REAL: Vol. 3 [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9783112321256, 9783112310137

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The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Volume 3

R] The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature Edited by Herbert Grabes • Hans-Jiirgen Diller • Hans Bungert Volume 3

w DE

G

Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York 1985

N o t i c e to Contributors The editors invite submission of manuscripts appropriate to the aims indicated in the Preface. The journal does not pay contributors. Each author will receive 50 offprints of the article. Articles submitted for consideration may be sent either directly to one of the editors or to an advisor. To facilitate correspondence, they should be sent in duplicate; they must be typed in English, doublespaced, with endnotes rather than running footnotes, and should otherwise observe the conventions laid down in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, ed. Joseph Gibaldi and Walter S. Achtert (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1984).

Herbert Grabes, University of Gießen

Editors Hans-Jürgen Diller, University of Bochum

Hans Bungert, University of Regensburg

Advisory Board P. G. Bouce (University of Paris III), Malcolm Bradbury (University of East Anglia), Bernhard Fabian (University of Münster), Avrom Fleishman (The Johns Hopkins University), Wolfgang Iser (University of Konstanz), Murray Krieger (University of California/Irvine), Giorgio Melchiori (University of Rome), Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (Jagellonian University of Cracow), John Spencer (University of Leeds), Albert E. Stone (University of Iowa), Arne Zettersten (University of Copenhagen). Assistant Editors Gordon Collier and Klaus Schwank (University of Gießen) ISSN 0723-0338 ISBN 3-11-010675-2 Walter de Gruyter & Co. ISBN 0-89925-153-6 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York R e : C o p y i n g in t h e U S A A u t h o r i z a t i o n t o p h o t o c o p y i t e m s f o r i n t e r n a l o r p e r s o n a l use, o r t h e i n t e r n a l o r p e r s o n a l use of s p e c i f i c clients, is g r a n t e d b y W a l t e r de G r u y t e r & C o . • Berlin • N e w Y o r k f o r libraries a n d o t h e r u s e r s r e g i s t e r e d w i t h t h e C o p y r i g h t C l e a r a n c e C e n t e r ( C C C ) T r a n s a c t i o n a l R e p o r t i n g S e r v i c e , p r o v i d e d t h a t t h e b a s e f e e of $ 0 2 . 0 0 p e r c o p y is p a i d d i r e c t l y t o C C C , 21 C o n g r e s s St., S a l e m , M A 0 1 9 7 0 . 0 7 2 3 - 0 3 3 8 / 8 5 / $ 2.0C © b y W a l t e r d e G r u y t e r & C o . • Berlin • N e w Y o r k © 1985 b y V e r l a g W a l t e r de G r u y t e r & C o . — P r i n t e d in G e r m a n y — All r i g h t s r e s e r v e d , i n c l u d i n g t h o s e of t r a n s l a t i o n s into f o r e i g n l a n g u a g e s . N o p a r t of t h i s j o u r n a l m a y b e r e p r o d u c e d in a n y f o r m — by p h o t o p r i n t , m i c r o f i l m o r any other means — n o r transmitted n o r translated into a machine language without permission f r o m the publisher. T y p e s e t t i n g a n d p r i n t i n g : H . H e e n e m a n n G m b H & C o , Berlin. B i n d i n g : L ü d e r i t z & B a u e r , Berlin

Contents

(Konstanz) Changing Functions of Literature

W O L F G A N G ISER

1

(Hull) The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance: A Chapter in the History of a Narrative Type

23

(Tel Aviv) Comedy as Heuristic Fiction: A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Context of Shakespearean Comedy

57

(Augsburg) Dramatic Elements and the Problem of Literary Mediation in the Works of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

Ill

(St. John's, Newfoundland) Wordsworth and Beattie's Minstrel: The Progress of Poetic Autobiography

131

(Marburg) Literature — Philosophy — Religion: On Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

163

(Normal, 111.) Sartor Resartus Retailored? Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

185

(Hilo, Hawaii) What Rough Beast?: Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A Vision

223

(Collegeville, Penn.) Arthur Miller: Illuminating Process

265

THOMAS MCALINDON

G.

BEINER

MANFRED PUTZ

EVERARD H . K I N G

CLAUS U H L I G

STANLEY R E N N E R

JAMES L O Y I C A L L E N

PATRICIA R . SCHROEDER

Addresses of Editors Prof. Dr. H a n s

Institut für Anglistik der Universität Regensburg, Univer-

BUNGERT,

sitätsstr. 31, D-8400 Regensburg 2 Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen DILLER, Englisches Seminar der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-4630 Bochum 1 Prof. Dr. Herbert GRABES, Institut f ü r Anglistik und Amerikanistik der Universität Gießen, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10, D-6300 Gießen

Addresses of Contributors Prof. James L. ALLEN, University of Hawaii at Hilo, College of Arts and Sciences, 1400 Kapiolani Street, Hilo, Hawaii 96720, USA Dr. G. BEINER, Tel Aviv University, Department of English, Ramat Aviv, Israel Prof. Dr. Wolfgang ISER, Philosophische Fakultät, Fachgruppe Literaturwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz, Universitätsstr. 10, D-7750 Konstanz Dr. Everard H . KING, Department of English, Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada A1C 5S7 Dr. Thomas

MCALINDON,

Department of English, The University of Hull, Hull H U 6

7RX, N. Humberside, England Prof. Dr.

Manfred PÜTZ, Universität Augsburg,

Philosophische

Fakultät,

Univer-

sitätsstr. 10, D-8900 Augsburg Prof. Stanley RENNER, Department of English, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61701, USA Prof. Patricia R.

SCHROEDER,

Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania 19426, USA

Prof. Dr. Claus UHLIG, Institut für Englische und Amerikanische Philologie, Philipps-Universität, Wilhelm-Röpke-Str. 6 D, D-3550 Marburg

W O L F G A N G ISER

Changing functions of literature"'

I The place of literature in modern society is something that can no longer be taken for granted. Once upon a time its significance was unquestioned, whereas now, paradoxically, the significance has been eroded in proportion to the increasing accessibility of books. Clearly it has lost certain functions which had formerly been so integral that they were taken for literature itself. This fact implies that ideas entertained about literature, but not literature itself, have come to an end. Thus, the repeated announcements of the death of literature which have punctuated the last hundred years from Lautréamont through the revolt of '68 have rather concerned the function attributed to it in bourgeois society — they are symptons of a malaise directed towards ideas, functions and applications of literature rather than literature per se. Throughout its history, literature has always stood in need of being justified, and since Aristotle we have grown accustomed to a branch of criticism that strives to analyse just what literature should be or should achieve. This gives rise to the extraordinary fact that, while literature achieves its own effects through itself, it is accompanied by a critical activity in the form of poetics or aesthetic theory which constantly tries to translate it into other terms in order to make it accessible to the prevailing requirements of the day. And since these requirements change, the functional values of literature also change. Evidently literature has reached just such a turning-point today. Why has it been relegated to the fringes of modern society? Does this marginal position denote a complete loss of function, or merely the loss of those functions with which literature has hitherto been identified? If we are to answer these questions, we must look back into the recent past so that we can ascertain those potential functions which have not First given as a public lecture in winter 1980/81 at the Hochschule fur Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften St. Gallen as part of the programme on "History and Future", and subsequently published in the series Aulavortràge.

2

W o l f g a n g Iser

been fully exploited. Without this backward glance it will be impossible to see new possibilities for literature, since these can only come into being through what has been superseded : the negation of what literature was becomes the condition for what it can become.

II Two outstanding twentieth-century "rebellions" — those of Dadaism and the 1968 Paris Revolt — point accusing fingers at the old bourgeois concept of literature, which was finally swamped by the upheavals that followed the two world wars. But precisely what were these rebellions directed against, and what lesson can be learned from them? Tristan Tzara wrote, in his Dada manifesto Pour faire un poème dadaïste: Prenez un journal. Prenez des ciseaux. Choisissez dans ce journal un article ayant la longueur que vous comptez donner à votre poème. D é c o u p e z l'article. D é c o u p e z ensuite avec soin chacun des mots qui forment cet article et mettez-les dans un sac. Agitez doucement. Sortez ensuite chaque coupure l'une après l'autre. Copiez consciencieusement dans l'ordre où elles ont quitté le sac. Le poème vous ressemblera.'

Instructions of this kind are meant to dissolve the boundary between literature and reality. A good ten years later André Breton proclaimed that the poet of the future would overcome the depressingly unbridgeable gap between Action and Dream. 2 Dream becoming action, newspaper cuttings becoming poems — here we have the hitherto unquestioned distinction between literature and reality being paraded as a sort of period scandal.

1

Tristan Tzara, Lampisteries

précédées des sept manifestes dada ([Paris: Pauvert], 1963),

p. 64. 1

See Maurice Nadeau, The History

of Surrealism, trans. Richard H o w a r d ( N e w York:

Macmillan, 1965), p. 304. T h e quotation from Breton is in "Les Vases Communicants" (1932).

Changing functions of literature

3

The hectic aggression of the Dadaists and the deliberate provocations of the Surrealists show how deeply rooted in people's minds was the contrast between the dream of art and the prose of reality — it needed a course of shock therapy to drive this concept out of the collective unconscious of the bourgeoisie. One can trace a direct link between Dada and the Surrealists on the one hand and the "cultural revolution" sparked off by the Paris student revolt of 1968. A placard at the Sorbonne proclaimed: T h e society of self-alienation must disappear from history. W e shall discover a n e w and original world. Fantasy has c o m e to power. 3

What is meant by this can be gauged from statements like the following: It is n o t in the seminars of the German departments that the poems of Brecht and Mayakovsky should be interpreted, but in the meetings of the workers' revolutionary councils. Let us chase painted desires out of the museums and o n to the streets. Let us bring written dreams d o w n from the overcrowded bookshelves of the libraries, and press a stone in their hands. 4

These stones are to be thrown to the following effect: T h e Revolution: let us create conditions such that everyone can share in Picasso's work. T h e Cultural Revolution: let us create conditions such that everyone can become a Picasso and Picasso can b e c o m e everyone. 5

This proclaimed interchangeability between art and revolutionary practice is not far removed from the Dada revolt, although much more clearly expressed here. The interpénétration between aesthetic self-expression and political action is meant to herald the coming of a new reality that is to form the basis of a future society. A clear and consistent thread running right through the proclamations of this cultural revolution is the violent need to merge literature and reality. But if literature becomes real, then its reality can only be a game, and if reality becomes literature, then this literature can only be anarchic. The anarchic game, then, is the price that has to be paid if literature changes into that which it is not, and if reality is to change into that which in fact it can never be — namely, literature. In the anarchic 3

4 5

Quoted by Peter Schneider, "Die Phantasie im Spätkapitalismus und die Kulturrevolution," Kursbuch, 16 (March 1969), 1. Schneider, "Phantasie im Spätkapitalismus," 31. Schneider, "Phantasie im Spätkapitalismus," 4.

W o l f g a n g Iser

4

game, literature and reality are forced by reciprocal negation into a symbiotic relationship. N e g a t i n g the fictional character of literature, so that it can make the leap into reality, is itself a piece of literature, which is reflected in the Dadaist manifesto and the writings of the Surrealists, just as it emerges f r o m the p r o n o u n c e m e n t s of the "Fantasy" that assumes power. In still more recent times the same line is to be observed in the various f o r m s of drama, f r o m the H a p p e n i n g s t h r o u g h to Living T h e a t r e and Street T h e a t r e , all of which negate the traditional structure of the d r a m a , which is based on a representative function. This literature offers itself as a continuous event, its content being the artist himself, or the audience, or even — as in Living T h e a t r e — the intermingling of play and revolution. 6 Is this compulsive urge to make literature into reality more than just the w a n t o n whim of impatient activists? It is clear that w h a t we have here is an aspect of literature which is concerned with destroying a n o t h e r aspect of itself. If literature is to dispose of distinctions by becoming reality, this can only be as a direct reaction to the tenet that there is a distinction between literature and reality — a belief that was produced and established by the aesthetic idealism of the nineteenth century. And if this reaction assumes the p r o portions of a revolution, then the violence can only be a sign of the extent to which that belief underpinned bourgeois culture. T h e upheaval required to destroy this existing concept acts as a sort of seismograph, indicating the reification of the bourgeois concept of literature — reified in the sense that a particular historical concept of literature was taken to be literature itself. In this respect the revolution offers us a key to the past. It does not, however, o f f e r us a key to the f u t u r e — it does not reveal to us potential aspects of literature. For all their claims to be "rebels of t o d a y " or " n e w mutants" 7 , the revolutionaries are still descended f r o m the aesthetic idealists. Literature has become reality in the f o r m of the anarchic game, but it is a fallacy to believe that by negating something, you have already grasped its otherness. This is also the fallacy embraced by the "Fantasy"

6

See K u r t Batt, Revoke

Intern:

Betrachtungen

zur Literatur

in der BRD

(Leipzig: Rec-

lam, 1974), p. 51. O n the w i d e r significance of revolution in the twentieth c e n t u r y , see Karel T e i g e , Liquidierung k a m p , 1968). 7

See Batt, p. 27.

der 'Kunst':

Analysen,

Manifeste

(Frankfurt/Main: Suhr-

Changing functions of literature

5

that has come to power. People take the announcement itself to be an indication that all things have changed for the better. "No-one thought it necessary to ask — and no-one would have been allowed to ask — what fantasy had to offer, and what it had ever offered." 8 With pure negation, the revolution remains dependent upon that which it negates, and the more radical the destruction, the more inevitably it must lead to self-destruction. Thus, the tradition of the nineteenth century has prevailed over its would-be destroyers, because they could not free themselves from the contradiction which is inherent in that tradition and which prevented the revolution from becoming a starting-point for a literature of the future. We must therefore take a closer look at this contradiction inherited from the nineteenth-century aesthetic tradition — not only because it blunted the knives raised against it, but also because the impasse which it created released new possibilities for literature.

Ill German Idealism involved a significant reorientation of the age-old relationship between Art and Nature. As an imitation of Nature, Art had the task of making it accessible to man, and even of perfecting it where necessary. In classical antiquity this relationship derived its stability from the orderliness of the cosmos, and in its final stages, during the eighteenth century, from the belief in the perfectibility of the world. But with the erosion of this guaranteed stability came a complete change in the Nature-Art relationship, with Nature giving way to the subjective self, known to the Idealists as the Genius. Initially the genius was viewed as one favoured by Nature, for he was able to create like Nature, though what he produced distinguished itself by rising above any practical use or application. Thus, the work of genius was considered to be quite different from what the craftsman produced; in its essence it was the embodiment of the creative process itself.9 Art was no longer a matter of technical skill, but had become a 8

9

Hans Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), p. 179 (my translation). This statement refers explicitly to the proclamation made during the Paris revolt of May 1968 that Fantasy had come to power. See Hans Georg Gadamer, "Zur Fragwürdigkeit des ästhetischen Bewußtseins," Rivista di Estetica, 3, No. 3 (1958), 378.

6

Wolfgang Iser

realm for exercising individual freedom, and it was Schiller who, in his Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung, radicalized this concept, which was drawn from Kant's Critique of Judgment. Kant's theory of genius had shown the extent to which the beautiful in art is able to activate human faculties, causing an interplay between them as a necessary prerequisite for cognition. Schiller attributed the same function to the human disposition for play, but he saw the aim as being not cognition but training for freedom. For him the play-drive (Spieltrieb) provided a precise balance between the striving for form and for content 10 , which in terms of art gives rise to a realm of "der schöne Schein", beautiful semblance — a realm that lies beyond the borders of the real. It is exactly this division — at the time heralded as a new humanistic ideal — from which a great many of the troubles began to ensue. If Art is now conceived as an exercise in human freedom, it is all too obvious that man's education through Art will lead ultimately to an education to Art." In other words, Art not only freed itself from its traditional links with Nature, but it also set itself up in opposition to reality, since reality did not contain the freedom that was only possible by means of education through Art. And so, instead of Art and Nature complementing one another, they settled into opposing positions of Appearance and Reality, their paths so divergent that they could never come together again. Where Art ruled, reality was overstepped; and so the nineteenth-century concept of Art is that of "beautiful semblance" contrasted to prosaic reality. The persuasiveness of this concept is to be inferred from the manner in which its influence spread even to such places as Britain, where the ground was originally far from fertile. Thomas Carlyle summed up the whole situation in his series of lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and

10

E. M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, eds., Friedrieb Schiller: On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Oxford: O x f o r d Univ. Press, 1967) have proposed "play-drive" as a translation for Spieltrieb, "formal drive" ior Formtrieb, and "sensuous drive" for Stofftrieb. For reference see H a z a r d Adams, ed., Critical Theory Since Plato (New York: H a r court Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 417; Thomas Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays II, Centenary Edition (London: Chapman & Hall, 1899), p. 201 suggests "sportimpulse" as a rendering for Spieltrieb.

11

See Hans Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1960), p. 78. H e supplies a detailed explanation of the nineteenth-century ideal of art.

Wolfgang Iser

7

the Heroic in History: "Literature, so far as it is Literature, is 'an apocalypse of Nature', a revealing of the 'open secret'.'" 2 This view of literature as the apocalypse of Nature entails a radical revision of the old complementary relationship between Art and Nature; what literature reveals is a secret whose manifestation leads to the outstripping of Nature. But if Nature is exceeded by literature, then reality itself can only be a collection of juggled appearances. 13 With this reorientation of the relationship, Carlyle completes the switch of ontological predicates initiated by Schiller. Now, even if Art as beautiful semblance embodies a reality of its own, this in turn remains dependent on the given prosaic reality which it must transcend in order to set man free. This is the defect inherent in the humanistic concept, for Art draws its determination from what it sets out to remove. In other words, not only is it dependent on something outside itself, but it is also the very negation of this "something" that helps bring about the basic characteristic of Art as beautiful semblance. This paradox lies at the heart of an Art that has become autonomous. Its pervasiveness becomes clear from such traditional descriptions of Art as beautiful appearance, magic, transfiguration, illusion etc., all of which show how impossible it is for an autonomous Art to break free from the reality it is supposed to annihilate. Evidently autonomous Art is not a transcendence of reality so much as a flight from it. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, abundant support has been offered for this view. Matthew Arnold, who postulated norms of Art widely embraced throughout the century and who was as influential as Schiller had been earlier, wrote: "Criticism must maintain its independence of the practical spirit and its aims.'" 4 This meant that the critic must refrain from "immediate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative treatment of things.'" 5 Instead of linking Art with life, the critic must separate the two in order to give Art 'reality', which is liberation from the social and political world. But what it is that enables Art to achieve

12

13 14

15

Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: Dent, 1948), p. 391. See Carlyle, On Heroes, p. 385. Matthew Arnold, Lectures and Essays in Criticism, vol. Ill of The Complete Prose Works, ed. R. H . Super (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1962), p. 280. Arnold, Lectures and Essays, p. 275.

8

Wolfgang Iser

this, and what qualities the new sphere is to possess, remains uncertain, as is evinced by the biblical metaphor with which Arnold attempts to describe the critic's situation: . . . t h e r e is t h e p r o m i s e d l a n d , t o w a r d s w h i c h criticism can o n l y b e c k o n . T h a t p r o m i s e d land will n o t b e o u r s t o e n t e r , a n d w e shall die in t h e w i l d e r ness: b u t t o have desired t o e n t e r it, t o have saluted it f r o m a f a r , is a l r e a d y , p e r h a p s , t h e best distinction a m o n g c o n t e m p o r a r i e s . 1 6

And so the promised land of Art is no more than a hope, whose religious overtones resound with the desire for deliverance. And as the century wore on, autonomous Art revealed itself more and more overtly to be nothing but a haven from the burdensome character of experience; it served to make us forget that world in which we are so inextricably entangled. This function was acknowledged explicitly at the end of the nineteenth century, in the concept of art for art's sake. Walter Pater sums it all up: W e l l ! W e are all u n d e r s e n t e n c e of d e a t h b u t w i t h a sort of indefinite r e prieve . . . w e have an interval, and t h e n o u r place k n o w s us n o m o r e . S o m e spend this interval in listlessness, s o m e in high passions, t h e wisest, at least a m o n g ' t h e children of this w o r l d , ' in a r t a n d song. F o r o u r o n e c h a n c e lies in e x p a n d i n g t h a t interval, in g e t t i n g as m a n y p u l s a t i o n s as possible i n t o t h e given time. G r e a t passions m a y give us this q u i c k e n e d sense of life, ecstasy a n d s o r r o w of love . . . O n l y be s u r e it is passion — t h a t it d o e s yield y o u this f r u i t of a q u i c k e n e d , multiplied consciousness. O f such w i s d o m , t h e p o etic p a s s i o n , t h e desire f o r b e a u t y , t h e love of a r t f o r its o w n sake, has m o s t . F o r a r t c o m e s t o y o u p r o p o s i n g f r a n k l y to give n o t h i n g b u t t h e highest quality t o y o u r m o m e n t s as t h e y pass, and simply f o r t h o s e m o m e n t s ' sake. 1 7

Art, then, is simply a response to man's oppressive awareness of the temporal nature of his existence; by giving him moments of rapture, it can make him forget everyday life and its transitoriness. What at the start of the century was a promise of freedom has become, by the end of the century, a stimulus to ecstasy. Little wonder, then, that Art at this time had hidden itself away in its ivory tower, its refuge from the sordidness of life.

16 17

Arnold, Lectures and Essays, p. 285. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (London: Macmillan, 1919), pp. 238-9.

C h a n g i n g f u n c t i o n s of literature

9

But this very retreat indicates that Art was not free from those practical functions it so vehemently disclaimed and whose very removal was supposed to give it its autonomy. For the flight from oppressive reality into the worlds of fantasy serves very real needs and shows very real practical purposes, the fulfilment of which inevitably involves an innate contradiction within the concept of autonomous Art.

IV At this point we must note that autonomous Art constitutes a concept of art, and should by no means be taken to cover all the products of artists and writers throughout the nineteenth century. Even though it was a principle that was continually put into practice by those who considered romanticism as an ongoing process, nevertheless a good deal of literature was written in opposition to this principle. But the very effectiveness of this literature depended in no small measure on the fact that it deliberately went against established expectations. While the aesthetic creed of the day was the liberation of Art from social reality, realistic and naturalistic literature gained its potency from its rebellion against such a creed. At first, however, this opposition had no influence on the validity of the autonomy concept, and what has since been called the aesthetic consciousness drew its criteria for Art from the classical periods in literature, whose peak achievements gave rise in the nineteenth century to what Heine had called a Religion of Art. The ground had already been prepared by the fact that during this period social and philosophical systems, as well as religious and scientific world pictures, were rivalling one another as attempts to penetrate the truth of reality. Art transcended all these various interpretations, not least because its very nature was to open up territories beyond those of the empirical world. This was the function that raised it to the status of religion, as can be seen from such contemporary critical terms as Offenbarungsgeschehen (revelatory event), signifying the superiority of Art over the various conflicting world views. But this claim of revelation was one that the religion of Art could never fulfil, for the intended transcendence of reality revealed itself as merely an escape, thus laying bare the needs it was meant to satisfy. Art had advanced to the level of a religion because after the period of the Enlightenment such an intramundane transcendence of reality could only

10

W o l f g a n g Iser

come about through Art — but as a result Art was more dependent than ever upon the worldly reality that it was supposed to outstrip.

V Right from the start this contradiction was aggravated by the need to provide a concrete idea of what autonomous Art meant. The mere impulse of abstracting Art from the given world was not enough to convey an image of its autonomy. After all, Art was claiming to be the realm of freedom in which lay man's only chance to ennoble himself; but if man was to be led to true humanity by way of Art, then this Art which was to underlie his education could scarcely remain an abstract idea. H o w , though, can one concretize something that only lives through the transcendence of its direct opposite? The answer was: by collecting all the great artistic achievements of the past. Hence the emergence of that typically nineteenth-century institution, the museum. Originally these collections had grown from the personal tastes of individuals; but now the multiplicity of tastes had to be unified into a single concept of taste which could take on normative authority. And so works of art were taken out of their sacred or profane settings and placed in the museum. It is this "abstraction", this uprooting of the work from its context, that underlies whatever we have now come to call a work of art. As a representative of a normative taste, it must exercise its effectiveness entirely through itself, and not through any purposes or functions. It is scarcely surprising that when Duchamp displayed a bottle-rack in a museum, everyone was shocked. For the museum was the final triumph of autonomous Art, in that it took works of art out of their historical settings, and endowed art of all periods with contemporaneity so that from their various appearances there could be extrapolated a single, universally valid norm of Art. Once again, however, there is no escaping the problem which the museum was in fact meant to dispose of. The museum is "a late stage of all the successful representations in the history of art, which are preserved by a present that simultaneously distances itself from them, in order to enjoy its own uniqueness.'" 8 This enjoyment, however, brings to light precisely the factor which the unified collection of works sought to

18

Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, p. 382 (my translation).

Changing functions of literature

11

cover up — namely, the historical relativity of taste, as evinced by the individual works and also by the historical functions, sacred or profane, that they had to fulfil in their original settings. Thus, the contemporaneity with which the museum endows the works actually causes stress to be laid on their historical differences, the concealment of which was supposed to underpin the claim of Art to be autonomous.

VI The contradiction had even more drastic consequences for literature, which followed the same trend by replacing its "canonized texts" with an imaginary museum of literary masterpieces. From Saint-Beuve's Temple du gout to Walter Pater's House Beautiful, literary critics of the time strove to filter out the great works from the stream of history, in order to put them in a treasure-house. It is this continual attempt to salvage artistic achievements from oblivion that made the treasure-house into such a conspicuous ideal of the cultural attitude prevailing throughout the nineteenth century. As a place of detached enchantment, the imaginary museum of literature gave man the chance to gaze at himself in the mirror of his achievements made tangible in history. 19 Just as the museum enabled men to enjoy detachment from their preserved past, so too did the great literary and cultural achievements bring inspiration to the human mind. This was precisely the meaning of the humanistic education beloved of the nineteenth century: release from an oppressive present, and retrospective contemplation of the past, whose preserved contemporaneity in museum and treasure-house drives out the threat of the real world and offers the constant ennobling of man to help him on the path to his own humanisation. The importance of the treasure-house in the nineteenth century can be gauged most obviously from the various collections of quotations from world literature published at that time. In 1855 Bartlett's Familiar Quotations was published in England, with similar success to that of Georg Büchmann's Geflügelte Worte in Germany, which actually bore the subtitle Zitatenschatz, or treasury of quotations. At the same time in Germany, Reclam brought out the first paperbacks, publishing cheap

19

See Walter Pater, Appreciations: p. 241.

With an Essay on Style (London: Macmillan, 1920),

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editions of the classics under the collective heading of Universalbibliothek (Universal Library) with the motto Bildung macht frei (Culture liberates). The commercial success of these enterprises shows clearly that they must have fulfilled an existing need. It was as if the ideal of humanistic education was now available to all; for easy access to the treasure-house was essential, since only a knowledge of the literary past was satisfactory evidence of culture. If one could lace one's conversation with quotations, one could pass for an educated being, thus gaining access to that élite group of persons who, regardless of class or profession, shared the same all-important status symbol of education. The fact that class and profession ceased to be social barriers for those in command of what culture had to offer, points up an important difference between this humanistic tradition and the original aims of autonomous Art. What initially was conceived as a haven from the burdensome pressure of social realities turned out to be a means of gaining social recognition. The fossilized nature of this culture is unmistakable, for just as the work of art in the museum was removed from its functional setting, so too was the quotation wrenched out of its context and made to serve only as a sort of password among the educated. And yet, despite this functional devaluation, such educational fossils still retain one subtle characteristic of their former selves: autonomous Art sought to release people from their webs of reality, so that they could enter into a higher realm — and precisely this was accomplished by the new opportunity to climb social barriers and enter the ranks of the initiated.

VII Autonomous Art did not ennoble man, as is all too clear from the appalling slaughter that has taken place in this century. The humanist ideology led instead to a whole fabric of delusions. Marcuse described this as follows: Culture means not so much a better as a nobler world: a world that is to be brought about not by overturning the material order of life, but through an event within the soul of the individual. Humanity becomes an internal condition; freedom, goodness, beauty become spiritual qualities: understanding for all things human, knowledge of the great things of all times, appreciation of all things difficult and sublime, respect for history, in which all this

Changing functions of literature

13

has taken place . . . Culture should permeate and ennoble the given world, not replace it with a n e w one. In this w a y it raises the individual. . . T h e beauty of culture is, above all, an inner beauty . . . Its realm is essentially a realm of the soul. 2 0

This basic disposition of humanistic culture, Marcuse concluded, lent itself readily to any kind of manipulation, as evinced by the political fate of Germany, from which this ideal originally arose. The illusory nature of humanistic culture is further revealed by a remark of Freud's. T h e great unmasker seems himself to have fallen into the same self-deluding trap as so many of the educated élite of his time. When visiting Berlin in 1930, he was asked by the American ambassador what he thought were the chances of National Socialism succeeding. His answer was: "A nation that produced Goethe could not possibly go to the bad." 21 Humanisation through culture has been proved by history — especially in Germany — to be an illusion, and this fact is responsible in no small measure for the loss of status suffered by culture in our time. Since the end of the Second World War, industrial societies have experienced a marked acceleration in the erosion of the one-time firmly entrenched class-structure, with a resultant social mobility and a far-reaching change in the nature of its status symbols. Social recognition no longer depends on education, but on success in the professional world. Instead of asserting ourselves by quoting from world literature, we make our social mark with cars, houses, holiday homes and the luxuries of life. In societies where social mobility has always prevailed — as in America, for instance — rank has never been linked to literary culture. Indeed, bringing quotations into conversation can often lead to the speaker being misunderstood or viewed as a sort of freak. Culture as such has become almost a fringe eccentricity, and the only time it arouses public admiration is when it features in T V quiz shows. Furthermore, literary culture — the source of all the quotations — has had to face heavy competition. The surfeit of optical and acoustic appeals to the human mind has considerably reduced the significance of

20

21

Herbert Marcuse, Kultur und Geselhchaft 1 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1968), p. 71 (my translation). Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, edited and abridged in one volume by Lionel Trilling and Steven Marcus (New York: Basic Books, 1961), p. 480. Freud made this remark to U. S. Ambassador Bullitt, who recounted it in English.

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reading in o u r time. "I w o n d e r " , Marshall McLuhan once mused rhetorically, "whether the rebellion today in classrooms and against the b o o k has anything to do with the new electronic age we live in." 22 H e leaves no doubt as to his o w n answer to the question, f o r he attributes the decline of the culture of the written w o r d to the fact that the media have enabled people to create new extensions of themselves.

VIII W e have seen that in the past literature increased its status in accordance with its use; this was most evident in D a d a and in the revolt of the left, t h r o u g h which literature was meant to become reality itself. But it is an integral feature of literature that — apart f r o m exclusively didactic writing — it is not created f o r any one specific use. T h u s , all attempts to assign such a use to it can be taken as an indication of some historically conditioned need. This applies to humanisation t h r o u g h literature as well as to fantasy's seizure of power, as d e m a n d e d by the Paris revolutionaries. In fact, literature seems constantly to provoke translations of itself into terms of prevailing social situations, which in turn makes it into a sort of divining-rod f o r those impulses that have given rise to whatever use has been attributed to it. T h u s , any talk of "use" remains naive if the conditionality of this use is not taken into consideration. H o w e v e r , can this use still be effective if its underlying presuppositions are exposed? As any use of literature implicitly entails the disclosure of historically conditioned needs, a f u r t h e r dimension is revealed which remains hidden so long as utility constitutes the be-all and end-all of literature. Harnessing literature to practical purposes, or even equating it with them, appears to be a defence mechanism directed against the growing complexities of an open society. For literature c o n f r o n t s people with themselves — which might prove irritating f o r those w h o consider themselves firmly rooted in their social role. As self-confrontation tends to shatter conventions, it remains questionable whether any use is to be derived f r o m it. Practical use, more often than not, presupposes the stabil-

-2

McLuhan: Hot and Cool: A Primer for the Understanding of and a Critical Symposium with a Rebuttal by McLuhan, ed. Gerald E. Stearn (New York: Dial Press, 1967), p. 143.

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15

ity of a given framework. For this reason, any talk of the practical use of literature is a thing of the past. In retrospect, use becomes an indicator of the secret longings prevalent in bourgeois society and of the anthropological necessity for people to reduce complexities in an expanding world.

IX The identification of literature with its practical function seems outdated, not least because literature failed to bring the human being to full fruition. Nevertheless, this very failure does raise the question of what happens to us when we make ourselves available for the literary experience. In this respect the past concept of literature conditions a new question as to what it might be. Two answers can be excluded: it is neither an escape from reality nor a substitute for it. Instead, it reacts to reality, and in doing so interprets it. Today we no longer cling exclusively to classical achievements in literature, nor do we select them as guides for our assessments, as was the case in bourgeois culture. W e no longer focus on the pinnacles of classical periods, nor do we consider them as objects of contemplation in order to be lifted out of our pedestrian ordinariness. Such an attitude resulted from a restrictive view of literature as a model to help us in our lives — a view that was bound to assume normative validity at the expense of other views. This exclusion concealed the degree to which literature, as a reaction to reality, opened up this reality by interpreting it. Today it is the multifarious need for interpretation prevalent in our lives that turns literature into a paradigm quite different from the contemplation of the aura emanating from the classical masterpiece. It has ceased to be an imaginary museum 23 such as served in nineteenth-century culture to underpin the aesthetic consciousness, which defined itself by exceeding empirical realities. Instead, it reveals the vast number of ways in which human faculties can be used to open up the world in which we live. What makes literature so fascinating and so relevant today is the discovery that all our activities are permeated by acts of interpretation — indeed that we live by interpreting. 23

T h e idea of the imaginary m u s e u m was devised and developed by A n d r é M a l r a u x in " M u s e u m W i t h o u t Walls," P a r t I of The Voices of Silence, trans. S t u a r t Gilbert ( N e w Y o r k : D o u b l e d a y , 1953) f r o m Les Voix du silence (Paris: G a l l i m a r d , 1951).

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Through interpretation we establish something which will correspond to the needs of a particular situation without laying claim to any normative validity for other situations. Thus, interpretation entails an attempt to pin down meaning; but, through this very precision, it also makes such meaning strictly non-transferable. It is an attitude geared to the changeability of situations, with the objective of stabilizing them for our pragmatically-orientated actions. Therefore it has to be determinate and open at the same time, since the managing of changing situations necessitates an awareness of what underlies and thus guides our acts of interpretation. Only if we catch sight of these presuppositions will comprehension ensue. Interpretation, then, is a never-ending process of directing ourselves in the world, and literature provides an exemplary form of this process in that it is a reaction to the world accompanying its ever-changing situations. Thus, it objectifies something inherent in our disposition, as the accommodation of ourselves in the world requires a constant editing of reality. Man is an interpreting animal, and in this respect literature is an integral feature of our make-up. It may be nothing but a game, yet as a game it allows us to simulate an inexhaustible variety of trial-runs, far in excess of what life may demand of us.

X Since literature itself is a form of interpretation, it must be linked to the real world. Consequently, it cannot be abstracted from reality — the ideal of autonomous Art — and it cannot replace reality — the ideal of the Paris revolutionaries. N o r can it merely imitate reality, as was claimed by the concept of mimesis. What, then, does it do? According to Dieter Wellershoff, Writing has increasingly assumed the character of a Probierbewegung [testing or experimental movement], which advances constantly from place to place, enthralled by the endeavour to communicate the unspeakable. Criticism will have to be geared to this endeavour; and, indeed, it is a supporting form of its articulation. It, too, has to become an act of surveying of what lies beyond the familiar and hence can no longer be guided by so-called eternally valid norms. It is as if fantasy had thrust itself into realms outside itself, in which our as yet unarticulated lives strive for cognizance of themselves. 24 24

Dieter Wellershoff, Literatur p. 12 (my translation).

und Lustprtnzip

( C o l o g n e : Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1973),

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17

These "testing movements" of literature are directed to hidden and as yet unknown dimensions of our lives. The world we live in is always an interpreted world, and we are conditioned by world-pictures and organizations which, because of their successful operations, we take for reality itself. But all our organizations are in fact solutions to problems, and even if they are successful, these solutions will still bring about further problems, since they must exclude elements of reality in order to achieve their success. Literature is preoccupied with precisely these exclusions — those aspects that have been omitted, ignored, displaced, etc., in order that our world may be stabilized by its institutions. In this respect, literature certainly depends on given structures in the real world — but not in order to perfect or to imitate them; on the contrary, literature serves to bring to our attention the price we must always pay for our pragmatically-orientated sense of security. On the one hand, we cannot do without the institutions, organizations and world-pictures that reduce the contingency of reality and enable us to come to terms with it. On the other hand, we cannot come to terms with the price that we must pay. Now, what happens if we want both the security and the return of whatever had to be sacrificed to gain security? In terms of the function of literature, there are two possible answers to this question; but they are answers that appear irreconcilable.

XI The first answer is the widely held view that literature is Utopian fantasy: it embodies that which does not yet exist but ought to exist. Adorno has put it succinctly: "what is not is nevertheless promised through the fact that it appears." 25 The problem here is with the nature of Utopia itself. Literature would have to present the deficiencies of the present as if they were correctible — in other words, literature would have to incorporate into the present that which is needed to make it perfect. But if literature embodied a counterbalance to existing conditions in order to repair their deficiencies, it would be nothing more than the extrapolation of a bad reality turned, as it were, upside down. And this would mean imposing

25

Theodor W . Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften 7 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 347 (my translation).

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specific aims upon literature, tying it inescapably to the conditions of a given society in order to make it serve the needs of that society. If this were so, the solutions provided would at best arouse a historical interest and would lose their immediacy of appeal for succeeding generations. Furthermore, the Utopian concept would set literature and society in diametrically opposed positions: literature would then be reduced to acting as a contrast or counterbalance to reality, without the vast range of different reactions which in fact it does incorporate. Such a concept is an offshoot of logocentristic thinking — a category which applies least of all to literature. Furthermore, it would imply the demise of literature if, by some revolutionary event, the Utopian reflection were to become reality. W e all know that Trotsky made this forecast, now hushed up in Marxist thinking in view of a flourishing Social Realism. The Utopian concept fails to explain the special position that literature occupies in our culture — perhaps not least because such a concept is based on the now superseded idea that we are capable of perfecting ourselves. Finally, the suspicion looms large that literature once again wants to turn itself into reality.

XII Literature refers to things which are suppressed, unconscious, inconceivable, and perhaps even incommensurable, but this does not mean that a view of the invisible must necessarily be Utopian. The urge to present whatever is beyond the range of conscious life has its roots in something other than a desire for completeness, let alone perfection. Nietzsche once said of Art that it is functionally allied to the predicaments of the human situation 26 ; less dramatically, we could say that literature relates to that which prevailing organizations of reality have made unavailable. These unavailable territories mark the boundaries beyond which the systems cannot work, but they are in themselves featureless. They resist conceptualization by the conscious mind and can only be tricked into shape through stories told about them. "Stories" should be taken in the broadest sense, for even the sequence of images in a poem can release the unavailable self for the narrating self to view. 26

See Friedrich N i e t z s c h e , Die Geburt der Tragödie, V o l . II of Werke, ed. Karl Schlechta ( M u n i c h : H a n s e r , 1977), pp. 98 and 108. See also Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos, p. 369.

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19

Now, world-pictures, and social and thought systems come into being as a means of tackling that which initially eludes our grasp; but they, in turn, cause other ungraspables to emerge, so that there can never be a complete coverage of all eventualities. Awareness of this fact is not implanted in the systems themselves, but in literature. If such awareness were present in the systems, then they would be continually forced to restructure themselves in order to counteract the blind spots they inevitably produce, and so they would be incapable of fulfilling their original function of establishing order. Thus, it is literature which brings the unavailable into view. This, in turn, is not a featureless entity, but is conditioned by the achievements through which the functional organizations of our reality have successfully patterned the intangible. In order to open access to the inaccessible, what is withheld from us can only be brought to the fore by being staged. Literature is a means of staging the otherwise inconceivable, which in terms of given reality appears to be unreal. It renders it conceivable because the stories told and images featured by literature employ the same techniques of perceiving and imaging as those operative in our daily lives. Thus, literature generates the illusion of a perception which endows the unavailable with a certain gestalt. And, indeed, the only way in which the inconceivable may gain presence is by being staged through a sequence of images. In this respect, literature does not head towards a future Utopia so much as continue the process begun by myth. Just like myth, it takes hold of the ungraspable, or rather appears to take hold of it. Y e t it simultaneously discloses that the outcome is only to be taken as if it were real. From this results a close correspondence between literature and reality. Each system which organizes our world is a pragmatic way of coping with contingencies and complexities; and so, irrespective of its success, it leaves behind something unmastered to which literature gives form, making it conceivable as the unconscious level of the real world. It is in this respect that literature is a continuation of myth, whose main function consisted in allaying primeval terror through its images. It is different from myth in that it spotlights the unavailable, which it draws out into the open through its stories and images. As such, it may even enable us to visualize what gave rise to the split between the available and the inaccessible; but as the inaccessible will vary according to what out patterning of reality has made available, clearly the origin of the split will vary, too. Consequently, literature, just like myth, can never be brought to an end, for every reality must perforce produce its

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own attendant irreality. The very attempt to bring literature to an end would itself have to be a piece of literature. Literature brings together instantaneously both the repressing force of our systems and the displacement caused by them, thereby removing the difference between them — a process which never occurs in life. It produces an illusion of the origin out of which that difference arises. Illusion, however, does not mean concealment; it means that something is made perceivable that is otherwise sealed off from the conscious mind. The origin is immemorial; by capturing it in an image we endow it with a graspable gestalt, which, however, serves only to indicate how we conceive the inconceivable. Its impenetrability, however, inscribes itself into this very gestalt, thus turning it into pure semblance. At this point the question arises as to why we should want to think the unthinkable at all. Here we enter into the realms of cultural anthropology. The extraordinary duality — thinking the unthinkable, picturing the inaccessible, bridging the unbridgeable, combining the mutally exclusive — all this has its roots in the decentered position of man: he is, but he does not have himself.27 Wanting to have oneself as one is, means needing to know what one is. Thus, we ourselves are marked by a duality that constantly seeks to be reconciled but never can be. From this irreconcilable split arises the need for representation, the need for images that can bridge the unbridgeable. This is why literature can never be reality but remains a form of semblance which — for all our awareness of its fictionality — is nevertheless indispensable. We live, as it were, on the subsidies of our fantasy, whose changing images, by staging what we are, enable us to overcome our own duality according to the changing requirements of our social and historical situations. The extent to which literature expresses our social and historical self-understanding is also the extent to which it helps us to gain insight into the nature of our imagination — that faculty which seeks to achieve what our nature forbids: namely, the state of being and, at the same time, of knowing what it is to be. Literature as a means of insight into the workings and functions of the imagination, and as a means of access to that uniquely human equipment which comes into operation when all 27

See Helmuth Plessner, "Die anthropologische Dimension der Geschichtlichkeit," Sozialer Wandel: Zivilisation und Fortschritt als Kategorien der soziologischen Theorie, ed. Hans Peter Dreitzel (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1972), p. 160. H e describes the human situation as: "I am, but I do not have myself" (my translation).

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our faculties have reached the limits of their capabilities — this is a subject with which literature itself is perennially concerned; and this no doubt is an area which the literary critic will also be bound to explore.

THOMAS McALINDON

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance: a Chapter in the History of a Narrative Type

I. G R E E K R O M A N C E A N D C H R I S T I A N

LEGEND

T a k e u p then all y o u r i n s t r u m e n t s o f t o r t u r e , a n d at o n c e . B r i n g o u t a g a i n s t m e the s c o u r g e s , the w h e e l , the f i r e , the s w o r d , a n d let S o s t h e n e s , y o u r c o u n s e l l o r , t a k e the f i e l d with y o u . I a m d e f e n c e l e s s , a n d a l o n e , a n d a w o m a n ; b u t o n e shield I h a v e , a n d t h a t is m y f r e e s o u l , w h i c h c a n n o t b e s u b d u e d b y the c u t t i n g o f the l a s h , o r the p i e r c i n g of the s w o r d , o r the b u r n i n g o f the fire. T h a t is a p o s s e s s i o n I will n e v e r s u r r e n d e r , n o , n o t I : and b u r n as y o u will, y o u will f i n d t h a t t h e r e is n o f i r e h o t e n o u g h t o c o n s u m e it!

The speaker is young and very beautiful and she is addressing an "utterly distracted" captor who has so far failed to make her yield her virginity, a possession which she prizes above life itself. The medieval scholar would be forgiven if he identified her as St. Margaret or St. Juliana, or indeed any one of the multitude of virgin martyrs celebrated in Christian hagiography. She is, however, the heroine of a third-century Greek romance, Achilles Tatius' Clitophon and Leucippe.' Even if this writer were a convert to Christianity (as was once thought to be the case), that in itself could not be considered as an explanation for the resemblances between the heroine of his love-and-adventure romance and the stereotyped virgin martyr of Christian legend. True to the canons of the sophistic rhetoric in which he was trained, Achilles adhered to the characteristics of the pagan form he had adopted: in the passage quoted above, situation, sentiment, and style are quite conventional. 2

1

2

Achilles Tatius, Clitophon and Leucippe, ed. and tr. S. Gaselee, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1917), p. 347. See also pp. 191-93. Cf. Heliodorus, An Aethiopian Romance, tr. T . Underdowne, rev. F. A. Wright, Broadway Translations (London: Routledge, 1923), pp. 11, 15, 95, 121, 158, 245ff. On this aspect of the romances see Erwin Rohde, Der Griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, 4th ed. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1960), pp. 4 6 1 - 6 3 ; Sophie Trenkner, The Greek Novella in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 108-9.

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The reason for the resemblances is, rather, that the most popular and influential legends of virgin martyrs originated in the Eastern Church and were first written in Greek. Writers sharing a common culture are likely to treat the same situation in much the same way, even though working in different forms; but it is probable too that Greek and Byzantine hagiographers were influenced by the manner in which the Sophists dealt with the popular theme of the virgin exposed to violence. They must certainly have been aware that in celebrating the ordeals of women martyrs they would appeal to a taste which the romances notoriously fostered; and it is hardly mere cynicism to observe that their competitive instinct is evident in their general indifference to female martyrs who are middle-aged and without beauty. In both the romance and the legend there is a chaste heroine who talks suspiciously like a practised orator when she should be inarticulate. In both she is separated from her true lover (Christ in the legends), and is rescued by a vigilant deity both from an abhorrent sexual relationship and from torture and untimely death — the martyr is usually pressed to renounce her virginity as well as her faith, and although she yields up her life in the end, she does so only when she has miraculously survived repeated attempts to destroy her physically. Of course the common element in the two narrative types represents no more than a predictable episode in the romance (albeit one which may occur several times in a single work), whereas it forms the very core of the legend. The fact remains, however, that the martyr legend served as a channel through which a recognizable portion of Greek romance — its inflated style, its fantastic spirit, and one of its favourite themes — passed into medieval literature. 3 3

For the hagiographic parallels see, for example, the early thirteenth-century legends Seinte Marharete, ed. Francis Mack, EETS. OS, 193 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1934), p p . 4 , 6, 42-46; Seinte Iuliene, ed. S.T.R.O. D'Ardenne, EETS, 248 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 6, 13, 27, 51-53, 67. Attention has been drawn before to the resemblances between Christian hagiography and Greek romance. See, for example, Ernest A. Baker, A History of the English Novel (London: Witherby, 1924), I, 43-49; Rosa Söder, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte Literatur der Antike (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1932). Martin Blumenthal, Formen und Motive in den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1933), pp. 144-59, is much more cautious than Söder in ascribing conscious imitation of pagan literature to early Christian hagiographers. See also M. Wilmotte, Les Origines du roman en France. L'Evolution du sentiment romanesque jusqu'en 1240 (Brussels: Palais des academies, 1941), chs. i and iii, passim; Tomas Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity ( O x f o r d : Basil Blackwell, 1983), pp. 154-65.

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Other elements of Greek romance were exploited in a different branch of hagiography from as early as the second and third centuries — the period in which the sophistic romance reached its maturity. The characteristic ingredients of this kind of romance are unmistakeable and will be familiar to most readers through Shakespeare's last plays: the separation of lovers, spouses, or a family; wanderings, shipwrecks, and much hardship; heroes and heroines of exalted rank reduced to or disguised as beggars and peasants; final reunion and recognition. One Greek romance, Apollonius of Tyre, was extremely well-known throughout Europe in a Latin version from the tenth century (if not much earlier) and this work alone would have acquainted medieval readers with the typical plot of Greek romance. 4 But Apollonius is a stray survivor only in the sense that it retained its pagan integrity. Otherwise it is one of a number of stories which, with varying degrees of change, perpetuated the old romance plot. Of the others the most important was the Recognitions of St. Clement, a third-century translation of an earlier Greek original. T h e Recognitions is a long work whose apologetic discourses on astrology, fatalism, and pagan mythology are brightened by a fully developed romance story and the ubiquitous presence of Simon Magus. Its popularity and its influence on the monastic mind throughout the early Middle Ages are evident in the large number of surviving manuscripts and in the frequency with which it is quoted by religious writers from Eusebius to Aldhelm and Bede.5 A very popular Epitome was made of it, too, and in its shortest version as the Life of St. Clement it found its way into all the great collections of saints' lives in the Middle Ages. Other early legends which noticeably imitated the plot of the romance were the Acts of St. Paul and St. Thecla, written probably in the

4

A. Riese, ed., Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Leipzig: Teubner, 1883), pp. xiv-xv. Scholarly opinion is divided nowadays on whether Apollonius was a Latin adaptation of a Greek original or an original work in Latin. Ben Edwin Perry pronounced it to be a Latin composition but suggested that it was directly influenced by an earlier form of the Greek Clementine romance (see below) or "by the same source on which the latter was built" — The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1967), p. 295. Tomas Hägg takes a neutral position on the problem, but stresses that the story of Apollonius "strongly resembles the Greek novels, especially Xenophon's Ephesiaca" ( The Novel in Antiquity; p. 147).

5

Adolf von Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1893), I, 212-29.

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Thomas McAlindon

second century and contained in the principal medieval collections of saints' lives; the so-called Acts of Xanthippe and Polixena (dignified by the presence of SS. Peter, Paul, and Philip), probably of the fourth century; and St. Jerome's Life of St. Malchus (fourth century). Two of the most successful legends created in the Middle Ages, the Byzantine legend of St. Alexis (tenth century), and that of St. Eustace (eighth century or earlier) were constructed, though in quite different ways, on the plot of separation, wandering, and recognition. Then from the twelfth century there developed a large number of narratives based on or incorporating this plot. They are mostly secular, and often chivalric, rather than hagiographic; but they are nearly always pietistic in spirit and they have numerous echoes of saints' legend. These narratives tend to fall into one of two groups according as they concentrate on the adventures of the man or the woman. The second group is the larger of the two and is variously classified as that of the Accused Queen, Calumniated Wife, or Outcast Wife; it is associated mainly with such heroines as Constance, Crescentia, and Florence. As Josef Schick has convincingly shown, this group owes its origin to the Clementine Recognitions.6 Narratives in the other group take their character from the Eustace or Alexis legend, or both. If we accept Schick's plausible supposition that the Eustace legend developed under the stimulus of the Recognitions, then the seminal nature of that work is given particular emphasis. 7 It is unnecessary to connect the Byzantine Alexis with the Recognitions. Greek romances were popular reading in Byzantium, and at least two full-scale romances were written there in imitation of Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius as late as the twelfth century. 8

Josef Schick, "Die Urquelle der Offa-Konstanze-Sage," in Britannica: Festschrift für Max Foerster (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1929), pp. 3 1 - 5 6 . "Die Urquelle der Offa-Konstanze-Sage," pp. 46, 5 2 - 5 4 . The origin of this legend has, however, been a source of much disagreement. See G. H. Gerould, "Forerunners, Congeners, and Derivatives of the Eustace Legend," PMLA, 19 (1904), 3 3 5 - 4 4 8 ; H. Delehaye, "La Légende de saint Eustache," Bull, de l'Acad. Royale de Belgique: Classe des Lettres, 4 ( 1 9 1 9 ) , 1 9 3 - 2 0 7 ; H. Petersen, "Les Origines de la légende de saint Eustache," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 26 (1925), 6 6 - 8 6 .

6

7

8

Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, pp. 5 5 6 - 6 7 ; Hägg, The Novel in Antiquity, pp. 7 3 - 8 0 . On the Byzantine composition of the Alexis legend see M. Amiaud, La Légende syriaque de saint Alexis l'homme de Dieu, Bibliot. de l'École des hautes Études, Fasc. 79 (Paris, 1889), pp. 1-li, lxxi-lxxii.

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

27

In the narrative part of the Recognitions, as in Greek romance, attention is fairly evenly distributed between the hardships of hero and heroine. Nevertheless, the heroine of the early separation romances is usually superior to the hero in patient acceptance of misfortune and in general spiritual resilience. It was by a very natural process, therefore, that her adventures became disengaged from the original framework to give rise to the large and homogeneous group of medieval stories about outcast women. But this development may well have been assisted by the longstanding predilection for the lives of the virgin martyrs. The outcast heroines are always beautiful, of noble lineage, victims of vile accusations and monstrous inhumanity, models of faith and fortitude, and unfailing sources of easy pathos; so, too, were the virgin martyrs. The separation story was probably the longest lived and most fertile in European literature. In spite of its numerous modifications, it can be traced in unbroken continuity from the eighteenth-century novel back to Roman New Comedy of the second and third centuries BC, and so to the lost plays of Menander in the fourth. From the beginning, but particularly in the form imposed on it by religiously serious sophists such as Xenophon and Heliodorus, it was infused with a wholesome morality and an optimistic spiritual outlook which — as the longevity of Apollonius suggests — was necessarily attractive to most Christians. Although it reflected an intense awareness of the part played in man's life by chance or Fortune, it had none of the fatalistic amorality which clung to the kind of mythological fables retold by Ovid. It exalted the mutual fidelity of lovers and spouses, the chastity of women and even of men. It showed that faith and fortitude are always rewarded, and it sought to prove that behind the seeming chaos and injustice of life there exists a fundamental order created by a just and benevolent god. The didactic meaning of the separation story, and its popular success, are alike dependent on its marvellous character. A truly popular tale is usually either fantastic or ironic. The separation story is both; and the ironic elements in the plot ultimately reinforce the sense of wonder which it generates. The traditional ironies of the story lie in its presentation of noble characters reduced to destitution, of lovers and relatives so altered by misfortune that they fail to recognize one another. Its marvellous effect arises principally from the final scenes of recovery and recognition, which are usually charged with mystery and excitement. However, since it consists of a series of astonishing escapes from apparently inevitable death culminating in at least one quasi-resurrection, the fable

28

Thomas McAlindon

is a sustained marvel from beginning to end. The marvellous is so intrinsic to it that improbable events are continually presented with little or no authorial comment, and no distinction is made between the fortunate and the miraculous. Such a distinction is of little significance in relation to events which are all seen to demonstrate the action of an omniscient providence. Karl Kerenyi has argued that the separation plot of New Comedy and Greek romance originated in the Egyptian myth of the goddess Isis, who travelled patiently in search of her lost husband, Osiris, discovered him dead, and restored him to indestructible life.9 (Egypt and Syria, or neighbouring countries, form the background of the wanderings in most classical and medieval versions of the separation story.) The inherently fantastic character of the story may, therefore, be ascribed to its ultimately mythical source: a point which applies, of course, to numerous tales in folklore and romance. Despite their improbabilities, however, plays, romances, and legends based on the separation-reunion plot could always be received as heightened pictures of actuality. They suggest the tremendous sense of adventure and uncertainty which was undoubtedly inspired by most long journeys in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Indeed one of the great attractions of the story to Christian writers was that it could be so easily recast in terms of their own experience; hence the remark of St. Peter in the Recognition, that men should not hesitate to undertake long journeys for the sake of eternal life.10 Almost automatically, the separated and outcast travellers of Christian legend and romance became missionaries, pilgrims, or crusaders; and although it was their proper destiny (in the given fable) to "live happily ever after" on this earth, they were often made to look like martyrs too. Indeed, one of them — Eustace — actually was martyred, together with the wife and family whom he had discovered after many years of separation.

9

10

Karl Kerényi, Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur (Tübingen: Mohr, 1927). O n Isis, see Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: Clark, 1908-21), VII, 434-37. S. Clementis Romani Recognitiones, VII. xxiv, in Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Gamier, 1857-1903), I, 1364.

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

29

II. M O T I V A T I O N Predictably, Christian writers made full use of the inherited motif of threatened chastity. The drama of separation and wandering is sometimes set in motion and generally punctuated by an attempt to seduce or violate the heroine; and the calumnies and litigious proceedings to which she is subjected are often inspired by the malice of a frustrated admirer. All the Christian heroines share the sentiment ascribed to Florence of Rome by a Middle-English romancer, that she would rather die than lose her maidenhead. In this they differ little from their pagan predecessors; but a willingness to die for virtue suggested martyrdom to a Christian story-teller, and in consequence some confusion of literary types occasionally resulted. When the heroine of Le Bone Florence of Rome is separated from her affianced lover, she claims, like many a virgin saint, that she is now wedded to a Lord who never dies. She is even, like St. Juliana, suspended by the hair and fiercely whipped because of her rejection of an undesirable lover. This blending of a secular and a religious heroine was much more fully developed, however, in the Acts of St. Paul and St. Thecla. Because of her loyalty to St. Paul and his teaching on virginity (he takes the place in the plot of the good lover or husband of the romances), Thecla rejects two pagan suitors and is twice condemned to death on charges which they bring against her. On both occasions she endures elaborate tortures and attempts to execute her in the most cruel fashion. But the optimism inherent in the survival miracles of martyr legend is here carried to its logical conclusion. Like a romance heroine, Thecla passes unscathed from the arena of death and is re-united with St. Paul and then with her family. Yet because of what she endured for her faith and her virginity, she actually became known as the first, and was probably the most famous, virgin martyr." Just how difficult it was for Christian story-tellers to dissociate the prolonged suffering of virtuous women from martyrological patterns is

11

Le Bone Florence of Rome 11. 1088-1105, 1510-45, ed. J . Ritson, Ancient English Metrical Romances (Edinburgh: Goldsmid, 1885), vol. I l l ; The Apocryphal Gospels, tr. Alexander Walker (Edinburgh: Clark, 1890), pp. 2 7 9 - 9 2 ; Apocryphal New Testament, tr. M. R. James (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 2 7 2 - 8 1 ; Legends of the Saints in the Scottish Dialect of the Fourteenth Century, ed. W. M. Metcalfe, S T S , 13, 18, 23, 25 (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1888-91), IV, 432-41. For the parallel between Florence and St. Juliana see The South English Legendary, ed. C. D'Evelyn and A. J . Mill, E E T S , 234-35, 244 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956), pp. 63-64.

30

Thomas McAlindon

evident in the legend of Constance of Rome, especially as told by Chaucer in his Man of Law's Tale. Here it is continually stressed that the sufferings of the heroine originate with Satan. H e r accusers, two jealous mothers-in-law and a spiteful admirer, are merely his tools, evil pagans inspired by a hatred of the Christian faith and of Christian virtue. This is the normal motivation in martyr legend. 12 Chaucer, however, elicited (as perhaps no hagiographer ever did) the rich potential of pity inherent in the virgin-martyr legend for what has been done to the Desdemonas of this world by its Iagos. N o English writer before the Jacobeans has so movingly imagined the bewilderment of an innocent woman caught in the snares of satanic cruelty: Have ye nat seyn somtyme a pale face, Among a prees, of hym that hath be lad Toward his deeth, wher as hym gat no grace, And swich a colour in his face hath had, Men myghte knowe his face that was bistad, Amonges alle the faces in that route? So stand Custance, and looketh hire aboute. O queenes, lyvynge in prosperitee, Duchesses, and ye ladyes everichone, Haveth som routhe on hire adversitee! An Emperoures doghter stant allone; She hath no wight to whome to make hire mone. O blood roial, that stondest in this drede, Fer been thy freendes at thy grete nede! (11. 645-58)

Constance becomes even more saintly by the addition of a missionary motive to her wanderings. Satan hates her not only on account of her purity and piety but also because he realizes that she is God's instrument for the conversion of pagan countries. Constance's father accepts on her

12

F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (London: O x f o r d Univ. Press, 1957) 11. 358-71, 571, 582, 778-84. (Subsequent references to the Man of Law's Tale, incorporated in the text, are to this edition.) It has been pointed out that these allusions to Satan are not in Chaucer's source, Nicholas Trivet. See J. A. Yunck, "Religious Elements in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," ELH, T7 (1960), 258-60; R. E. Lewis, "Chaucer's Artistic Use of Pope Innocent Ill's De Miseria Humane Conditionis in the Man of Law's Tale," PMLA, 81 (1966), 491. T h e passages from Trivet's Anglo-Norman Chronicle used by Chaucer are reprinted in W. F. Bryan and G. Dempster, eds., Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (London: Routledge, 1941), pp. 165-81.

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

31

behalf a distasteful offer of marriage from the Sultan of Syria in the hope that it will lead to the conversion of a heathen kingdom. (According to Trivet and Gower, Constance was already in the habit of converting pagan visitors to Rome.) 13 When the baptized Sultan is murdered and Constance set adrift through the plotting of the fiendish Sultana, a great evangelistic plan is foiled — but only for a while. The hagiological pattern of the devil twitted soon becomes apparent in the narrative. Constance drifts to England and finds another pagan land and another prince whose admiration for her prompts him to accept baptism. Hence the significance of Chaucer's comment on that perilous voyage: "The wyl of Crist was that she sholde abyde" (1. 511). This imposition of a missionary motive on the voyage of a persecuted princess may have been inspired by the twelfth-century legend of Mary Magdalen. Conceived as a rich and beautiful châtelaine redeemed from adulterous love by her love for Christ, Magdalen is put to sea in a ship without food, oars, or sail, and drifts from Palestine to Marseilles. There she converts the local Saracen prince and his family, and, in consequence, the whole province. N o r was this accidental, since Christ actually appointed her his "apostless" before he died, instructing her "to sermon and to preach.'" 4 Constance, then, did for Northumbria what Magdalen did for Provence. Once more, however, Thecla seems to have been the prototype for this fusion of a secular and a religious heroine. Lovely, persecuted, wandering, and disguised, she too turned her travels to good account by preaching the gospel and was honoured with the title of "apostless.'" 5 Thus, through the Acts of St. Paul and St. Thecla, some of the missionary spirit which imbued the early apostolic legends entered the separation fable.

13

Gower, Confessio Amantis,

in Works of John Gower, G. C. Macaulay, 4 vols. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1 8 9 9 - 1 9 0 2 ) , II. 6 0 0 - 1 2 . Subsequent citations of G o w e r are from this edition. 14

Jacobus à Voragine, Legenda pp. 4 0 8 - 1 3 ; Early

South

Aurea,

English

ed. J.G.T. Graesse (Osnabruck: Zeller, 1965),

Legendary,

ed. Carl Horstmann, E E T S (London:

Triibner, 1887), pp. 4 6 2 - 7 7 . O n the development of the legend see Acta July, V , 2 1 8 - 2 2 ; H. M. Garth, St. Mary Magdalen

in Medieval

Literature

Sanctorum, (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins Press, 1950); and for dating of the "separation" episode: E. M. Faillon, Monuments

inédits sur l'apostolat

de Sainte Marie Madeleine

en Provence

(Paris: Migne,

1869), II, 9 7 - 9 8 . 15

Apocryphal

Gospels, tr. Walker, p. 292; Apoc. New

Saints in the Scottish Dialect, ed. Metcalfe, IV, 440.

Test. tr. James, p. 281 ; Legends of the

Thomas McAlindon

32

Even in narratives where the hero's adventures are the main focus of interest there are a few instances, such as Jerome's Life of St. Malchus and the much more famous Alexis legend, of a journey initiated by a threat to male virginity. 16 However, Alexis' memorable flight from his young wife and his aristocratic home on the night of his wedding is only one manifestation of the profoundly ascetic spirit which animates him: in the medieval separation tales the hero's wanderings usually arise from, or at least produce, a desire to expiate past sins and visit famous shrines. Sometimes the journey is voluntarily undertaken (if one can look upon the more impetuous spiritual decisions of the medieval aristocrat as voluntary). Mary Magdalen's Saracen prince suddenly decides to sail to Rome and be baptized by St. Peter himself — he is thereafter referred to by the name "Peregrinus" in the Legenda Aurea. Partly imitating St. Alexis, and perfectly exemplifying the typical spiritual crisis of his class, Sir Guy of Warwick abandons his pregnant wife after a month of marriage and goes abroad as a mendicant palmer in the hope of atoning for the life of violence which suddently afflicts his conscience. 17 But in the Eustace legend and the romances influenced by it the process of conversion and atonement is imposed by divine intervention. This is an echo of Greek romance, where the plot is usually conceived as the fulfilling of an oracular prediction, and the initial prophecy of future wandering is acted upon as if it were an injunction. Eustace is a Roman knight converted from heathenism by a vision of Christ, who appears to him in the form of a stag during a hunt. H e is offered the choice of suffering now, or later in life. Assured that he will eventually be restored to happiness and recover everything he loses, Eustace accepts the first alternative. H e is promptly assailed by misfortunes which deprive him of all his possessions and then, in the course of his travels, of his wife and two young sons. These misfortunes, however, are ascribed to Satan, who enters the plot in a manner which recalls the Book of J o b as well as the martyr legends: Eustace is specifically a second J o b whom God permits the devil to test, and a converted pagan whom the devil hates and ultimately brings to martyrdom. T o add to the complexity of his charac-

16

Patrologia

Latina,

ed. J . P. Migne (Paris: Gamier, 1 8 4 5 - 1 9 0 4 ) , X X I I I , 5 5 - 6 0 ;

Aurea, p. 403, and Altenglische

Legenden:

Legenda

Neue Folge, ed. Carl Horstmann (Heilbronn:

Henninger, 1881), pp. 1 7 4 - 7 5 . 17

Legenda Aurea, pp. 4 1 0 - 4 1 1 ; ESEL, p. 471; Guy of Warwick, 25, 26, 42, 49, 59 (London: Trubner, 1875-91), 11. 7093 ff.

ed. J . Zupitza, E E T S , E S ,

T h e Medieval Assimilation of G r e e k R o m a n c e

33

ter, Eustace is also a knight-turned-herdsman, a pilgrim in Middle-Eastern lands and a warrior who conducts a successful military campaign there for the Roman emperor. 18 It was perhaps because so many cultural and social types converged in Eustace, and were, moreover, projected in a bizarre and marvellous plot, that his legend won such lasting and widespread popularity in the Middle Ages. Apart from numerous vernacular versions in almost every European country, it gave rise to two fullscale romances, the French Guillaume de Angleterre (twelfth century) and the Middle-English Sir Isumbras. It also exercised a formative influence on the wanderings of the hero in a number of other Middle-English romances — Sir Bevis of Hampton, Sir Eglamour, Octavian, and Sir Torrent of Portyngale. Like Eustace, each of these knights is reunited with his son or sons on the field of battle. Since its theme is the separation of friends rather than of spouses or family, the attractive romance Amis and Amiloun does not really represent the kind of story examined here. Nevertheless the context illuminates it. This tale resembles Eustace in that separation and suffering are imposed as part of a divine plan, although the sins atoned for are thoroughly chivalric. Because of his affection for Amis, Amiloun finds himself committed to a judicial combat in which his opponent is clearly innocent. Although warned by an angel to withdraw, Amiloun persists, is soon smitten with leprosy, and becomes a complete social outcast. Through his sufferings and wanderings, however, he eventually expiates his own sin as well as that of his friend. The adventures culminate in miraculous recognition scenes in the manner of the Clementine Recognitions and later separation legends. That this story was known in the form of a saint's legend (Vita Sanctorum Amici et Amelii, which honours the friends with martyrdom), a chanson de geste, and a romance is indicative of the unusual character of medieval separation tales. The common plot has been used so often as a vehicle for both secular and religious ideals that it can, with slight variations of detail, be turned into any one of a number of literary types, or produce an unclassifiable hybrid. 19

18

Legenda Aurea,

pp. 7 1 2 - 1 8 ; Legends

of the Saints in the Scottish

Dialect, ed. Metcalfe,

III, 6 9 - 9 8 . 19

Amis and Amiloun,

ed. M. Leach, E E T S , 203 ( L o n d o n : O x f o r d Univ. Press, 1937). O n

the origin and d i f f e r e n t versions of the legend see L. A. H i b b a r d , Medieval England

(New

York:

Oxford

Univ.

Press,

1924),

pp. 6 5 - 7 2 ;

Romance

Leach,

ed.

in cit.,

pp. ix-lxxviii. T h e difficulty in classifying this kind of "pietistic r o m a n c e " has been

34

Thomas McAlindon

III. R E C U R R E N T MARVELS Like all the marvels of religious legend and of romance, those of the separation story are closely related to the character and experience of the protagonists. These men and women are noticeable mainly f o r their passive qualities. T h e y are meek, they vanish into obscurity. T h e y are acted upon and d o not act; their lives are completely in the hands of higher powers — arbitrary kings and queens, Fortune, Fate, and Providence. H u m a n rather than superhuman, secular rather than religious, saints more by accident than intention, they do not perform miracles; rather, miracles are performed f o r them. T h e r e are of course some exceptions to this "rule" concerning the marvellous even in the most representative stories; but these follow a discernible logic and are usually developments of ideas inherent in the generic plot. Constance, for example, restores sight to a blind N o r t h u m brian, a miracle which, added to her elucidations of the Christian faith, converts the constable of Northumbria and so leads to the Christianization of the whole kingdom. This miracle follows naturally f r o m the inclusion of a missionary motive in Constance's peregrinations; but although it alters the traditionally passive character of the persecuted heroine (even Thecla performed no miracles), it is still consistent with her nature in two senses. Even in human terms Constance is allowed no more than indirect responsibility f o r this miracle; what she does is to inspire Hermengyld with the courage to defy her pagan husband and the faith in Christ's power that is needed to cure the blind man. Moreover, it was often part of the heroine's role in the separation story to draw others away from fatalistic or atheistic thoughts and inspire them with faith in divine providence (the clearest sign of her spiritual superiority to her male counterpart in adversity). T h e r e is, then, a family kinship between the miracle modestly worked by Constance and a crucial feat of persuasion performed by Thaisa in Apollonius of Tyre. Constance lifted the blind Christian out of physical darkness ("Bright was the sonne as in that someres day" — Man of Law's Tale, 1. 554) and Hermengyld's pagan husband out of spiritual darkness; Thaisa dispelled the intense despair which overcame her father in his ship at Mytilene: This king hath founde new grace, So that out of his derke place stressed by O. Kratins, "The Middle English Amis and Amiloun: Secular Hagiography?" PMLA, 71 (1966), 347-54.

Chivalric Romance or

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

35

H e goth him up into the liht, And with him c a m that swete wiht, His d o g h t e r Thaise. 2 0

Another exception to the rule is that Florence of Rome (and other heroines of the Crescentia group) acquires, toward the end of her adventures, the character of a miraculous healer. Her fame on this account leads to her discovery in the convent where she has taken refuge after being shipwrecked and so to the final reunions.21 This development in the heroine's usually passive character should perhaps be related to the conviction, commonly indicated in the separation story, that recovery of the lost one is so improbable as to presuppose a miracle; Florence has appropriated an act which would normally be ascribed to an intervening deity or the kindness of a holy man. But if Kerényi is right in supposing that the separation fable originates in the Isis myth, Florence was merely retrieving part of the ancient prerogative of her type, since it was Isis herself who performed the miracle which reunited her with her husband. The more predictable marvels are occurrences which serve to protect the outcast travellers from the perils of the way and to assist their recovery of good name and reunion with their loved ones. Usually these are natural but unexpected events, and are piously traced to a supernatural origin in a brief, stereotyped phrase; occasionally they are pure miracles, naked acts of divine intervention in human affairs. Otherwise they are brought about by a character who is clearly an earthly delegate of divine providence — a priest in Greek romance, a saint or hermit in hagiography and medieval romance. Perhaps the most monotonously repeated of all marvels is the heroine's feat of getting home with her chastity intact. She is so completely idealized that this always represents a triumph, not over any moral weakness of her own, but over the physical strength of the opposite sex. Intending ravishers always find that a superior power intervenes between them and the lady at the last moment. This power manifests itself in a number of ways. One of the most popular of these is a savage lion, an animal which, the author of Bevis of Hampton assures us, has a very

20

21

Confessio Amantis, V i l i . 1739-43. Cf. Heliodorus, An Aethiopian Romance, tr. Underdowne, pp. 250, 256, 259. Florence of Rome, ed. Ritson, 11. 1912 ff.; A. Wallenskòld, Florence de Rome: Chanson d'aventure, SATF (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1907-09), Intro., p. 105.

36

Thomas McAlindon

special regard for virgins, especially those of royal birth. 22 A much more humane method of prevention is the sudden disappearance of the villain's desire just when he is about to gratify it and immediately after the lady has uttered a frantic prayer for help: he is likely to accuse her of using magic against him on such occasions. 23 Lastly, the heroine herself may be momentarily endowed with extraordinary strength and knock her assailant senseless. The literary historian must not hastily classify this as the final stage in the life of a marvellous motif — complete rationalization. Chaucer (or, rather, his Man of Law) wordily excludes all possibility of a purely naturalistic interpretation. The relevant passage in The Man of Law's Tale deserves quoting in its entirety, for it illustrates how Chaucer, far from toning down the marvellous element in the separation story, throws it into relief and presents it ostensibly in the deeply credulous and edified spirit of saints' legend. The theological and moral significatio of the event, as well as its wonderful character, is rendered inescapably obvious, while biblical parallels are adduced to make it thoroughly respectable and plausible: W o was this wrecched w o m m a n tho bigon; H i r child cride, and she cride pitously, But blisful Marie heelp hire right anon; For with hir struglyng wel and myghtily T h e theef fil over bord al sodeynly And in the see he dreynte for v e n g e a n c e ; And thus hath Crist u n w e m m e d kept Custance.

22

T. R. Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (New York: Stechert, 1924), p. 337 (Xanthippe and Polyxena); Jerome, Vita S. Malchi, in Migne, PL, XXIII, 61; The Romance of the Emperor Octavian, ed. J. O. Halliwell, Percy Society, 14 (London: Percy Society, 1884), 11.470-519 and p. 67 (Notes); Beues of Hamtoune, ed. E. Kolbing, EETS, ES, 46-65 (London: Kegan Paul, 1885-94), 11.2377-94. Mention should be made here of Thecla, who, when thrown to the beasts because of her adherence to Paul's doctrine of virginity, is heroically defended by a lioness — Apocryphal New Testament, tr. James, pp. 278-79; Legends of the Saints, ed. Metcalfe, IV, 438. Greek and Middle Eastern hagiography is well stocked with lions who protect saints, spontaneously or in gratitude for veterinary care: see C. G. Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1948), pp. 58-59.

23

Confessio Amantis, VIII. 1428-31 (Apollonius of Tyre); Florence of Rome, ed. Ritson, 11. 1494-1500. Thaisa's feat of resisting the corruptions of the brothel has numerous parallels in pagan and Christian story. See Trenkner, The Greek Novella, p. 109, esp. notes 13 and 14; and for M.E. examples, SEL, ed. D'Evelyn and Mill, pp. 21, 568.

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek R o m a n c e

37

O foule lust of luxurie, lo, thyn ende! N a t oonly that thou feyntest mannes mynde, But verraily thou wolt his body shende. Th'ende of thy werk, or of thy lustes blynde, Is compleynyng. H o u many oon may men fynde That noght for werk somtyme, but for th'entente T o doon this synne, been outher slayn or shente! H o w may this wayke w o m m a n han this strengthe Hire to defende agayn this renegat? O Golias, unmesurable of lengthe, H o myghte David make thee so maat, S o yong and of armure so desolaat? H o u dgrst he looke upon thy dredful face? Wei ma\ men seen, it nas but Goddes grace. W h o yaf Judith corage or hardynesse T o sleen hym Olofernus in his tente, And to deliveren out of wrecchednesse T h e peple of G o d ? I seye, for this entente, That right as G o d spirit of vigour sente T o hem, and saved hem out of meschance, S o sente he myght and vigour to Custance. (11. 9 1 8 - 4 5 ) 2 4

As Margaret Schlauch has noted, there is a marked preoccupation with hagiography in Chaucer's source, Nicholas Trivet's Anglo-Norman Chronicle (as there had been in one of the two separation narratives used by Trivet, the late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century romance, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople)Chaucer's adoption of a consistently hagiographie style in the Man of Law's Tale may, therefore, have been prompted by Trivet; but his sense of artistic decorum would also have suggested it. H e must have known that the fantastic separation story was entangled with hagiographie conventions and that, where it did not survive in its pagan form, it was most appropriately presented in the style of a saint's legend. And undoubtedly it is in the marvellous passages that the hagiographie manner is most obvious. Indeed, one can detect in their

24

See also Florence of Rome,

11. 1591-1611. In G o w e r , w h o follows Trivet, the rapist is

struck by "the myhti g o d d e s h o n d " ( C o n f e s s i o Amantis, 25

Sources

and

pp. 157-60.

Analogues

of

Chaucer's

Canterbury

II. 1124).

Tales,

ed. Bryan and

Dempster,

38

Thomas McAlindon

rhetorical elaboration (somewhat excessive even by the standards of Latin hagiography) signs of that most elusive form of irony, commonly met with in Shakespeare, which arises when a writer is simultaneously perfecting and lightly caricaturing a traditional style. In the Man of Law's Tale, Chaucer shows himself a most convincing exponent of the hagiographic style as well as its most amusing critic. He was well qualified for this role, having already excelled in straightforward hagiography in his treatment of the legend of St. Cecilia, the virgin martyr (The Second Nuns's Tale).26 The heroine of the separation story faces murder or execution, or both, as well as the inevitable fate-worse-than-death. H e r escape, while always providential, may be by natural or supernatural means, but where the influence of hagiography is strong, as in the Man of Law's Tale, the supernatural escape is preferred. Chaucer's Constance is saved from certain condemnation to death for the murder of Hermengyld by an "open myracle" (1. 636). The whole treatment of the scene corresponds in detail with a pattern which had been stereotyped for centuries in martyr legend, the archetypal account in medieval narrative of perverted justice: (i) It is stressed that Constance is completely alone, without friends or relations who might help her. She is led before her accuser and the judge "as the lomb toward his deeth is broght" (1. 617). (ii) the narrator remembers the power of Christ the Redeemer, who conquered Satan (author of this situation) and bound him in Hell: H e will be her champion (11. 632-35). She herself remembers Christ, asks Him for succour, and reminds Him of a famous biblical instance of His protection of the unjustly accused (11. 638-44). (iii) The onlookers, including the judge (King Alia), are filled with pity for her (11. 621, 659-60). (iv) The moment is thus ripe for a benign deity to intervene. An invisible hand strikes the accuser on the neck, he falls unconscious to the ground, and "bothe

26

Chaucer's endeavour to make the given story more exemplary and more hagiographic has been carefully analyzed by E. A. Block, "Originality, Controlling Purpose, and Craftsmanship in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," PMLA, 68 (1953), 572-616; and Yunck (see n. 12). P. F. Baum, "The Man of Law's Tale," MLN, 64 (1949), 12-14, suggests that although the poem is "an edifying story of a Christian woman's suffering, patience, and triumph," Chaucer handled it in a spirit somewhere between "low seriousness and levity." I myself believe that the poem is at once more serious and more slily humorous than this view suggests; that Chaucer was thoroughly sympathetic to the spirit of the story but rationally amused at times by the excesses of the traditional form: as was Shakespeare in the Winter's Tale ("Exit pursued by a bear").

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

39

his eyen broste out of his f a c e / I n sighte of every body in that place" (11. 671-72). Moreover, a voice is heard proclaiming the innocence of the "doghter of hooly chirche" (1. 675). (v) With the predictable exception of the holy maiden herself, everyone ist "agast," "mazed" at "this mervaille" (11. 677-79). (vi) Lastly, the miracle is employed with a form of divine economy which hagiographers had always admired. In addition to establishing beyond doubt the innocence of the saint and punishing the devil's agent, it serves to convert many of the awed pagan spectators, one of them a person of distinction, in this case the judge himself. 27 There is no trace of amused imitation in all this, since it is here that Chaucer's imagination is wholly captured by the pathos of bewildered feminine suffering (which he, unlike the hagiographers, is able to communicate without the apparatus of torture). However, when he comes to the final effect of this miracle, and solemnly applies hagiographical language to matter for which it is not entirely suited, an ironic overtone seems to enter the narrative: And after this Jhesus, of his mercy, Made Alia w e d d e n ful solempnely This h o o l y mayden, that is so bright and sheene; And thus hath Crist ymaad Custance a queene.

(11. 690-93) This nicely anticipates the openly ironic observation that Constance will now be called upon to practice her characteristic patience at bed-time, and in a way that requires her to "leye a lite hir hoolynesse aside" (1.713). Although seldom fully miraculous, escapes f r o m the purely natural hazards of the journey are generally much more improbable than those f r o m human malice. T h e way in which the elements and the animal

27

A glance at Seinte Marharete, ed. Mack, pp. 6, 8, 42, 44, and Seinte Iuliene, ed. D'Ardenne, pp. 26, 48-60, will show how hagiographic Chaucer's treatment is of this scene. The manner in which God punished Constance's accuser can be paralleled in several legends. But Trivet may have had in mind the fate of the torturer and executioner in the legend of the English martyr St. Alhan. As soon as he delivered the beheading blow, "his owene ey ene out his heued: are rijt fullen to grounde" (ESEL, p. 70, 1. 98). For other escapes from execution in the separation story, see, for example, Legends of the Saints, ed. Metcalfe, IV, 65 ff. (Thecla); Confessio Amantis, VIII. 1324-93 (Historia Apollonii, ed. Riese, p. 62). The parallels in romance and hagiography are noted by Soder, pp. 150-58; Blumenthal, pp. 157-58.

40

T h o m a s McAlindon

world depart from their natural or destructive roles and permit or assist the traveller to return unharmed to civilization strongly suggests the action of a providential power. Indeed, the journey (source of loss, trial, and recovery) is the imaginative centre of the story, and the most recurrent marvels of the type radiate from it. The simplest of these is survival from shipwreck. This the traveller may ascribe to whimsical Fortune or to a kind god who has heard his prayer and employs Fortune (or Fate) for his own good, but not always instantly apparent, purposes. In the Clementine legend, the survival of Matthidia and her twin sons, after being shipwrecked while travelling from Rome to Athens, is part of an ethical and even philosophical scheme which St. Peter, spokesman of divine providence, reveals twenty years later at the moment of reunion. 28 An advanced form of this incident, at once more marvellous and more obviously endowed with significatio, occurs when the traveller is actually saved from ruin by shipwreck; here the storm is instantly identifiable with a god w h o punishes the wicked and guards the good. Among Christian heroines, Helen of Constantinople and Florence of Rome are saved from rape and captivity, and their oppressors punished, in this way. There is a less violent but equally purposive use of the elements when the ship is blown completely off its course toward the one port where the reunion of the separated ones can take place. This device is prominent in Apollonius of Tyre. It is used in Alexis with that freshness of meaning which characterizes the whole legend, for it serves to enhance the self-effacing meekness of the saint. Alexis' desire for obscurity and poverty is deemed excessive even by Heaven, whose intention is that he should be restored to his family and ultimately recognized by Christians for what he is, a man of exquisite sanctity. 29 The most remarkable of all marine adventures in the separation story is that of the rudderless ship. Mary Magdalen, Helen of Constantinople, Emare, Constance, and the heroines of Sir Eglamour of Artois and Sir Torrent of Portyngale are all set adrift in a rudderless vessel but carried safely by it to distant lands. N o t to be found in the Greek ro-

28

Confessio

Amantis,

VIII. 5 8 4 - 6 3 3 ; Clementis

Recognitiones,

VII. xxvii, xxxviii, IX.

xxxiv (PG I, 1366, 1370, 1417); ESEL, pp. 324, 331. See also Söder, p. 48; Blumenthal, pp. 148-49. 29

M. Schlauch, Chaucer's

Constance

Press, 1927), pp. 1 2 1 - 2 2 ; Florence

and Accused of Rome,

1 3 9 5 - 1 4 0 5 , 1 5 9 0 - 1 6 1 0 , 1 8 0 7 - 1 3 ; Altenglische

Queens

( N e w York: N e w York Univ.

11. 1 8 5 0 - 5 8 ; Confessio Legenden,

Amantis,

ed. Horstmann, p. 181.

VIII.

41

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

mances, this motif is a medieval contribution to the separation story. It occurs almost exclusively in the adventures of accused princesses and in fact originated in a form of legal punishment practised in the Middle Ages, often against women charged with adultery. Its introduction into the story was felicitous, for it completely surpassed the traditional and by now all-too-trite kinds of sea marvel as a vivid sign of human helplessness and divine providence. As the better medieval writers recognized, and the most mediocre must have sensed, the image of the rudderless boat, the fragile passenger, and the vast sea was instinct with symbolic suggestion. T h e conception of God as an omniscient pilot who masters the dark seas and the storms was present in Boethius and was lovingly elaborated in English poetry as early as Cynewulf and the Andreas. Allegorical commentaries on the experience of the apostles with Christ on the sea of Galilee would, of course, have prepared the way for its popularity in the Middle Ages.30 Chaucer did nothing to reduce the fantastic character given to Constance's ocean travels by Nicholas Trivet. Set adrift by the Syrians in "a ship al steereless" (1. 439), she is at sea for three years before she reaches the Northumbrian coast, apparently in excellent health. As if to make it absolutely clear that no naturalistic attitude to the story is permissible, she is made to undergo a second and even more astonishing journey of this kind. Five years at sea with her infant in a rudderless ship, she drifts from Northumberland to the Mediterranean, where she fortuitously meets with a ship which carries her uncle, and so is taken back to her native city, Rome. Chaucer treats each of these two adventures as a "wonderful myracle" (1. 477) and, in true hagiographic style, finds their prototype in the great saving miracles worked by God on behalf of His chosen ones in the Old Testament (11. 473-76, 484-90). Constance was

30

Legenda Aurea, p. 409, and ESEL, p. 467; M. Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance cused Queens,

p. 121; The Romance

and Ac-

of Emare, ed. E. Rickert, EETS, ES 99 (London:

Kegan Paul, 1908), 11. 2 7 5 - 3 3 3 , 6 3 7 - 8 4 ; Sir Eglamour of Artois, ed. F. E. Richardson, EETS, 256 (London: O x f o r d Univ. Press, 1965), II. 8 0 0 - 8 3 6 ; Torrent of Portyngale,

re-

ed. E. Adam, EETS, ES, 51 (London: Trübner, 1887), 11. 1 7 9 1 - 1 8 5 2 ; Boethius, De Consolatione

Philosophiae,

wulf, The Ascension,

II, pr. i, 5 5 - 5 8 , II, nat. iv, III, pr. xii, 3 8 - 4 2 , 9 5 - 9 7 ; Cyne-

11. 8 4 9 - 6 6 ; Andreas,

11. 3 7 6 - 5 2 7 . For more examples, historical as

well as fictional, of exposure at sea, see King Horn, ed. J. Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), pp. 102-03. There are also magically propelled boats in the fairy matter adopted by Arthurian romancers. See below, n. 36.

42

Thomas McAlindon

saved not just because she was unswervingly virtuous but also because (like Jonas) she had the faith to ask for the seemingly impossible: He that me kepte fro the false blame While I was on the lond amonges yow, He kan me kepe from harm and eek fro shame In sake see, althogh I se noght how. As strong as evere he was, he is yet now. In hym triste I, and in his mooder deere, That is to me my seyl and eek my steere.

(11. 827-33) In the last line of this passage, and in his own sympathetic apostrophe, "He that is lord of Fortune be thy steere" (1. 448), Chaucer carefully elicits the symbolic character and spiritual meaning of the marvellous motif. Contrary to appearances, the pious never travel in "a ship al steereless." And if they love Mary — Chaucer here neatly introduces two of the symbolic titles given to Mary in the Litany of the Saints — they will not want for a "brighte sterre of day" or a "haven of refut" (1. 852). It should perhaps be noted that early Christian legend contained many transportation marvels which roughly resemble that of the rudderless ship. In the apocryphal Acts of St. Andrew, the apostle's ship is divinely propelled from Achaia to Mermidonia, the land of his missionary efforts. Moreover, the bodies of numerous classical heroes and Christian saints arrived mysteriously at their destined burial places on floating sarcophagi and derelict vessels. There is a variant of this last motif in Apollonius of Tyre that may have helped to introduce the rudderless ship to the separation story. Apollonius' wife gives birth to her daughter during a storm at sea and falls into a death-like coma. The superstitious mariners insist that the storm will not abate until the "corpse" is disposed of. Accordingly, the body is placed in a chest made of lead and pitch and cast overboard; but the chest stays afloat and drifts to Ephesus, where a skilful physician resuscitates the queen. This episode was partly incorporated in the Magdalen legend, the separation of the Saracen prince and his wife taking place in identical circumstances. 31 The manner in which St. Eustace loses his two young sons in Egypt shows that separations by land can be as memorable as those by sea; to

31

C. G. Loomis, White Magic, pp. 90-91 Confessio Amantis, VIII. 1021-1201 (Historia Apollonii, ed. Riese, pp. 45-53); ESEL, pp. 472-73 (Legenda Aurea, p. 411).

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

43

judge by the number of imitations it inspired, it was this part of the Eustace legend which most impressed medieval readers and audiences. One child is stolen by a wolf while Eustace carries the other across a river, and the second is seized by a lion when he gives chase to the wolf. Obviously, the test of a separation motif is the degree of certainty it induces that the lost ones are lost for ever. As was to be expected, the heroes of the two romances directly modelled on this legend, Guillaume d'Angleterre and Isumbras, lose their children in the same way. But so also — and this emphasizes the affinity between the different forms of the separation story — do the outcast heroines of La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, Octavian, Sir Eglamour, and Torrent of Portyngale. In almost all the romances, an attempt is made to vary the common motif by rendering it more fantastic. The award for ingenuity undoubtedly goes to the author of Octavian (the best of the Middle-English separation romances). The child is carried off by a hungry lioness, which is then seized, child in mouth, by a gryphon, and borne to a desert island. Here the quadruped kills the flying reptile and so, its hunger appeased, turns into a protecting Friendly Lion. But it adds to the traditional function of the Friendly Lion that of a nurse (by suckling the infant) and subsequently plays a prominent part in the story as the mother's tough travelling companion, warding off objectionable admirers. 32 H o w all these outcasts manage to get food enough to stay alive in the wilderness is a question which interested medieval story-tellers only when, as in Octavian, the answer suggests the miraculous. 33 Although Constance was provided with food by those who set her adrift, this was quite inadequate for voyages of three and five years' duration. Chaucer (or the Man of Law) confronts the problem here and finds the explanation for Constance's survival in saints' legend and the New Testament. Like the other reflective and rhetorical passages which give the tale a distinctly hagiographie character, this one constitutes an addition to Trivet's narrative:

32

Legends of the Saints, ed. Metcalfe, III, 8 1 - 8 2 (Legenda d'Angleterre,

Aurea, pp. 7 1 4 - 1 5 ) ;

ed. M. Wilmotte, CFMA (Paris: Champion, 1927) 11. 753 ff.; Sir

ed. J. O. Halliwell (The Thornton

Romances,

ed. Halliwell,

of Artois, ed. Richardson, 11. 8 3 8 - 6 5 ; Torrent of Portyngale,

Adam, II. 1939 ff. 33

Isumbras,

Camden Soc. [London], 1844) 11. 1 6 8 - 9 0 ;

Schick, "Die Urquelle der Offa-Konstanze-Sage," p. 39; Octavian, 11. 3 3 1 - 8 0 ; Sir Eglamour

Guillaume

ESEL, p. 476; Isumbras, 11. 5 2 1 - 3 3 ; Florence, ed. Ritson, 11. 1453-71.

ed.

44

Thomas McAlindon

Where myghte this womman mete and drynke have Thre yeer and moore? how lasteth hire vitaille? W h o fedde the Egipcien Marie in the cave, Or in desert? N o wight but Crist, sanz faille. Fyve thousand folk it was as greet mervaille With loves fyve and fisshes two to feede. God sente his foyson at hir grete neede. (11. 498-504)

IV. T H E SUCCUBUS CALUMNY The travels of the Outcast Queen remind us that in a society untouched by modern methods of communication the foreigner was likely to excite superstitious awe and suspicion; sooner or later someone claims that the heroine is a supernatural being. The claim may be a mere hyperbole used to convey the astonishment which her beauty excites in strangers: surely, they ask, this lovely creature is a fairy, an angel, the Virgin Mary herself? This kind of hyperbole is not confined to the separation story, being a favourite rhetorical trick of the ordinary medieval romancer. But it occurs repeatedly in the Greek romances, Apollonius of Tyre included. In them, it usually has an obvious dramatic fitness and is something more than mere compliment, since the heroine is discovered in circumstances (alone in a temple, or dressed in the garb of a goddess) which encourage the idea that she is divine.34 In most medieval narratives the device is reduced to a mechanical simile; but in some it is sensitively merged with plot and setting in the Greek manner. Thus, in the famous Aucassin et Nicolete — itself perhaps a gallicized Byzantine romance — when shepherds happen upon the ravishing Nicolete wandering near a fountain at a forest side, they are filled with admiration and fear, and conclude that she is a fairy. This association of the old divinizing hyperbole with native folklore is developed, in several of the medieval tales of outcast women, into the calumny which leads to the second exposure of the heroine, and so constitutes an integral part of the plot. The villain in Florence of Rome

34

Eglamour, 11. 913-18; Isumbras, 11. 289-90; Pastoralium de Daphnide et Chloe, lib. 4 ... accedunt Xenophontis De Amoribus Anthiae et Abrocomae, ed. C. W. Mitscherlich (Biponti, ex. typ. soc., 1794), pp. 1 9 6 - 9 7 , 230, 276; Heliodorus, Aethiopian tr. U n d e r d o w n e , p p . 8 , 9 - 1 0 , 14, 80, 84; Historia 1 0 7 - 0 8 ; Confessio

Amantis,

VIII. 7 8 0 - 8 2 .

Apollonii,

Romance,

ed. Riese, p p . 3 1 , 59,

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

45

supports his charge that the heroine murdered her host's daughter by claiming that one so beautiful and so richly clad must be no earthly thing: she is a false fiend sent specially from Hell to commit this murder (we are now in Cbristabelcountry). The jealous mother-in-law in Emare and in the Constance story exploits the belief that the offspring of a mortal who marries a fairy or succubus is usually a monster: the absent father is told that his wife has given birth to a hideous child. The note of numinous wonder is struck early in Emare with the description of the sumptuous cloth presented to Emare's father by the King of Sicily (Byzantine territory). Made in the Orient by an Emir's daughter, it glittered so brilliantly that Emare's father exclaimed: "Sertes thys ys a fayry / O r ellys a vanyte!" It is turned into a robe and given to Emare, and throughout her adventures intensifies the mysteriousness of her beauty in the eyes of all who behold her: "She semed non erpely w o m m o n / That marked was of molde." (Compare with the divinizing robe of the classical heroine.) In this way the poet deftly established within the story an ambience, and an attitude to the heroine, which lend plausibility to the subsequent accusations of the mother-in-law and the absent husband's belief in them. 35 If I have read him correctly, Chaucer wove the formula into the special texture of the Constance story with similar fitness, though more economically. Donegyld's early observation that Constance is "so strange a creature" (1. 700) indicates the response of her heathen mind to the miracle just recently worked by the visitor, as well as to her extraordinary mode of arrival in Northumberland. It quietly foreshadows the charges, made nine months (i.e., fifty lines) later, that Constance is "an elf, by aventure/Ycomen, by charmes or by sorcerie," and that "every wight hateth hir compaignye" (11. 754-56). It would seem that both these tales implicitly rely on the folk belief that fairy women often come to (or fetch) their husband in a mysterious ship.36

35

36

Aucassin et Nicolete, ed. M. Roques, CFMA, 41 (Paris: Champion, 1941), pp. 19-20; Florence, ed. Ritson, II. 1666-70; Emare, ed. Rickert, 11. 105, 246 (see also 11.396, 697-702). Old Celtic Romances, tr. P. W. Joyce (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1961), pp. 62-67; Gugemar, ed. J. Lods, Les Lais de Marie de France (Paris: Champion, 1959); Partonope of Blois; ed. A. T. Bòdtker, EETS, ES, 109 (London: Kegan Paul, 1912), 11. 712 ff.; Richard Lówenherz, ed. K. Brunner (Vienna and Leipzig: Braumuller, 1913), II. 1-90.

46

Thomas McAlindon

Here, then, is an intriguing little history. A commonplace romantic hyperbole, probably generated by the mythical background of the separation story (in Heliodorus the heroine is specifically compared with Isis), was carried into medieval literature on the stream of Greek romance and rhetoric. But it has now gone to earth again in something like its proper habitat: pagan myth — albeit Celtic, changed by folklore, and darkened by Christian theology.

V. C O N C E A L E D I D E N T I T Y One established element in the separation story which could not be classified as marvel, yet contributes substantially to its marvellous character, is the noble wanderer's disguise or altered appearance, and, cognate with this, his choice of an obscure and humble way of life. This disguise element usually arises quite naturally out of the typical circumstances in which the wanderer is placed; but apart from its internal necessity it is frequently exploited for its special narrative effects: irony, pathos, suspense, and wonder. Indeed, in some medieval stories the desire to extract the maximum emotion from the motif so dominates the author's mind that he introduces it where there is little real necessity for it. H o w ever, in such instances the ascetical piety which informs most medieval separation stories tacitly suggests its own unworldly and impractical justification: the noble hero and heroine have been so purified spiritually by their misfortunes that disguise and secrecy are really a manifestation of their desire for self-effacement and their willingness to renounce all worldly pleasure. Concealed identity produces a variety of emotive and ironic confrontations between separated relatives and spouses. These are roughly of two kinds. The first is a dialogue (often quite extended, as in the Clement legend) in which the topic of conversation, and perhaps the attitude of one party to the other, call attention by their striking aptness or ineptness to the irony of the situation. 37 The second is really an elaboration of this; although found in Latin New Comedy and Greek romance, it is at least as old as the Odyssey. The wanderer is taken into his own

37

Clementis Recognitions, VII. xxii, V I I I - I X (PG I, 1364, 1371 ff.); ESEL, pp.328, 330-31; Confessio Amantis, VIII. 1650-1735; Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, p. 178; Legends of the Saints, ed. Metcalfe, pp. 85-86.

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

47

home or that of a relative to be treated as a stranger and an object of charity. In medieval legend and romance, this situation is clearly conceived as the surest sign of the returned wanderer's spiritual excellence, or as his final act of atonement for past sins. Constance kept her identity hidden from the uncle who rescued her, living incognito with him and his wife for twelve years — and in the very city where her father was emperor. 38 We may look upon this prodigious act of self-denial as unnecessary and even ridiculous, but only if we disregard the implied spiritual motive. In Rome, as in England (where she also concealed her royalty), Constance lived "In hooly werkes evere, as was hir grace" (1. 980) and was so diligent, withouten slouthe, T o serve and plesen everich in that place, That alle hir loven that looken in hir face.

(11. 530-32) But perhaps the true reason for Constance's anonymous years on her father's doorstep is that the author of her legend had come under the spell of the Alexis legend. When Alexis is involuntarily driven to Rome, the first person he meets there is his father. In response to a request for alms, the father says: "for mi sonne sake / Into mi house i will thee take." 39 And so, unrecognized by his parents and his wife, mocked and treated as a beggar by the family servants, the meek Alexis lives (quite wittingly) in his own home until his death seventeen years later. The disguise motif of the separation story is developed in the Alexis legend to an extent that would have been impossible outside hagiography. Of its very nature, the separation story requires that the quest for missing relatives should be successful and culminate in mutual recognition. And yet, although Alexis dies unrecognized, the conclusion of the legend is perfectly in harmony with the rest, and is, in its way, exciting and triumphant. This is because two distinct types of quest are skilfully combined in the narrative: the romance quest for a missing son and husband; and the hagiographic quest for the remains of a saint (a translatio). The fulfilment of the second quest derives all its splendour from the

38

39

Twelve years is the period specified by Trivet (and Gower). Chaucer simply says "a long time," but the part played by Constance's son in her reunion with Alia would, anyhow, suggest a period of roughly this duration. Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, p. 181 (11. 335-36).

48

Thomas McAlindon

non-fulfilment of the first, and indeed depends on it. Shortly after Alexis' death, and before it is known to the household, a voice is heard by all the congregation in a nearby church, proclaiming that the body of a saint lies unhonoured in Rome. T o the astonishment of Alexis' father, a crowd of secular and ecclesiastical dignitaries presently arrives at his house in search of the unknown saint. H e is found clad in horse-hair, lying on a bed filled with stones, and exuding the miraculous odour of sanctity.40 In the Clementine Recognitions, the separation story is essentially an exemplum lost in apologetics. In the purely narrative vita of St. Clement, and in St. Eustace, it is spoilt by the death of the hero, which was added to give the romance material the conclusion proper to a saint's legend. But in Alexis the assimilation of the old plot is perfect: the narrative is about separation, discovery, and recognition, and nothing else. And because spiritual motives are consistently substituted for worldly ones, the result of the assimilation is thoroughly original. Separation, flight, poverty, celibacy, and anonymity are not imposed on the aristocratic Alexis, but are chosen by him as the prerequisites of perfection. H e can be recognized by those who love him only when his sanctification is complete, reunited with them only in death. Rooted in popular tradition, histrionic in its gestures of renunciation, and imbued throughout with a deep sense of pity and wonder, the legend of St. Alexis is remarkably expressive of medieval piety. Certainly it set a standard by which the spiritual regeneration of a large number of romance heroes was to be measured. Among others, Sir Isumbras, Sir Amiloun, Sir Bevis of Hampton, and Sir Guy of Warwick all take beggar's bread at the end of their wanderings from the hand of a dear one who does not recognize them and who dispenses such charity in memory of a long-lost knight. Guy, saintliest of them all, thereafter lives and dies as a hermit close to his wife's castle, his name a secret to the end.41 Assuredly, the Middle Ages imposed its own stamp on the separation plot.

40 41

Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, pp. 184-86 (Legenda Aurea, pp. 405-06). Isumbras, ed. Halliwell, 11. 546-680; Amis and Amiloun, ed. Leach, 11. 1861-2028; Bevis of Hamtoune, ed. Kolbing, 11. 2056-132; Guy of Warwick, ed. Zupitza, 11. C. 10487-698. See also Sir Gowther, ed. K. Breul (Oppeln: Franck, 1886), 11. 320-70.

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

49

VI. R E S U R R E C T I O N At the close of The Winter's Tale, the greatest of all separation stories, the "statue" of the queen is brought to life and she is restored to her husband and daughter, having been thought dead for sixteen years. This mock resurrection has always offended the more realist critic. Renaissance audiences, however, would hardly have dwelt on its improbability; at worst, they would have felt that the scene is almost too predictable, since the idea of a resurrection is embedded in the climax of the separation story throughout its long history. Indeed, the recovery of the lost one is traditionally so charged with spiritual implications that any response which does not pass quickly beyond a mere sense of the marvellous (or improbable) to a mood of awed comprehension and edification is inherently inadequate. Throughout the action, but here in particular, "It is requir'd/You do awake your faith" (The Winter's Tale, V. iii. 94-95). Some forms of the story have a genuine resurrection, one of which is worth recording. The happy reunion of the royal family in the Vitae Duorum Offarum (a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century account of an outcast English queen) depends on the intervention of a hermit who collects and pieces together the mutilated bodies of the queen's children, so bringing them to life.42 The resemblance between this resurrection and that performed in the supposed matrix of all European separation tales is startling. At the end of her quest, before she could restore her murdered husband to life, Isis had first to collect the scattered fragments of his body. A more common form of the motif, one which looks like an incompletely rationalized version of a primitive miracle, is that of recovery from apparent death. However, in Gower's version of Apollonius of Tyre and in the Magdalen legend this event is so closely tied to the theme of divine providence that it has much the same effect as a real miracle: at the end of each story the narrator discloses his true attitude by referring retrospectively to the lady's comatose condition as death. 43 The idea of a

42

43

Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance, p. 16. See also Amis and Amiloun, ed. Leach, 11. 2305-424. Confessio Amantis, VIII. 1153; ESEL, p. 476 (1. 489). The apparent death of the hero or heroine was a common motif in Greek romance (Rohde, Der griechische Roman, p. 408).

50

Thomas McAlindon

resurrection may also be introduced dramatically, either as an analogy or as a hypothesis. T o those who have found her, the return of one long thought dead seems so incredible that their feelings can only be expressed by reference to a resurrection; or they are slow to grasp the fact that she did not perish: (i)

"Parfay," thoghte he, "fantome is in myn heed! I oghte deme, of skilful juggement, That in the salte see my wyf is deed." And afterward he made his argument: "What woot I if that Crist have hyder ysent My wyf by see, as wel as he hire sente T o my contree fro thennes that she wente?"

(ii) For thogh his Moder were come Fro deth to lyve out of the grave, H e mihte nomor wonder have Than he hath whan that he hire sih . . . H o w wonderly this chance ferde, H e thonketh god of his miracle, T o whos miht mai be non obstacle. (iii) Louerd huy seiden here is our moder: pat adreint was as we wende, I-hered he beo pat hire hath to Hue i-brou3t: And pat hire to us sende. 44

It would be incorrect to say that primitive resurrection has been completely rationalized here. In these passages resurrection is hypothesis or metaphor only in the sense that one kind of miracle has been associated with another, for all three speakers are convinced that some kind of miracle has occurred. Only if we substitute our own conception of miracle (an occurrence contrary to what is known of nature) for theirs (a remarkable event which faith acknowledges to be an act of God) can we claim that they are speaking hyperbolically.

VII. F O R T U N E , FATE, A N D P R O V I D E N C E The return or "resurrection" of the lost one proves triumphantly that despite the turbulent cruelty of life men can perceive in it a benevolent

44

Man of Law's Tale, 11. 1 0 3 7 - 4 3 ; Confessio Amantis, stance)-, ESEL, p. 329 (1. 212, St.

Clement).

II. 1 5 2 3 - 2 7 , 1 5 4 3 - 4 6 (Tale of Con-

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

51

and rational design; that man's destiny is governed by his moral choices and the hand of God. These ideas are intermittently expressed in the course of the action through the miracles of protection and guidance. Nevertheless, before the reunion such beliefs are more in doubt than otherwise, since until then the story is a lurid picture of the ruthless uncertainty of life, where every favourable glance of the transcendent power is liable to be followed briskly by "sodeyn wo, that evere art successour/To worldly blisse, spreynd with bitternesse!" (Man of Law's Tale, 11. 421—22). The wanderer suffers from doubt, despair, a longing for death; those who witness his misfortunes are prompted to remark on God's incomprehensible distribution of weal and woe among good and evil men.45 T h e Man of Law, reflecting on Constance's first escape from the sea, alludes to the wise but mysterious workings of divine providence (11. 479-83); yet at the start of her travels, and again at the wedding massacre, he had commented gloomily on man's inability to evade the sufferings and death which are exactly prescribed for him by the position of the stars at the moment of birth (11. 190-203; 11. 295-315). The astrological opinions of the Man of Law were unorthodox if not heretical. 46 Both in their esoteric sophistication and in their extreme fatalism, they seem quite out of tune with the rest of the story. But it is possible to see in them the deliberate presentation of an attitude which the ensuing narrative is intended to reveal as misleading. 47 The Sultan's horoscope showed that he would die for love, and this destiny was fulfilled: he did not escape the "woful day fatal" (1. 261). O n the other hand, though the planetary indications that Constance would have an unfortunate marriage and a troublesome journey were in a limited sense correct, her misfortunes were not in any way calamitous. When the whole story is known, they can be seen as a necessary prelude to what the Man of Law must have accounted a great and unforeseeable good — the restoration of Christianity to England. If Constance's father was

45

46

47

ESEL, p. 326 (1. 112), pp. 330-31, p. 473 (11. 389-95); Legends of the Saints, ed. Metcalfe, pp. 80 (1. 402) 81, 83-84 (11. 434-39, 472-521); Confessio Amantis VIII. 1059-80, 1635-55; Man of Law's Tale, 11. 813-16. T . O. Wedel, The Mediceval Attitude Toward Astrology, Particularly in England Yale Studies in English, 60 (New Haven and London, 1920), pp. 145-48. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt. II, second part, qu. ii, art. 2. Cf. W. C. Curry, Chaucer and the Mediceval Sciences, 2nd ed. (London : Allen & Unwin, 1960), pp. 171-94, and Block, pp. 596-97.

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"imprudent" (1. 309), God with his "prudent purveiance" (1. 483) was not, for H e is "lord of Fortune" (1. 448). Again, it needed no "elections" to foresee that the lady set adrift in the "wilde see" would perish; yet this expectation proved false, since, as she herself realized, God in his mercy can suspend the laws of nature and postpone the moment of death as prescribed by secondary causes. Lastly, it is noticeable that the opposition of the stars to the marriage and the travels of Constance is quickly, and thereafter consistently, rendered equivalent to the hostility of demons. Here we can feel reasonably confident of our reading of the astrological passages. Chaucer is now implying his meaning in terms which the ordinary reader (or listener) would have grasped instantly. The classical and philosophical dictum that the wise man rules the stars would have meant far less to his audience than the hagiographic cliché that a saintly woman will always, with Christ's aid, frustrate the wicked designs of Satan. This interpretation of the astrological content of the Man of Law's Tale and its relation to the pervasive theme of divine providence will possibly seem more plausible if we bear in mind that an identical scheme of ideas is developed, though with far greater emphasis and explicitness, in the most influential of all Christian separation legends. The first part of the narrative in the Clementine Recognitions is treated as evidence supporting the philosophy of an astrological determinist; but the story as a whole is manipulated for the sole purpose of confuting fatalistic beliefs and upholding the doctrines of free will, grace, and divine providence. 48 The pagan Faustinianus introduces himself to St. Peter and his three young disciples, Clement, Nicetas and Aquila, by politely ridiculing their manifest belief in the efficacy of prayer: it is fated for the individual whether he will be good or evil, prosperous or unhappy; prayer is of no avail. In support of these views Faustinianus points to the misfortunes of his own family: his wife (according to a slander which he came to believe) committed adultery with her slave and, fleeing with her sons, was lost at sea. W h a t really confirms Faustinianus' fatalistic beliefs is that his wife's misdemeanour as well her drowning concurred in detail with her

48

For the events and argument summarized below see bks. VIII and IX. M. W. Laistner, The Intellectual Heritage of the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1957), p. 78, has said that the Recognitions were the chief source of knowledge about astrology — "or rather of the commoner arguments against it" — in Western Europe up to the tenth century.

T h e Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

53

genesis or nativity, the fate written in her stars at birth. St. Peter and his companions argue at length against these opinions. They maintain that the moment of death cannot be predicted, being subject to the inscrutable will of God, and that although the stars, through the ingenuity of demons, may incite man to sin, they cannot compel him. Faustinianus is intellectually but not psychically convinced by their reasonings. What gives him faith is a miracle which fully enacts the theology of free will and divine providence — the miracle of recovery and recognition. Peter quickly inferred from Faustinianus' story that he was in fact the father of Clement, Aquila, and Nicetas; and he himself had recently discovered the wronged wife and mother on the isle of Aradus, where she had lived in virtuous poverty for twenty years. T o convert Faustinianus, therefore, he has merely to ask: if ich bringue bi-fore pe i-hole: pine children and pi w i j f , W o l t p o v f o r - h o t e pine mis-bi-leue: and a-mendi pi lijf A n d i-leue pat ping c o m e z ase g o d w o l e : and no-ping after 3wate? 4 9

The sophists had given a degree of seriousness to their sensational romances by a consistent if superficial preoccupation with Fortune, Fate, and divine providence. The author of the Recognitions carried this preoccupation to the point of reducing the narrative to the status of a miracle in a debate on human destiny and the existence of a benevolent god. In so doing, however, he showed medieval writers that the separation story had great didactic potential and that its proper function was to pose and answer the principal questions which vex Everyman on the journey of life. In trying to bring out the full implications of the fateprovidence theme obviously inherent in his material, Chaucer may well have added the astrological passages quite spontaneously. But it is just as likely that he was recalling the Clement legend, which he must have known in one of its Latin forms. Certainly anyone with an elementary knowledge of saint's legend would have heard in these astrological passages an echo of the gloomy sentiments inspired in Faustinianus by the wanderings of his wife, and, having ready-made refutations, would have been in no way troubled by their unorthodoxy.

49

ESEL, p. 331 (11. 277-79). T h e astrological details of the argument, retained in the Legenda Aurea (pp. 781-82) and the Scottish Lives of the Saints (IV, 384-85), are omitted here.

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The popularity of the separation fable in an age obsessed with the role of Fortune in human history is easy to understand. T h e very properties of its plot (journey and voyage, ship, sea, and tempest), being stock metaphors in medieval moralizing on human destiny, tied it to the consciousness of the age. Of course, Chaucer's dramatic method of narration and his elusive irony make it difficult to estimate his attitude to the kind of story he assigned to the Man of Law. But as a translator of Boethius he must surely have looked on it as an expression, however simplified and analogical, of a favourite philosophy. A much more exact understanding of medieval attachment to the separation story can be found in Gower, the unambiguous spokesman of orthodox thought and conventional literary taste. In all his writings Gower reverts again and again to the problems of Fate, Fortune, and free will; and he makes it clear that in so doing he is reflecting the malaise of his contemporaries, oppressed by plague and political disorder. 50 T w o particular aspects of Gower's picture of the hopes and fears which dominate the mind in times of great distress are illuminating here. H e makes extensive symbolic use of those images which are also the properties of the separation story — his symbolic ship is even rudderless. And he relies on biblical and hagiographical miracles to justify his claim that all created things, including the elements and the animal world, are directed by God to help the virtuous and punish the sinful — that, in other words, "Fortune" is obedient to God and good men.51 For Gower, however, the marvellous history of Apollonius and his family demonstrated exactly the same point: And every man hath gret mervaile, Which herde tellen of this chance, And thonketh goddes pourveance, Which doth mercy forth with justice. Slain is the moerdrer and moerdrice Thurgh verray trowthe of rihtwisnesse, And thurgh mercy sauf is simplesse Of hire whom mercy preserveth; Thus hath he wel that wel deserveth. 52 50

51 52

Mirour de I'omme, 11.27013-27, 27096; Confessio Amantis, Prologue, 11.500-1090, 11. 2851 ff., IV. 1771 ff.; VII. 633 ff.; Vox Clamantis, II. 37-350, III. 1-106. See also the comments on Gower in B. L. Manning, The People's Faith in the Time of Wyclif (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1919), ch.xi ("The Problem of Free Will"). Vox Clamantis, Bk I passim, II. 217-80, III. 82, 106. Confessio Amantis, VIII. 1954-62.

The Medieval Assimilation of Greek Romance

55

It was not by mere chance, therefore, that Gower used the Apollonius story to help bring the Confessio Amantis to a conclusion, although he had already provided it with another edifying history of the same kind, that of Queen Constance; or that these were by far the longest narratives in the whole collection. N o other stories embodied so well his vision of man's life on earth.

VIII. C O N C L U S I O N Outside the broad tradition I have been describing, sporadic evidence of the influence of Greek romance has been detected in medieval literature. Most notably, it has been seen by some critics in the twelfth-century romance Floire et Blancheflor, and so in the fourteenth-century II Filocolo, Boccaccio's elaborate re-working of the old romance. 53 There are also about eight novellas in The Decameron whose plots and situations are reminiscent of Greek romance. Boccaccio's tales, however, like Floire et Blancheflor, are celebrations of natural love devoid of moral and metaphysical intent; they display no positive interest in the virtues of chastity and patience (some of the heroines are singularly unchaste), and they do not seek to demonstrate the wonderful efficacy of divine providence in a world of chance. 54 Indeed, in Boccaccio's world Fortune is supreme, the only force which rivals her being the combined wit and resolution of the lover. In these respects Boccaccio's tales have affinities with some Greek romance, but not with Greek romance in its classic form. It is, then, not mainly to Boccaccio and Floire et Blancheflor that we must look for evidence of medieval indebtedness to Greek romance, but rather to that vigorous and varied tradition, made up of religious legends and chivalric romances, which ultimately stretches back through the virgin-martyr legends, and the legends of St. Clement and St.

53

54

Arabic, Germanic, and Oriental sources have also been postulated for Floire et Blancheflor. For a summary discussion of the conflicting theories, see Laura A. Hibbard, Mediaeval Romance in England, pp. 189-93. Divine providence is solemnly invoked in one of the eight tales which have been compared with Greek romance — the famous story of Titus and Gisippus (Tenth Day, N o vella VIII). But the theme of providence does not affect the tenor of the story as a whole; indeed, it functions as an essentially specious argument in an oration of "Athenian subtlety."

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Thecla, to the flourishing period of Greek romance. 55 It is perhaps indicative of the tremendous effect which this narrative tradition had on the Christian imagination that Shakespeare's dramatic romances seem so very much closer in spirit to it than to the worldly tales of Boccaccio. For the characters in Shakespeare's romances are ennobled by patience and chastity. Through suffering and catastrophe, separation and reunion, they are brought to the recognition voiced by Edgar for his "resurrected" father: "Thy life's a miracle." 56 It is a recognition which crystallizes the essential spirit of medievalized Greek romance.

55

56

This distinction can be made unhesitantly even when we know that Shakespeare took the wager plot in Cymbeline from one of the eight Greek-type tales in the Decameron (Second Day, Novella IX). Boccaccio's importance as an inheritor of Greek romance has been stressed by Carol Gesner in Shakespeare & the Greek Romance (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), pp. 19-33. King Lear IV.vi.55, 79. It has often been remarked, of course, that King Lear anticipates the last plays or romances in a number of important ways.

G. BEINER

Comedy as Heuristic Fiction: A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Context of Shakespearean Comedy

I. A DREAM

A N D SHAKESPEAREAN T H E O R E T I C A L ISSUES

COMEDY:

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an accomplished Shakespearean comedy. It is also a play which incorporates a prominent and extensive self-reflexive dimension which casts light on fundamental elements of the genre of comedy, 1 as well as on the more general issues of creating a play, presenting it, and securing the appropriate response from the audience by activating the imagination. In addition, A Dream is a play which points to the heuristic function of the artistic fiction beyond the temporal finitude of a performance on the stage (or of a reading of the continuum of the text). The imaginative, poetic, non-realistic fiction clarifies from a comic perspective aspects of human experience, as well as aspects of the creation, communication, and reception of the artistic illusion in which the exploration is given a "local habitation." The fiction which is A Dream points at itself, but does not remain in a prison house of fiction: it does not deal only with itself. It has a mimetic dimension, albeit not one of realistic representation. The "virtual world" of the play has a referential relation to aspects of human reality. 2 Correspondingly, the play generates an active role for the spectator/ reader in his response to fiction — to what the fiction says, how it says

For the sake of clarity, this essay will distinguish between "comedy" (a complete play of a certain kind), "comic" (an element of comedy), and "comical" (that which arouses laughter). However, in order to avoid a proliferation of terms, I shall not use different terms for the genre of comedy (as defined by characteristic elements) and for a comedy (a play which belongs to that genre). The word "comedy" is used for both, and the distinction will be evident in the context in which the word is used. The term "virtual" comes from Susanne Langer's Feeling and Form (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1953). See especially chapter seventeen.

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G. Beiner

it, and what it speaks about. 3 Ultimately, A Dream indicates that the comedy is a heuristic device. It is delightfully entertaining as it unfolds, but it also has an abiding value beyond the imaginative world it creates; and finally, when the fiction comes to an end, the spectator/reader has to evaluate what it "yields." The play invites us to consider that mythopoesis need not be empirically real in order to convey significant reality in a work of art. In the evaluative retrospective view which the Epilogue challenges us to take, the comic exploration conducted in the play and the significance emerging from it "more witness than fancy's images," which are employed by the playwright in order to articulate what the play speaks about. A Dream makes us see that a play is not a self-sufficient object, but an object which generates interaction in a number of directions. There is the referential level: the way the play relates, from a particular generic perspective, to aspects of human reality. There is the self-reflexive level: the way the play points to itself, and deals with its ontological status as comedy and with the epistemological issues pertaining to this kind of fiction. There is also the level of spectator/reader response, which the play makes explicit and deals with internally. The nodal point for all these levels is, of course, the generic. The play selects aspects of reality, treats them in a certain perspective and organizes the exploration in a certain structure, engages in self-reflection, and elicits a certain kind of response by being a certain kind of play — a comedy. Furthermore, we have to emphasize, the generic, the referential, the self-reflexive, and the 'reception' levels are all integrated within the play and, hence, are integral to any comprehensive analysis of A Dream. These are not merely

T h e distinction, w h i c h is an i m p o r t a n t r e m i n d e r of referentiality, is based on Paul Ricoeur's essay " M e t a p h o r and the C e n t r a l P r o b l e m of H e r m e n e u t i c s . " T h e essay was first published in F r e n c h , in Revue philosophique and in English in New Literary Philosophy Journal,

History,

de Louvain,

70 (1972), 9 3 - 1 1 2 ;

6 (1974), 9 5 - 1 1 0 and also in Graduate

Faculty

3 ( 1 9 7 3 - 7 4 ) , 4 2 - 5 8 . T h e edition used f o r r e f e r e n c e in the present

essay is J o h n B. T h o m p s o n , ed. and trans., Paul Ricceur: Hermeneutics

and the

Human

Sciences ( C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g e Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 165-81. T h e emphasis o n the r e a d e r ' s role is pursued in the i m p o r t a n t studies in "reception t h e o r y " by W o l f g a n g Iser, w h i c h f o c u s o n the novel. I believe that the extension of the t h e o r y t o d r a m a ( w h e r e t h e r e is reception by spectators as well as by readers) should be f r u i t ful, and directly p e r t i n e n t t o issues raised by o u r play. In this c o n n e c t i o n , see also Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?(Cambridge, 1980).

Mass.: H a r v a r d Univ. Press,

C o m e d y as H e u r i s t i c Fiction

59

considerations, or conceptual constructs, which emerge only on a metacritical plane and which one may, supposedly, elect to dispense with in a critical analysis. Since the levels exist explicitly in the play, a critical analysis has to take them into account in the operations of description, explication, and interpretation. The combination of levels in the play should produce a correspondingly complex response in the sensitive spectator, reader, and critic. In particular, we should be aware that the comedy is concerned with the idea of comedy, as well as with the specific issues which emerge in the world of the play. Therefore, there is a dialectical process of clarification in relation to Shakespeare's other comedies. Understanding A Dream contributes to our understanding of Shakespearean comedy generally; and, conversely, if we bring to this play a knowledge of Shakespeare's other comedies, we are in a better position to understand A Dream. Poetics and the critical analysis of the specific play are part of one dialectical process — not two separate areas, let alone conflicting activities. It is one of the purposes of this essay to pursue both the theoretical aspects of a poetics of Shakespearean comedy (which are evident as common denominators of the individual comedies) and a detailed analysis of A Dream (which, I suggest, cannot be isolated from a poetics of Shakespearean comedy). In order to pursue this dialectical process of criticism, and the implications of the levels on which the play functions, we need to clarify the fundamental concept of genre. This concept is essential for all of Shakespeare's comedies, whatever the degree of self-reflection and meta-dramatic clarification in them, but it is brought into focus with particular clarity in A Dream. The form of each play (which unfolds in time and can be fully perceived only upon completion) and the perspective in which the spectator/reader perceives the play as it unfolds are both genre-bound. Genre is not merely a heuristic critical concept which we may choose to employ or not, or to discard at some stage; it is a constitutive dimension — the formative principle in the play. Hence, genre is necessary to the proper "decoding" of the artistic message which the playwright "encoded" in it. For the playwright, the generic norm provides the artistic langue in which he can articulate and explore the specific and creative form. 4 For the spectator/reader, genre provides the 4

For the t e r m s " n o r m " and " f o r m , " see E. H . G o m b r i c h , Norm and Form ( L o n d o n and N e w Y o r k : P h a i d o n , 1966); and f o r an illuminating application to the relationship

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G. Beiner

means for placing the unfolding details in the play in a meaningful pattern, on the basis of which he can interpret the details and the entire play. More than any other playwright, Shakespeare makes us see that the generic norm itself, which is always defined by the abstract common denominators of existing forms, changes with the addition of new forms (i.e., creative plays of the same kind): the plays are articulated on the basis of existing norms, and they modify the norms. Here, too, we have a dialectical progress — in artistic creation. For the reader, and especially the critic (who is a systematic reader, and engages in the issues of validity by continually examining the critical assumptions and procedures), the generic perception of a play involves a spiral process, rather than a "philological circle." 5 This process combines a circular movement (between the details of the specific play and the abstract level of common denominators of many plays of the same kind) with progression: with each revolution between the specific and the general we understand more about both. This dynamic perception, or growing critical understanding, does not emerge wholly in the closed framework of a play (the play is not an "intrinsic genre"), 6 nor is it exclusively a matter of a theoretical level of poetics (as if we could know a play by pigeonholing it in some abstract scheme). 7 The generic class (in this case, comedy) does not exist without the component members (comedies); and the plays are not properly comprehensible without the generic class (used by the playwright to "encode," and by the spectator/reader/critic to "decode"). The definition of a generic class, such as comedy, is not static and absolute; one cannot give it and then work with it only by deduction.

5

6

7

between plays and tradition, see Rosalie L. Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1974). As my argument indicates, I use "form" for a complete play, and "norm" for a set of elements which define a class of plays. For the concept of the "philological circle" and its application, see Leo Spitzer, "Linguistics and Literary History," in Linguistics and Literary History (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1948). Cf. Ricoeur, "Metaphor and the Central Problem of Hermeneutics," p. 175. See E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1967), ch. 3. Such is often the tendency exhibited by Northrop Frye — for instance, in Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957). His observations on the genre of comedy are among the most perceptive and most seminal available, but the literary phenomenon (the concrete, individual work) gets short shrift in his vast taxonomical system.

61

C o m e d y as Heuristic Fiction

Each new contribution within the genre (each new play) may affect the definition of the class: the concept of genre itself is dynamic and developmental. The spiral process I referred to earlier in relation to criticism has a counterpart on the creative side: the creative writer needs existing schemes derived from earlier plays, without which he can articulate nothing; but in creating, he changes the schemes. The objects we analyze, the plays, are creative — they do not merely imitate previous plays, and do not merely exemplify abstract principles for creating such plays. So, for instance, it is impossible to give a working definition for Shakespearean comedy only on the basis of Graeco-Roman "new comedy," even though this tradition was one of the formative influences on Shakespeare's comedies. There are differences as well as changes. 8 Shakespeare demonstrated on an ample scale within his own work the principle of development and change when he moved from comedy (the plays from Errors to Twelfth Night) to those complex forms ("problem plays" like Measure for Measure and "romances" like The Tempest) which have an overall framework within which tragic possibilities can be explored more amply than in the comedies. We have to bear in mind this crucial, and often misunderstood, point of dynamism and development as we proceed to indicate a model for Shakespearean comedy, and then to use the model in an analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The model is derived from a reading of all of Shakespeare's comedies, but it is not used merely deductively for our play — nor could it, since A Dream makes a distinctive contribution. The remainder of this section concentrates on one part of the spiral critical process: a poetics of Shakespearean comedy. It gives as many references as possible to the plays in order to show whence the elements of the model are derived. The following sections constitute the second revolution in the critical spiral: employing the generic model, I analyze A Midsummer Night's Dream — in a number of sections based on major elements and levels — and indicate its specific preoccupations and contribution. Finally, I deal with what I believe is the climactic point made in the play: as the fiction comes to an end, and in a sense deconstructs it-

8

If our topic were c o m e d y in general, w e would need to use a concept like Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" in order to deal with major blocks such as ancient N e w Comedy, Italian Renaissance commedia

erudita

and the commedia

dell'arte,

Shake-

spearean comedy, and so on. For a discussion which is confined to Shakespearean comedy there is no need for a special term to refer to developments and changes.

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G. Beiner

self, it points to its heuristic function in creating a meaning which remains after the performance is over. The structural basis of a Shakespearean comedy (as in Terentian "new comedy") is a teleological development through a number of phases from an initial point of problems and obstacles to an ultimate point of resolution, which is the goal of the comic movement. All three aspects mentioned here are essential: the problems, which constitute an instability in the initial situation, and thus push towards action; the resolution, which (to borrow a phrase from Susanne Langer) fulfils the comic form; 9 and the forward thrust towards a goal, which upon being eventually reached is "the one the audience has recognized all along to be the proper and desirable state of affairs.'" 0 This structural foundation may be called, in a metaphor from analytical geometry, a vector; and various points in the unfolding structure are definable in terms of their relative position in the vector between obstacles and resolution. The metaphor, however, should not be allowed to take over: some of its implications are not applicable. The progression from problems towards resolution is not direct and linear: the unfolding comic situation is not in every respect nearer the resolution in proportion to the distance covered from the point of departure. There are complications, new problems may arise, and internal stresses (ranging from the danger of physical violence to bewilderment and frustration) increase as the comedy unfolds. For the characters in the play, these developments seem to increase the distance to the desired resolution, until the gap is suddenly narrowed or revealed as an error which is eliminated by discovery. Usually, the progression from complications to resolution is connected with correction, clarification, and remedial action achieved in the world of the play. However, the degree of awareness possessed or acquired by characters, and their ability to initiate effective action for achieving their aims, vary in the different comedies." This point is worth emphasizing and demonstrating with examples, since it is one of the characteristic features of the comedies, and, indeed, an element which A Dream foregrounds and clarifies.

9 10 11

Feeling and Form, p. 309. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 164. For an extensive, though rather mechanical, analysis of degree of awareness, see Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's Comedies (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960).

C o m e d y as Heuristic Fiction

63

One extreme in the scale is given in The Comedy of Errors, where all characters are at "degree zero" both in awareness and in ability to solve their problems and achieve what they desire — but a full resolution, indeed with unexpected fortunate bonuses, is achieved. In some of the other comedies, we see the opposite case: characters who have a high degree of perception and manipulative control, and who either create or significantly contribute to the resolution. So, for instance, in The Shrew: Petruchio perceives and controls the situation with which he is confronted to such an extent that he can arrange a delightful and instructive comedy which shapes his reality in accordance with his scenario. The merry wives of Windsor are aware of the trickster's designs on them, and trick him to the point of casting him in the role of pharmakos — while also playing a corrective game with the jealous husband. In As You Like It, Rosalind, who is herself fully committed emotionally, is efficiently in control of the supposed impasse in which the various lovers find themselves in the Forest of Arden — and she can bring them to a resolution and a festive celebration. The spectrum between the two extremes of complete lack of awareness (Errors) and some internal manipulative control (The Shrew, The Merry Wives) and a high degree of awareness (As You Like It) is covered by various characters in the comedies from Errors to Twelfth Night. They are not all uniformly aware and in control, nor invariably unaware and unable to act towards the goal they desire; there are varying degrees of awareness, and different manifestations of discrepant awareness. Furthermore, we see in the comedies that there need be no correspondence between the degree of awareness and the ability to act effectively towards what is desired. The clearest cases in point are Julia (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) and Viola (Twelfth Night): both are perceptive and faithful to their emotional commitments, and yet they have to bide their time and hope for a favourable change in the situation without being able to bring that change about. In other cases, awareness is the result rather than the cause of positive, resolving developments. So, for instance, Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado perceive their own sentiments for each other only after they are tricked into love. In short, the existence of the final comic resolution is not a function of the degree of awareness of participants in it, nor necessarily of actions they undertake to achieve their aims. Fortunate transformations (like those of Oliver and Duke Frederick in As You Like It), fortunate and timely discoveries (such as the presence and identity of Proteus' page at the end of The

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Two Gentlemen, or the "natural perspective" of look-alike twins in Twelfth Night), and many other manifestations of comic control lead to comic resolutions regardless of the degree of perception characters have, and sometimes in spite of a complete lack of awareness. 12 The point can be summarized by saying that the resolution is a function of the genre, not of awareness and initiative (which is often absent, minimal, or insufficient) in the participants. The resolution is an essential generic element needed to confirm the teleological thrust and to complete the comic form. When it does not occur, as in the deferred and conditional promise at the end of Love's Labour's Lost, the result is a radical disruption of the comic form. 13 Whether we know in advance how the resolution is to be achieved, or are surprised by the fortunate transformations, coincidences, and cognitio which lead to it — we expect the resolution to come in due course and complete the comic form. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, as we shall show in detail, the mythopoeic forest gives an "objective correlative" to the comic control which secures resolution in spite of the characters' lack of awareness and inability to solve the problems of sentiment in which they are involved. This correlative, which presents an essential element of comedy, is integrated in the dramatic developments in the play. O u r understanding of that level of A Dream will be enhanced by a knowledge of the comic element it clarifies. I have referred to the comic element of resolution, and to the fact that the progressive unfolding from initial obstacles to the final resolution is not direct. Complications may seem to push away from the achievement of the goal, and the resolution — though expected by the audience — may depend upon unexpected transformations and discoveries. Precisely because there is no straight and continuous line leading from problems to resolution, the comic perspective which the audience has from an early point onward is essential: it ensures the proper "reception" of the unfolding play. The comic form, which is the defini-

F o r t u n e in c o m e d y is a large topic in its o w n right. For some of t h e traditions and their impact o n S h a k e s p e a r e a n c o m e d y , see Leo Salingar, Shakespeare tions of Comedy

and the

Tradi-

( C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g e Univ. Press, 1974). An illuminating n o n -

historical analysis of c o m i c f o r t u n e is given by Langer, Feeling and Form, ch. 18. In my article " E n d g a m e in Love's Labour's Lost,"Anglia,

103, i-ii (1985), 4 8 - 7 0 , I a n -

alyze in detail b o t h the d r a m a t i c and the m e t a - d r a m a t i c aspects of t h e disrupted e n d ing in t h a t play.

C o m e d y as Heuristic Fiction

65

tive proof that the play is a comedy, is fully available only at the end. However, the spectator/reader cannot suspend his understanding and response until the end of the play, and then apply them only retrospectively; he needs a way of interpreting every detail, and of formulating a working hypothesis concerning the unfolding form. The comic perspective, which accompanies the unfolding form, is the way of interpreting and responding to the world of the play in the progressing "virtual present.'" 4 Each new phase in the comic movement supports the perspective, and the ending fully confirms it. The comic perspective generates in the audience detachment from apparent dangers and deadlock, and from expressions of bewilderment, anxiety, or pathos in the comic world. One essential reason for detachment is the confidence the audience has, on the basis of recognizing the play as a comedy and of familiarity with the basic conventions of the genre, that problems and errors will ultimately be eliminated. There is, in effect, an understanding between the playwright (who uses the generic norm to create the play) and the audience (which relies on a recognition of the genre in its response and interpretation) that the play is a comedy. T h e unfolding form progressively supports this understanding, and confirms it upon completion. 15 As it does on many other levels, A Dream clarifies, through the mirror of comedy in the play, the way in which the comic perspective is secured by our awareness of comic control and by the consequent detachment in our attitude. The phase of complications, through which the plot moves in its trajectory to eventual resolution, is connected with comedy's distinctive way of exploring, unfolding, and clarifying. In the phase of complica14

See Langer, Feeling and Form. T h e emphasis here is on "present."

15

There is a process here which is similar, and related, to the interplay between generic norm and the form of the play: the interpretation of the details of a given text in relation to the overall structure of that text. "The presupposition of a certain w h o l e precedes the discernment of a determinate arrangement of parts; and it is by constructing the details that w e build up the whole" (Ricoeur, "Metaphor," p. 175). In the case with which w e are dealing here (the interpretation of a comedy), the overall structure (the comic form) is the guide for interpreting the details of the play; and the relationship of elements indicates to us what overall structure is relevant (i.e., that the play is a comedy). W e interpret everything in the play in the light of our knowledge that it is a comedy; and our perception that the play is a c o m e d y is based on the unfolding relationship of parts. For an application of "gestalt" in the response to art, see E. H . Gombrich, Art and Illusion 3rd rev. ed. (London: Phaidon, 1968).

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tions, the play moves through the game which is comedy to the meaning which comedy articulates. Problems are brought out (including latent stresses which were not evident at the outset, and underlying causes of visible problems as well as new issues), and are made to work themselves out by being pushed ad absurdum, as ordinary restraints on behaviour are temporarily removed. 16 Through ridiculous excesses, release of inhibitions, errors, and the interaction of various partial perspectives, the comedy uncovers the underlying causes of problems. The most concise and suggestive terms for this phenomenon, and for its function and effect, are those used by Barber in his seminal study: "release" and "clarification." Barber's formula, "through release to clarification,'" 7 is useful too, especially in indicating a dynamic progression. There is, however, a mixture of levels and a lacuna in this formula — and these make for an imprecision. Release occurs within the comedy: it is a phase (or sequence of phases) within the unfolding comic form. Clarification may occur within the world of the comedy, and usually does — to varying extents. But the inclusive clarification, beyond anything available even to the most perceptive characters, is directed at the audience. Apart from limitations which characters have within their own sphere (of which we are aware), there are levels in the play which are

Even w h e n the g a m e aspect of c o m e d y is most evident, in w h a t is o f t e n called farce r a t h e r t h a n c o m e d y (with the implication that the superficial effect is t h a t of mere ent e r t a i n m e n t , apparently w i t h o u t the f u r t h e r p u r p o s e of clarification), exposure is in f a c t a central e f f e c t of the complications. T h e point is well w o r t h e m p h a s i z i n g , since the term ' f a r c e ' is o f t e n misleadingly employed in c o n n e c t i o n with such cases as the p e r m u t a t i o n s of misidentification in Errors, the taming of K a t h e r i n a in The

Shrew,

and the p u n i s h m e n t of Falstaff in The Merry Wives. In all of S h a k e s p e a r e ' s comedies, complications are a device f o r clarifying exposure. — An analysis of this aspect in The Comedy

of Errors, w h i c h has pertinent implications f o r A Dream, is given in m y

f o r t h c o m i n g article, "Errors and S h a k e s p e a r e a n C o m e d y . " — T h e critically neglected Cinderella of the t h e a t r e , f a r c e , is receiving increasing attention — especially in the light of psychological t e r m s — and o u r u n d e r s t a n d i n g of c o m e d y has benefitted. See, f o r instance, Eric Bentley's " T h e P s y c h o l o g y of Farce," in 'Let's Get a Divorce!' Other Plays ( N e w Y o r k : Hill and W a n g , 1958); M o r t o n G u r e w i t c h , Comedy: rational

Vision

and

The Ir-

(Ithaca, N . Y . : C o r n e l l Univ. Press, 1975); and the v o l u m e in T h e

Critical Idiom series (gen. ed. J o h n D . J u m p ) by Jessica Milner Davis, Farce ( L o n d o n : M e t h u e n , 1978). For the t e r m s "release" and "clarification," and f o r the f o r m u l a " t h r o u g h release to clarification," see Barber, Shakespeare's Press, 1959), ch. 1.

Festive Comedy

( P r i n c e t o n : P r i n c e t o n Univ.

C o m e d y as H e u r i s t i c Fiction

67

available only to us. T h e meta-dramatic level, for instance, is by its very nature in this category. I propose, therefore, to amend Barber's formula so as to indicate the place of release within the unfolding comic form, and its effect of clarification — which functions partly in the world of the play and mainly in relation to the audience. The comic plot progresses from an initial situation which indicates a goal of well-being (thereby pointing to the desired resolution) as well as problems which constitute obstacles, through clarifying release, to a final resolution. The comprehensive clarification given to the audience is based, of course, on the complete comic form. Indeed, as A Midsummer Night's Dream indicates, there is a sense in which clarification goes beyond the play, which creates for the spectator/reader "something of great constancy." H o w ever, if the comedy is in this respect a heuristic device, no clarification can be generated without it; and one of the principal means for a clarifying comic exploration is the comic phase of release. Release need not be saturnalian in the precise sense of having roots in, or being analogous to, popular festivals (as Barber argued), but it is saturnalian in the extended sense of a world upsidedown which is temporarily governed by its own rules and possibilities, including the inversion of ordinary norms and modes of experience. In some cases it is connected with a special fictional environment, a fiction (or "second world") within the fiction of comedy. The forest of Arden, where most of the comic exploration in As You Like It takes place, and the wood near Athens, where the errors of love unfold and are resolved in A Midsummer Night's Dream, are cases in point. The creation and employment of such an environment is not, however, essential to Shakespearean comedy.' 8 In the majority of Shakespeare's comedies from Errors to

T o r e g a r d it as an essential structural element is a prevalent e r r o r in m o d e r n criticism of S h a k e s p e a r e a n c o m e d y . O n e of the b e s t - k n o w n f o r m u l a e , which calls the special e n v i r o n m e n t a "green w o r l d , " is N o r t h r o p Frye's: "the action of c o m e d y begins in a world r e p r e s e n t e d as a n o r m a l w o r l d , moves into the green w o r l d , goes into a met a m o r p h o s i s t h e r e in which comic resolution is achieved, and r e t u r n s t o t h e n o r m a l w o r l d " ( A n a t o m y of Criticism,

p. 182). P a r t of Frye's e r r o r is t h a t he takes the pas-

toral m o d e as a model, w h e r e a s the s t r u c t u r i n g principle is t h a t of c o m e d y ; pastoral topoi are only o n e type of material w h i c h c o m e d y m a y use. F o r an avowedly Marxist analysis, w h i c h refers to several versions of Frye's f o r m u l a and a d o p t s it with a diff e r e n t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , see Elliott Krieger, A Marxist ( L o n d o n : Macmillan, 1979), esp. ch. 1.

Study of Shakespeare's

Comedies

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G. Bei'ner

Twelfth Night, with the two notable exceptions mentioned above, 19 the device is either not used at all (the comedy unfolds through all its phases, including saturnalia, in one fictional environment), or has only a minor function (the saturnalian condition is not dependent on a change of locale, though perhaps dramatically reinforced by it). What is important is the condition, or phase, of release — with the unfolding of problems and the effect of clarification. And yet, since Shakespearean comic plots progress through a saturnalian phase in their trajectory from obstacles to resolution, when there is a "second world" this brings out and crystallizes the double transition into and then out of the temporary condition. The inner fiction, which has its own distinctive laws of behaviour, experience, and action, also becomes an inner mirror which throws light on the overall comic world, which is a fiction with its own nonrealistic rules. The inner fiction becomes a vehicle for self-reflexivity in the comic fiction — a meta-dramatic pointer to the fiction which is the play, as well as being a dramatic element through which exploration and clarification are achieved. 20 It is in the light of these general points that much can be learned, and I believe Shakespeare intends us to learn, about comic release, comic control, and comic clarification from the forest in A Midsummer Night's Dream. When we consider the function of the complex pastoral world in As You Like It and of the manipulative mythopoesis in A Dream, we are confronted with a meta-critical issue of great importance for a poetics of Shakespearean comedy, and one which is all too often misunderstood or ignored. In addition to comic elements, a comedy has elements which 19

For reasons w h i c h c a n n o t be fully explained in this context, I d o n o t include Merchant

The

of Venice in the comedies. As I indicate below, this play is best u n d e r s t o o d

in the c o n t e x t of the " p r o b l e m play." T h a t c a t e g o r y is the subject of a separate m o n o g r a p h , w h i c h is n o w in p r e p a r a t i o n . H e n c e , I d o not r e f e r here t o t h e juxtaposition of t w o locales in The 20

Merchant.

M e t a - d r a m a in S h a k e s p e a r e a n c o m e d y is discussed in g r e a t e r detail below, and applied in m y analysis of A Dream. — O n e of the most illuminating studies of this topic, which takes examples f r o m several genres, is J a m e s L. C a l d e r w o o d , Metadrama

Shakespearean

(Minneapolis: Univ. of M i n n e s o t a Press, 1971). An earlier study, w h i c h

gives a perspective of historical d e v e l o p m e n t , is A n n e Righter's Shakespeare

and the

Idea of the Play ( L o n d o n : C h a t t o and W i n d u s , 1962). In this context, see also V . A. Kolve's " T h e D r a m a as Play and G a m e , " in The Play Called Corpus

Christi

(Stan-

f o r d : S t a n f o r d Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 8 - 3 2 . A r e c e n t study, w h i c h c o n c e n t r a t e s o n S h a k e s p e a r e a n c o m e d y , albeit in a s o m e w h a t simplistic w a y , is J. D e n n i s H u s t o n ' s Shakespeare's

Comedies

of Play ( L o n d o n : Macmillan, 1981).

Comedy as Heuristic Fiction

69

are not intrinsically comic but are given a comic function and are integrated into a comic structure. A pastoral environment of retreat, exile, exploration and uncovering is not necessarily comic. Within a comic plot, as an area of release, play-acting, and solutions, it does become comic; indeed, it provides an "objective correlative" to an essential phase in the comic plot. Similarly, a combination of literary mythopoesis and folklore need not be comic; but when it crystallizes the function of release and of detached and resolving manipulation, as it does in A Dream, it is comic and holds a mirror up to comic fiction. This point, concerning features which are not intrinsically of a specific genre but become elements of that genre by virtue of their function within the generic structure, has extensive implication for poetics generally. Within our more limited topic, it can be usefully applied to at least three features of Shakespearean comedy which are not in themselves comic but become so by occupying prominent positions in the comic structure. These are: the use of "reflectors," the "contrary valuation" of the tragic alternative given in the comedy, and self-reflexivity. Since these concepts are all of particular importance for A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I apply them in the analysis of the play in the following sections, I propose to elucidate them in theoretical terms and to indicate, as far as possible, their range in Shakespearean comedy. As in most English Renaissance drama, the plots of Shakespearean comedies are multiple. 2 ' Any theoretical model for the comedies which treats them as if they had simple, one-level plots (e.g., by referring only to the comedy of love in each case, and indicating the progression from obstacles through release to resolution) is bound to be insufficient. We need a model which takes into account the various levels, their interaction, and their integration into a multiple plot. Furthermore, in addition to the interrelationship of plot-levels, there is in every Shakespearean comedy a variety of juxtapositions (of characters, attitudes, modes of experience and of action, and of degrees of awareness) which contribute to the accumulating clarification created by the play without necessarily being levels of plot. In A Dream, for instance, we have the level of the

21

The most thorough study of this topic is Richard Levin's The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971). — Useful indications of the development of the multiple plot in Italian Renaissance comedy, and of its relevance to Shakespearean comedy, are given in Salingar, Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy.

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young lovers (where problems of love unfold through complications to resolution), the level of the fairy world (which has its own unfolding from problems to resolution, as well as exercising control over the lovers), the level of the mechanicals (which deals with the theatrical presentation of a classical love story, and which becomes involved in its own way in events in the forest), and the level of Theseus and Hippolyta (where we have adjudication and comment, as well as its own relationship to the issue of love and marriage). The overall plot of A Dream includes all these levels and their juxtapositions, as it unfolds from initial problems through comic exploration to resolution and provides clarification. Whether levels impinge on each other directly in terms of action (as the fairy world does on the young lovers), or develop separately (the mechanicals do not affect the action of the comedy of love, though they cast light on it for us) — they are all juxtaposed, and the juxtapositions are an essential contribution to the comic meaning. There are also juxtapositions within levels (e.g., between the attitudes of Theseus and Hippolyta), and these are no less important than the others. The term which I have found most useful for referring to all kinds of juxtapositions is "reflectors." 22 This feature, I have to emphasize, is not limited to comedy. The complex and central use of reflectors in Henry IV, Hamlet, Lear, Troilus and Cressida, and The Tempest (to take only some major examples) shows the importance of juxtapositions across the generic spectrum in Shakespearean drama. However, comedy being the dramatic form which exposes errors, follies, posturing, "supposes," and "fancy's images" as in a laboratory where results can be controlled, is a genre which puts to good use, and in a distinctive way, the interaction of reflectors for producing exposure and promoting the detached awareness acquired by the spectator. As I have indicated, some comic reflectors are plot-levels. Indeed, in some of the comedies (notably The Shrew and Much Ado), a chiastic juxtaposition of two plot-levels is the principal basis for the overall plot as well as a vital device for comic clarification. In other comedies there are more than two plot-levels, and some of them are less extensive than in the above-mentioned cases. But there are also reflectors which are not

22

This Jamesian term is used in a suggestive way by Francis Fergusson in his essay on Hamlet in The Idea of a Theater (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1949), ch. 4. I borrow it, even though my application differs somewhat from Fergusson's.

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plot-levels so much as means of further comic clarification. Among these, one requires special emphasis and explanation. This is the element of "wise folly" and of versions of clowning. The element, we may mention in passing, is not derived from classical N e w Comedy but rather from the medieval tradition — and yet, it is integrated in the teleological unfolding form which has its roots in classical comedy (and perhaps in the Donatian critical tradition based on Terentian comedy). 23 Wise folly and clowning are a potent means for comic exposure, exploration, qualification, parallelism, and contrast. They are also the expression of a saturnalian spirit, with a natural home in comedy, which celebrates the cathartic function of folly — whether by using folly as a stalking horse for wit which would otherwise be unlicensed (Feste and Touchstone), or by showing fools stumbling on truths missed by their social betters (Dogberry and Bottom). Since folly holds a mirror (though not the only one) up to human nature, it is integrated in the range of exposure we find in comedy. Like other reflectors, folly and clowning are not restricted to the realm of comedy. The clownish gravediggers who treat death with casual irreverence, while Hamlet ponders the issues of being, and what is to come after death; Lear's fool, who exposes his master's folly and ostensibly argues for compromise while choosing to be loyal in adversity; the "bitter fool" Thersites, who sees villainy, policy, hypocrisy, lechery, and pointless conflicts everywhere in the world of supposed heroism and love — these inhabit worlds quite different from the purely comic. Comedy does not have a monopoly on the use of folly ("foolery . . . does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere," as Feste says), nor is it the only genre which exposes and clarifies. Henry IV, in which we find the most capacious comic figure, or Troilus and Cressida, in which personal and public values as well as literary myths are mercilessly uncovered to reveal a rotten core, are sufficient proof to that effect. But comedy, as a complete play of a certain kind (and not just as a dimension or a perspective which may be used in other genres) has a distinctive use for folly. It generates a sense of delight in exposure while preventing the destructive consequences which human folly may lead to. In comedy folly is pushed ad absurdum, not ad catastropham in the tragic sense. N o r

See T . W. Baldwin, Shakespeare's Five-Act 1947).

Structure (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,

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G. Beiner

is there any need to choose and reject (as in Henry IV), even though the final resolution moves beyond folly, after the saturnalian phase comes to an end, and does not include it except as a minor element. Although it is both revealing and delightful, folly — we have to emphasize — is not the highest or most inclusive perspective in Shakespearean comedy: the entire play is not an encomium moriae, even if it shows "what fools these mortals be." The Shakespearean comic perspective incorporates both exposure, to which the clowns and fools contribute greatly, and the thrust towards a constructive resolution, which is outside the scope of even the wisest fools — whether they are included in the final festivity (like Touchstone), or remain outside it (like Feste). There is mutual qualification in the juxtaposition between the level of love (where folly is exposed, but there is also positive assertion) and the level of folly (which reveals significant truth, but does not participate, or, like Touchstone, participates only on a low level in the assertion celebrated in the resolution). Even before the resolution, it is clear to the audience that there are areas of experience in the play which are unavailable or irrelevant to the clowns and fools, though they are central on other levels in the play. Bottom may know that "wisdom and love keep little company together," but he does not experience love. His comment is a pertinent comic clarification, both in its direct context (the meeting with the doting Titania) and in juxtaposition the the lovers' "story of the night"; but it is not an inclusive vision, nor the highest level of awareness, in the play. Reflectors (including those of folly and clowning) have, as I have indicated, a major function in the Shakespearean comic structure, though the feature is not intrinsically and exclusively comic. The same point applies to the use of the possible alternative, or "contrary valuation." 24 This feature is so intimately connected with Shakespeare's 24

I borrow this useful phrase from Philip Edwards, Shakespeare and the Confines of Art (London: Methuen, 1968), ch. 1. Used without a specific generic tag (such as the tragic valuation), it can refer generally to the alternative possibility to the one presented in a play: the alternative of possible resolution we glimpse in tragedy before the catastrophe, the alternative of possible disaster indicated in comedy before the resolution. For our purposes, however, the term "contrary valuation" is specifically applied to the indication of possible disaster given within the comic form. See in this connection Anne Barton's illuminating essay "As You Like It and Twelfth Night: Shakespeare's Sense of an Ending," in Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, 14: Shakespearian Comedy, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer (London: Edward Arnold, 1972), pp. 160-80.

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73

continuing explorations in the different genres that it cannot be fully treated in the context of a discussion of one genre. In particular, Shakespeare's extension of the comic frontier so as to incorporate the exploration of tragic dilemmas, choice, and responsibility (as in Measure for Measure), and of the re-enactment and healing of tragic wounds (as in The Tempest) would take our discussion, as it took Shakespearean drama, to the complex forms of the "problem plays" and the "romances." For a discussion of comedy, which comes first both logically and chronologically, the point is that the contrary valuation of tragedy is given a significant function in the comic plot and the comic perspective. The point is particularly marked in A Midsummer Night's Dream, as the play looks at tragic fiction as well as at the impasse created by errors of sentiment (i.e., at tragic possibilités in the fictional reality of the play, and at what should be tragedy in an inner fiction within the play). But the issue is not unique. The clarification of this point in A Dream has a wide scope precisely because it casts light on Shakespearean comedy generally. A Dream indicates, indeed emphasizes, that the young Athenian lovers might have been involved in a Pyramus and Thisby tragic story (or, we might say, a Romeo and Juliet tragic plot), but for the manipulative comic control which prevents irreparable harm and secures resolution. If the comic perspective reassures us long before the end that the tragic alternative is avoided, the play also draws our attention to the existence of that alternative, and to the lovers' inability to secure what they desire by solving the problems of misprised love. Similarly, the "motiveless malignity" (in Coleridge's apt phrase for Iago) of Don John in Much Ado, and the "unkindness" and exile in As You Like It, which have their fully tragic counterparts in Othello and Lear, indicate the avoided tragic possibilities in the comedies. This is not merely a matter of critical analysis showing that the tragic and the comic are complementary worlds by dealing with A Dream vs. Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado vs. Othello, and As You Like It vs. Lear. The point would be true even without being made internally in the plays. However, in our examples, and in other such cases in Shakespearean comedy, the tragic alternative is evident and functional within the plays; just as in the tragedies the alternative of possible solution is tantalizingly evident before actual catastrophe completes the tragic form. 25 If there are predicaments in the comedies, they do not 25

There is a deliberate sense in many of Shakespeare's tragedies that the possibility of averting catastrophe exists, but it is the road not taken. Lear meeting Cordelia and

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lead to tragic dilemmas and choice; if there are errors, they do not result in unavoidable consequences and irreparable harm. In addition to such controls, comic fortune provides the bonus of coincidences, discoveries, and metamorphoses needed for solutions, just as tragic timing (e.g., in Romeo and Juliet) leads to disaster and excludes the alternative of resolution. The comedies emphasize internally the tragic alternative, to which human errors, ignorance, or fickleness are likely to lead, but manipulate developments so that they progress to complete a comic pattern through resolution. When characters in the comedies complain of misfortune and express bewilderment, frustration, lack of fulfilment, and pathos — that indicates to us what is at stake (the goal of well-being), and what could happen if the plays were not comedies. Such expressions are controlled, however, by the comic perspective, which is reinforced by our awareness that the state of affairs is, or will be, different from what the characters concerned believe it to be. Where expressions of this kind are not fully controlled, as in The Merchant of Venice, the play is not fully comic; it crosses the boundary, and it is best understood in the context of the "problem plays." A Dream indicates the boundary, as well as the fact that it clearly stays on the comic side of it. In so doing, it helps us see that comedy is all the more clearly defined by distinction from tragedy. I have pointed out that an account of the comic structure and of comic clarification has to include the use of reflectors, as well as the deliberate, functional employment within the comedy of the contrary valuation of tragedy. Both elements, as I indicated at the outset, are not intrinsically comic; they become comic elements by being integrated into the comic form and the comic perspective, and by contributing to comic clarification. A third element which is not intrinsically comic but is given an integral and prominent function in the comedies is that of self-reflection. This meta-dramatic dimension, which points from within at the dramatic object, as well as at the creative process and at audience re-

finding happiness in her company, and R o m e o and Juliet having a plan of action are particularly striking cases in point. T h e tragic effect is strengthened precisely because the alternative seems to exist, but is not in fact available. Timing, we may observe, is no less important in tragedy than it is in comedy: just as comic fortune secures solutions at the right moment, the tragic process is completed by such delays as being one moment too late in rescuing Cordelia from prison, or being defeated by time in carrying out Friar Lawrence's well-meaning plan.

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75

sponse, is integrated in the play's structure, and functions as a comic element. Self-reflection in a Shakespearean play, especially as given through deliberate playacting and the creation of, or reference to, theatrical occasions in the play, is a central and recurrent feature in all genres. Richard II, Henry IV, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest provide ample instances and an indication of the generic range, even if the list is far from exhaustive. In particular, in many Shakespearean plays there are characters who are involved in producing, directing, and manipulating theatrical situations. In Henry IV, Prince Hal manipulates his political image (without needing any instruction from his father) by playing the role of prodigal son and profligate prince: in accordance with his own premeditated plan, he upholds awhile the unyoked humour of the world of misrule only to secure his eventual position as ruler in a kingdom troubled by disorder. Hamlet, whose "antic disposition" is at least in large measure an assumed role, instructs professional actors, confronts the issue of "action" vs. "acting" in relation to a speech from a play, discusses the state of the (Elizabethan) theatre, and uses drama as an instrument for probing into reality. The "Duke of dark corners" in Measure for Measure witnesses indeed the dark corners of the human psyche, as they are uncovered by the fiction of authority and tragic dilemmas. Prospero, the artist/magician, creates, re-creates, and uncreates dramatic illusions while having thereby a real (though not an absolute) effect on human reality in the play — on characters, on situations, and on the prospects for the future. Viewed alongside such examples, self-reflection in the comedies is evidently a manifestation of Shakespeare's persistent investigations of drama through drama, of his repeated creation of fictions within fictions, and of his use of inner reflectors upon fiction. Yet, if self-reflection in Shakespeare's plays is not exclusively characteristic of comedy, it has a special function in comedy. In order to see that, let us refer briefly to some major examples in the comedies, leaving out the prominent case of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we will consider later in detail. Our analysis will gain from these references to the other comedies, and will show how the play clarifies the comic use of self-reflection. In The Taming of the Shrew, where we have a number of meta-dramatic dimensions, two are particularly notable: one in the play itself, and another in the Induction, which gives the entire play the status of a play-within-a-play. In the play, or, to be precise, on one of the juxta-

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posed levels of the plot, Petruchio creates, directs, and plays in an extravagant saturnalia: a comedy through which the régisseur-husband26 shapes the reality of his marital relationship. His campaign based on playacting, in which Katherina "beholds what she . . . is in his mirror . . . [and] beholds in another mirror what she may become if she tries," 27 is shown to be much more successful than the efforts of Lucentio, on the other plot-level, who plays — as we see — a conventional role in a conventional situation. Lucentio is a character in a comedy of "Kabale und Liebe," Petruchio is a character who creates a comedy; in these "Liebesgeschichten und Heiratssachen," Petruchio has the advantage. A separate meta-dramatic dimension is given in the Induction, where the Lord is an aristocratic régisseur who makes the drunken tinker play the role of lord malgré lui, and then lets him see a play presented by professional actors (The Taming of the Shrew), which enacts an image of man's desire for dominance in marriage. In Love's Labour's Lost we have the Muscovite masque, through which Navarre and his bookmen attempt to woo the ladies of France, but the attempt fails — as the forewarned ladies deliberately disrupt the game of supposed fiction. The show of the Nine Worthies fails too, both as spectacle and as pleasant pastime, and both failures become reflectors on the disrupted comic form of Love's Labour's Lost.2' The play as a whole foregrounds meta-dramatic issues by refusing to confirm generic expectations (among which a resolution is the most basic); and raises throughout the problem of referentiality, and of the reliability of conventional, cliché-ridden, statements. In Twelfth Night the gulling and exposure of Malvolio are an entertaining spectacle witnessed by the festive crew, who punish the kill-joy by making him reveal his hidden ambition as he unwittingly-yet-willingly plays a festive role. O n e of the amused spectators in the play, who appreciates the trick used to catch the stern one, comments: "If this were

I change Fergusson's phrase "regisseur-prince," which he applies to Hamlet, to provide an equivalent for Petruchio. Maynard Mack, "Engagement and Detachment in Shakespeare's Plays," in R. Hosley, ed., Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 280. T h e complexities of this issue are dealt with in my essay "Endgame in Love's Labour's Lost." In the case of A Midsummer Night's Dream, we shall see how the failure of the internal performance is a reflector on the achievement of Shakespeare's play.

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played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction" (III.iv.127-28). 29 If such a remark makes the fictional world we see on the stage (the play) seem real, through contrast to an inner fiction, it also draws our attention to the fiction of comedy: Twelfth Night as a whole is played upon a stage and may be said to be improbable fiction, though it is not to be condemned for that. Comedy does not rely on realistic probability, and often deliberately flouts it, either in the process of release-exposure-and-clarification, or in the final resolution. Comedy is a "game" governed by its own (generic) rules, which are not the rules of reality. 30 Fabian's remark, quoted above, is a version of the time-honoured comic game of comedy played within comedy. 31 In 29

30

31

All quotations from Shakespeare's plays are given from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). — The internal comment on acting in Twelfth Night has many parallels in Shakespearean plays of all genres. One of the best-known occurs in Julius Caesar, where, in the scene of Caesar's death, Casca says: H o w many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In [states] unborn and accents yet unknown (III.i.111-13). In a sense, every genre may be seen in terms of game: it involves principles of selection and rules of structuring. If one ponders what aspects of reality tragedy (as a complete form) and comedy (as a complete form) reflect, rather than how they reflect upon human reality, one might not conclude that tragedy is more probable than comedy. Indeed, in his study of comedy and tragedy The Dark Voyage and the Golden Mean (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1949), Albert Cook sees comedy as "probable" and tragedy as "wonderful." At least, one may say that solutions are no less probable than catastrophes, and fortunate coincidences no rarer than heroic choice in the face of ultimate risks. T h e pattern of triumph over obstacles is no less a part of life than defeat. However, comedy foregrounds fantasy, improbability, manipulation, metamorphosis, and a discontinuity of cause and effect — as it creates its patterns of release, exposure, and resolution. It deliberately emphasizes the effect of game in the way it functions — even if the overall comic pattern refers, without direct mimesis, to a pattern of human existence. Examples in European comedy from Aristophanes onward are legion. A particularly interesting one occurs in Plautus's Mostellaria — when the clever slave's tricks have been discovered by the master, who wants to administer dire punishment. The slave does not excuse himself, but says: Tell you what — if you happen to know the comic writers, Philemon and Diphilus, you might give them the story of how your slave put it across you; you'd be giving them the finest plot of cross-purposes ever seen on the stage. 'The Rope' and Other Plays, trans. E. F. Watling (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), p. 83, 11. 1176 ff.

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Twelfth Night this meta-dramatic pointer, given on one of the levels, increases our awareness of the juxtapositions between the spectacle of Malvolio's exposure and punitive exorcism (which is created and witnessed by internal manipulators) and the other comic spectacle we see: the "midsummer madness," in Olivia's words, of love. The comic spectacle, in which Orsino, Olivia, Viola, and Sebastian are involved, exposes through absurdity and an apparently Gordian knot of errors problems of love until, at the proper time for the comic plot, the knot is cut and there is a constructive resolution. In As You Like It there are many mirrors of fiction and levels which we consciously see as fiction. Among them, one is particularly delightful. It is a tour-de-force, and a great Shakespearean contribution to the tradition of European comedy: the vivacious, perceptive young woman who is fully committed emotionally, and yet able to play comic games, through which a great deal of comic clarification and comic delight are produced for the audience. In addition to being a principal level in the play, this reflector also directs our attention to the way in which the comic fiction functions. Rosalind, under the protective-yet-liberating masculine disguise and with the license of temporary release, playacts as Rosalind and woos Orlando by pretending to cure him of love. The supposed remedia amoris involves the presentation, in Rosalind's speeches, of Orlando and Rosalind as comic types, and a debunking of the conventional language and conventional idealism of a young gentleman in love. This exposure is constructive, since both the young man (who proves his innate nobility without the benefit of "nurture") and the régisíewr-princess (who enacts and explores the reality of emotion through comedy) are in love. The meta-dramatic pointer given to us by Rosalind's playacting enhances our perception of the range of reflectors in the play: the figures which are literary types (Phebe and Silvius), the misanthropist who is kept outside meaningful human relationships because he views them as a ridiculous spectacle (Jacques), the clever fool whose own experience is inevitably limited by lack of idealism (Touchstone), and others. The multiple comic fiction functions as a complex heuristic device, which explores and exposes, and moves to a constructive resolution without ignoring qualifications, and emphasizing to the last its fictional status. As the examples given here indicate, there is a congruence between the genre of comedy and at least one major function of meta-drama — even though meta-drama is not exclusively comic. Comedy creates hy-

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pothetical worlds — fiction seen as fiction — and, far from attempting to disguise this aspect, it emphasizes it through various devices which remind us that we are watching a game and a fiction. This congruence between comedy and meta-drama is not in itself a Shakespearean discovery, though Shakespeare uses it extensively and integrally in his comedies. Jokes on fiction, the short-circuiting of illusion by directly addressing the audience and by other devices which foreground fictionfantasy-game are present in European comedy, both Aristophanic and Plautine/Terentian, from the beginning. The genre of comedy emphasizes fictionality; it conveys the sense of a game with manipulative, nonrealistic internal rules.32 Explicit meta-dramatic pointers to the fictionality of the play, and various games with fiction, correspond to and promote this characteristic feature; comedy is one of the objects of the game of comedy. The meta-dramatic game, especially when it is connected with manipulation in the world of the play, also corresponds to the comic process of detached clarification: through meta-drama comedy clarifies its own nature. In this aspect Shakespeare was particularly interested. He used it, and explored it in most of his comedies, usually with a complex use of reflectors. A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is placed roughly mid-way in the chronological progression from Errors to Twelfth Night, has — I suggest — a central place in Shakespearean comedy, especially in relation to the dramatic use of meta-drama. This accomplished comedy is not, of course, an all-inclusive clarification of comedy; no play can include all the generic variations. But it casts light on all Shakespearean comedy. If it teaches us that what comedy does (or, the experience of reading/watching a comedy) and what comedy is (or, a poetics of comedy) are inseparable, it is also indispensible in a study of those comedies which by critical consensus (and audience response) are regarded as his most mature.33

A striking example of this effect, even in the absence of explicit meta-dramatic pointers, is The Comedy of Errors. There are, of course, obvious meta-dramatic implications in the creative use of comic and literary material in that play, but, uncharacteristically for Shakespeare, there is no explicit meta-dramatic exploration. Nonetheless, the sense of game, manipulation, and non-realistic rules is very marked. I apply the epithet "mature" within the context of the comedies from Errors to Twelfth Night to refer, for instance, to Twelfth Night and As You Like It in contrast to plays such as Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. For a view that the mature comedies are artistically more accomplished than the late "romances," see Frank

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Meta-drama, integrated as a level in the play's structure, may relate to a variety of aspects concerning the creation, articulation, and presentation of theatrical fiction. Indeed, in the case of A Dream, which we shall examine in detail, the internal mirror of fiction deals with the entire theatrical process, including such ostensibly technical matters as casting, props, and rehearsals. However, meta-drama in Shakespearean comedy does not relate only to the issues of artistic creation and the literary/ theatrical object. It also deals, especially in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with referentiality and reader/spectator response — both of which are important in the critical process. When a Shakespearean comedy (such as Love's Labour's Lost and A Dream) includes an internal performance (which need not be itself a comedy), the perceptiveness of the internal audience and its ability or willingness to play its part in the cooperative relationship of creationpresentation-reception becomes an explicit issue. It is explored by Shakespeare, together with other meta-dramatic aspects, in a way which becomes a stimulus to active criticism. The indication we receive, particularly in A Dream, is that the task of the audience is to employ the faculty of imagination in order to perceive what the fiction which is comedy "yields" and, most of all, to realize that the theatrical artefact is a heuristic device. Fiction cannot be assessed in directly empirical or simple-mindedly realistic terms (which dismiss, for instance, fairies, and generally discount imagination). N o r is a play simply entertainment and a social, rather than an aesthetic, occasion (as Theseus regards the mechanicals' show). W h a t matters most, as we are given to understand, is the clarification gained through fiction concerning human realities. Hence, the question is not whether the wood near Athens or the forest of Arden, and other fictional environments, are, or directly correspond to, real territories. These are landscapes of the imaginative mind, territories for artistic exploration. And such fictions are potent means for bringing out, exploring, and organizing in specific perspective (such as comedy) realities of the mind. The point is emphasized in A Dream negatively through Theseus' attitude, and positively through Hippolyta's wiser views.

K e r m o d e , " T h e M a t u r e C o m e d i e s , " S t r a t f o r d - u p o n - A v o n Studies, 3: Early

Shake-

speare, eds. J o h n Russell B r o w n and Bernard H a r r i s , rev. ed. ( L o n d o n : E d w a r d Arnold, 1967), pp. 2 1 1 - 2 7 .

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Shakespeare deliberately complicates, or distances, this central point of the play as heuristic fiction through the internal audience's response to the play-within-the-play. As we see with the response to "Pyramus and Thisby," the internal audience is, on the whole, a negative mirror: we see by contrast, not directly, what our response should be. In the view we, as distinct from the internal audience, are invited to take, the mechanicals present — however inadvertently — an important mirror of fiction in A Dream; but "Pyramus and Thisby" is a failure as a play. At the same time, we also see that the internal audience is not as cooperative and as perceptive as it ought to be. The spectators within the comedy are confronted with a performance which is both inadequate and a relevant (if somewhat crooked) mirror to their reality. They pounce upon the inadequacy (thereby remaining blind to their own limitations), and ignore the relevance. The external audience, which is faced with the accomplished comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream, is invited to apply the internal mirror of fiction and its reception to an evaluation of Shakespeare's play, and to be more receptive than the internal audience. As the Epilogue indicates, this is an active challenge to the spectator (and to the reader and the critic) and a caveat: what the play, the comic fiction, "speaks about" and what it "yields" are important issues. We can now summarize both the meta-critical observations made so far and the major points given towards a poetics of Shakespearean comedy. Poetics, I have stressed, is not a separate activity, but part of a dialectical process together with the analysis of specific texts. Furthermore, it is not directed simply at an object, or at a set of objects, but at interrelationships, which involve the generic, referential, "reception," and, particularly in Shakespearean comedy, the self-reflexive levels. We also have to note that a poetics of comedy has to deal not only with the unfolding form but also with the accompanying perspective. The Shakespearean comic form unfolds teleologically in time through a number of phases from obstacles to a resolution which asserts, with whatever qualifications, a goal of well-being. The teleological progression unfolds in a multiple, not a single, plot and with additional reflectors, among which folly (whether wise or not) is prominent. The overall effect that is directed at the audience is one of clarification, not merely of the completion of a form; and comic release (or, the saturnalian phase) is a major means for generating clarification. Within the Shakespearean comic form and comic perspective, we see the active internal

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use of the alternative, contrary valuation of tragedy, which helps define the actual comic form and perspective. There is also throughout the play a prominent, explicit dimension of self-reflexivity (or, meta-drama), which contributes to comic clarification. In particular, self-reflection makes comedy itself one of the objects of clarification. Ultimately, the comedy is seen as a heuristic device which generates an abiding, and valuable, meaning beyond its temporal finitude and beyond the fiction which creates that meaning. These points (and any amplification which could be pursued if the available space permitted it) are only one part of the critical process, or — as I have put it — one revolution in a spiral process: they indicate common denominators of plays of the same kind, and thus point to the norm which the playwright employed for creating the specific form, and the spectator/reader employs in responding to the form. The other, necessary revolution in the spiral process operates in the opposite, or complementary, direction: my essay proceeds to analyze a specific play, with its unique fictional world and focus of exploration, while utilizing the generic common denominators explained so far. 34 The play is an accomplished comedy, which repays close scrutiny, and it also expresses Shakespeare's interest in exploring and clarifying the comic form itself. It is hoped that the ensuing analysis may contribute to the elucidation of a great comedy, and may also stimulate the reader to pursue the points and methods employed here for further investigation.

34

T h e present enterprise is obviously different from purely theoretical studies which place new theories in relation to previous theories without extensive textual analysis. Equally obviously, it is different from lengthy studies of the play (e.g., David P. Y o u n g , Something

of Great Constancy

[ N e w Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1966]) which

d o not have a theoretical framework. I should add that, in attempting to formulate a poetics, testing it in analysis, and also indicating that the meta-dramatic preoccupations are embedded in the play itself, my essay is distinct from the kind of argument one finds in recent books on Shakespearean comedy. T h e available studies apply some theoretical concept — structure in Blaze Odell Bonazza, Shakespeare's Comedies

(The H a g u e : Mouton, 1966), discrepant awareness in Evans,

Comedies,

dislocation in Alexander Leggatt, Shakespeare's Comedy

of Love

Methuen, 1974), "new comedy" in Ruth N e v o , Comic Transformations

in

Early

Shakespeare's (London: Shakespeare

(London: Methuen, 1980) — but without formulating a comprehensive poetics. Professor H.-J. Diller has drawn my attention to Rainer Lengeler's Das Theater der leidenschaftlichen tungstheorie

Phantasie:

Shakespeares

'Sommernachtstraum'

als Spiegel seiner

Dich-

(Neumiinster: Wachholtz, 1975). Unfortunately, I was unable to see this

b o o k by the time my article went into print.

C o m e d y as Heuristic Fiction

II. T H E

COMEDY OF LOVE IN A MIDSUMMER DREAM

83 NIGHTS

At the outset, the play defines an obstacle to well-being. This takes the form of parental opposition to a choice of love, with the conflict made acute and urgent by the "sharp Athenian law," which imposes on the daughter the death penalty, or a life sentence as a nun, if she disobeys her father's will. We see that the father's arbitrary but insistent demand is irrational, even in terms of social criteria of status and money — as Lysander points out (I.i.99-102) without being contradicted. It is clearly negative in opposing itself to love, treating the conventions of wooing as if they were a sinister magic influence on imagination (I.i.26-38), and being blind to the possibility that the young lady's transference of allegiance from father to chosen mate is both voluntary and natural. The harsh law which the old man invokes is supposed to be inflexible and automatic, allowing no counter-argument on the basis of sentiment or reason, and no leeway to the adjudicator. This situation of conflict between love and obstructive parental/social authority is a way of defining the point of departure for the comic plot (which opens with an instability that pushes towards action), and, correspondingly, of indicating the desirable goal of well-being (which, we expect, is to be reached in the resolution). When the time for resolution eventually comes, the law will be brushed aside without ado, though not before imagination, irrationality, the reliability of declarations of love, and changes of allegiance are indeed explored — albeit not in Egeus' terms. The initial predicament generates the comic action, as the young lovers take an initiative to get out of the apparent impasse. It does not, however, provide the issue which is to be explored and clarified in the phase of comic release. The issue, we soon see, is not the external opposition to love, with which Hermia and Lysander are confronted, but the internal problems of love, which exist independently of parental obstruction and social threat. The focus is again on the young lady, rather than on the man. We have seen Hermia confronted with the external threat and with the choice (to give in or take the consequences) it seemed to impose. Shortly afterwards we see Helena perturbed by misprised and irrational love, and struggling with that problem. For Lysander and Hermia there is at least the option of trying to overcome the threatening pressure by escaping Athenian jurisdiction. For Helena, who has to confront the internal problem of the nature of love, the option of action is unavailable. If Demetrius addresses to

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Hermia the conventional love language Helena pines for, then Helena can think of no solution to her wishes except to be "translated" into Hermia (I.i.181 ff.). N o mode of behaviour, declaration, or sentiment of hers seem able to effect the wished-for change in Demetrius, while Hermia's blunt rejection of the young man does not dampen his ardour. The problem of irrational discontinuity of cause and effect does not admit a rationally planned solution. The trouble, as Helena herself realizes, albeit not without self-contradiction in her own position, is located within love itself (I.i.22 ff.). There is no objective reason for Demetrius' choice, since — says Helena — the consensus of opinion is that she is as beautiful as Hermia. Hence, Helena argues ^ i t h herself, Demetrius's choice is an error. But error is no objection to love, as she knows only too well: "as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes," says Helena, "So I, admiring of his qualities" (I.i.230-31). Love itself, we hear, is irrational, even without interference from unreasonable parents and harsh laws. It does not depend on the objective qualities of the beloved: it effects a "translation," which may turn even the base and vile into form and dignity. It does not depend on sense perception, and emanates from the mind of the lover, but not from his judgement. If love is arbitrary, irrational, independent of sense and of judgement — what initiative can Helena take towards the desired goal? The character caught in this impasse can give no answer, and Helena's reaction to the initiative Lysander and Hermia are taking towards their cause promises only to aggravate her own problem, and to increase her pain. H e r decision also signals the conflict between the old loyalties of friendship (with Hermia) and the new sentiment of love — a conflict which will develop through errors and open rifts in the phase of comic release, and will finally be sorted out in marriage and reconciliation. Helena decides to betray the confidence of her friend by informing Demetrius of Hermia's elopement. Far from contributing towards a solution, this step presupposes Demetrius' love for the other woman, and can only increase Helena's pain. Hermia's and Lysander's initiative and Helena's decision take, in effect, both couples into the area of comic release/exploration/clarification, where problems will be exacerbated but also manipulated towards a resolution. Before that movement takes place, however, the play introduces (in the second scene of the exposition) another level, which is not causally connected with the first: the artisans, who struggle with the problem of creating, articulating, and presenting dramatic illusion. The

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material they choose for the celebration of the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta is the tragic counterpart of the comedy-to-be in which the young Athenians are involved. It is the story of Pyramus and Thisby — the lovers who elope in order to escape from parental opposition to their love, but are overtaken, like Romeo and Juliet, by disastrous error. Thus, while the artisans' struggle with art will be a constrasting mirror from within the play to a level in the play, it also provides a "contrary valuation" to the comedy of love. The potential for tragedy exists within the comedy, as the exchange between Lysander and Hermia in the opening scene (I.i.128 ff.) already points out. The mirror of the obverse, or complementary, possibility will help clarify the actual comic form of the play — especially as the juxtaposition becomes explicit yet distanced in the final act, when the mechanicals perform their play and the young lovers are detached spectators. The two levels which are created in the exposition converge towards the area of comic exploration for separate yet juxtaposed comic unfolding. We have to emphasize immediately that the phase of exploration/ release/clarification in this play, which takes place in the "wood near Athens," is not only a special condition, a temporary abrogation of ordinary behaviour, in which the initial levels are to unfold. It is itself a distinct level with its own comic problems and inner developments, and it also produces manifold self-reflection in the comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The world of the forest is an imaginative fiction-withinthe-fiction, created by the playwright in pointed contradistinction from the clumsy attempts made by the "rude mechanicals" to produce fiction. The forest provides a phase in the comedy of love of the young Athenians (the phase of clarifying release); it is a distinct plot-level, which gives another version of disrupted relationships (Oberon-Titania), and pursues them through comic error and manipulation to a resolution; and it is a meta-dramatic pointer to the overall comic fiction of A Dream. The inner fiction in this play is mythopoeic, 35 combining sophisticated literary Ovidian material with native folklore, and is given a saturnalian/comic function.

Mythopoesis is not a necessary element in comedy, even when an extensive inner fiction is created. In As You Like It and Twelfth Night, for instance, the inner fictions are of different kinds — they rely on the pastoral and saturnalia respectively.

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The point which needs to be emphasized, and which has not received the critical attention it deserves, is that the mythopoeic level in A Dream functions specifically as an image of, or meta-dramatic pointer to, comedy — especially by giving a correlative to comic control, and to comic resolution after the accumulation of errors. In relation to the comedy of love in which the young Athenians are unwitting actors, Oberon and Puck function on a meta-level which controls the comic phase of release and secures the resolution. Within the context of A Dream as a whole, the level of Puck and Oberon functions as an internal mirror of comic manipulation; and the developments concerning Oberon and Titania function as one of the juxtaposed levels in the comedy. We have to bear in mind this complexity, so as not to give a reductive account when we deal with the phase of comic release. "Love-in-idleness," the mythical essence of infatuation, is the device used in A Dream to produce comic exposure. Within the inner fiction, it produce a manipulative comedy — engineered by Oberon to expose Titania's folly, to teach her a lesson, and to resolve their marital dispute. In relation to the young Athenians, it produces comic release (which creates clarification for us) and comic complications, and ultimately serves as the means for securing comic resolution. The antidote (of which we know from the outset — II.i.184 — so that the comic perspective is secured) is the means for terminating the comic exposure in due course. It provides the security needed for comic control, including the ability to correct errors of comic manipulation. The dual device of love potion and antidote is operated by the two figures through whom the comic function of the forest is created: Puck, and his master Oberon. Puck is introduced from the first as the spirit of comical scenarios, which he creates on an improvisatory basis out of opportune occasions, and to which he becomes an amused spectator. As we hear from Titania's fairy (II.i.32 ff.), he may also bring harm, though not on a disastrous scale. Despite the discomfort to the participants, whom he observes with detached amusement, Puck enjoys the comical events he creates. He delights in human folly: those things best please him, as he himself says (III.ii.120-21), that befall preposterously. Human nature does not fail to give him ample instances of precisely the kind of material and spectacle he delights in, and which he pushes towards the ridiculous. The kind of manipulation represented by Puck is an important comic ingredient (and we get considerable clarification by having it made explicit for us), but it is only one, limited aspect of the

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Shakespearean comic perspective and form; one which is not sufficient to create a comedy, though it creates comical events.36 T h e higher and more inclusive (though not all-inclusive) aspect is represented in A Dream by the King of Fairies. Within his own sphere Oberon intends, and eventually manages, to shape the problem he has with the Queen into a revealing and corrective comic event: he tames Titania through comedy. 37 When he also becomes a spectator to the spectacle of the problems of young love (so that the Athenian lovers, for whom the problems are real, unwittingly become actors in a comedy played out in the forest), he decides to exercise benevolent control and provide a remedy. For us, the spectators to the overall hierarchy of levels in the play, the means of manipulation, the errors which are exposed and brought ad absurdum, the benevolent control exercised by Oberon, and Puck's amused and complicating interference are all together an image of the controlling comic framework of the play. They also provide the specific comic unfolding in the phase of release. The comedy of the young lovers begins in Athens with the external problem in relation to Hermia and Lysander; and with the internal problem of love, which is evident in relation to Helena and Demetrius. From the first scene, the reality (in the world of the play) is given to us as fiction — not only because we recognize the character types (the senex iratus and the adulescentes) and the typical situation, but also with the help of direct indicators. For instance, in the patterned, stylized exchanges between Lysander and Hermia (I.i. 128 ff.), in which they refer to the stories of star-crossed lovers, they see themselves cast, as it were, to play tragic roles, though they take an initiative to avoid that fate. For us, the expressed pathos is an indication of the contrary valuation, of what might have been if the play were not a comedy. In the forest, which we see as a mythopoeic mirror of comedy and as a phase in the comic movement, the lovers clearly function in a comedy, and destructive possibilities are avoided. This very interplay between what happens in the comedy and what might have been, helps foreground the idea of fiction, and of the characteristic elements of the specific kind of fiction with which we are confronted. 36

37

For a very different view, which posits a demonic Puck, see Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, trans. Bolestaw Taborski, rev. ed. (1965; London: Methuen, 1967), pp. 171-90. For a comparison to Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, see Huston, Shakespeare's Comedies of Play, ch. 4.

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The comic sequence of release in the forest starts, in relation to the young lovers, in act 2 scene i with a problem which Demetrius and Helena bring with them from Athens. The man loved her once, then left her to pursue a young lady who loves another man; and now Helena is the doting and unrequited lover. The frustration, and the inversion of roles, are obstacles to well-being which the comedy will have to put right. Part of the revealing comical effect in the exchanges between the pursuing woman and the man who rejects her is manifested in the contrary directions in which Demetrius is pulled simultaneously: he wants to be the conventional lover, and to use conventional love language (in relation to Hermia, whom he pursues), yet he is brutal and coarse to the other young lady, whom he wants to shake off. The contrary valuation which is indicated here is not the Pyramus-and-Thisby one of fatality, but rather the potential for physical violence in the brutal threats of the man. Disaster may occur without the stars, the "sharp Athenian law," and parental tyranny. The threat of rape (which will be echoed on another level, with a more ridiculous effect, by Titania in relation to the "translated" Bottom) shows the need for comic control if there is to be a final resolution. The comic control, which aims at a solution, does indeed exist — as we understand from the reaction of the unseen spectator of the scene, Oberon. H e decides to use the remedial means at his disposal to rectify the inversion of love he has witnessed. Puck is instructed to carry out this decision by anointing the unrequiting man's eyes with "love-in-idleness." Next in the sequence, in act 2 scene ii, we see the couple who have no problems in their relationship, and who can playfully exchange lovers' banter on whether "two bosoms interchain'd with one oath" (II.ii.49) means that they should have not only one heart and one troth but also one bed. Hermia's arrangement, which "becomes a virtuous bachelor and maid" (II.ii.59), is adopted — only to become the occasion for Puck's genuine error, with the result that Lysander's eyes are anointed. The action proceeds swiftly from this point with increments of error, which expose and exacerbate the problems of love. Helena, who voices her frustration and her sense of self-abasement, wakes Lysander up with her verbal self-flagellation, and becomes the object of conventional adoration, as she is addressed in conventional love language. There is double comic dislocation 38 here: Helena is assigned the role she 38

The term "dislocation" is extensively und usefully employed by Alexander Leggatt,

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has been pining for, but with the wrong partner, and in circumstances which aggravate error; Lysander unwittingly plays a role (as we see it, a comic role) in love's metamorphoses, which demonstrates the irrationality of love. T h e role induced by "love-in-idleness" is all the more revealing since we know that it re-enacts in the present a metamorphosis which took place in Athens in the virtual past in the other young man. Lysander's solemn rationalization of his evidently irrational transformation (Xl.ii. 115 ff.) is as revealingly funny to us as it is bewildering and suspect to Helena; all the more so, if we remember Helena's speech on blind Cupid. She attempts a rational explanation of the new situation, too, but one which is a function of her turmoil: her view is that Lysander's "translation" is an act he has deliberately put on in order to mock the lady whom no man wants. N o w it is her turn to flee from unwanted courtship, and to be torn between two aggravations: Demetrius' rejection of her, and Lysander's unwelcome (and supposedly mocking) courtship. The nearness of the comic situation to potential disaster (or what would lead to disaster if there were no comic control) is given in the enactment of betrayal, as Lysander leaves the sleeping Hermia, in order to pursue Helena, and speaks of his former love in terms of surfeit, loathing and hatred (II.ii. 135-44). In his deliberately brutal words (which are in direct, ironic contrast to the conventional love language he used to address to Hermia, and is planning to address to Helena), there is not even a suggestion that the "remainder viands / W e do not throw in unrespective sieve, / Because we now are full" — as Troilus argues in the Trojan council scene (Troilus and Cressida, II.ii.61 ff.). And Hermia, in the only dream in the literal sense of the word we see in the comic fiction, has a vision of betrayal, of suffering, and fear which shows us what is at stake. It indicates the inner dimension that disaster would have if betrayal did truly and irrevocably occur (II.ii.145 ff.). The implications and permutations 39 of the comedy of love are worked out and brought to a resolving conclusion, of which the participants are unaware when it takes place, in act 3 scene ii. Demetrius and

39

(Shakespeare's Comedy of Love), Leggatt shows how this device works in all the comedies included in his study. The unfolding of permutations of error was already used in Errors, without a necessary connection to love. In A Dream this pattern is incorporated in the comic exploration of sentiments and conventions of love.

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Hermia, neither of whom is under mythopoeic control but who are both under much greater stress than at the outset, meet in the forest. Hermia, for whom the only logical explanation of Lysander's disappearance is that disaster has taken place, suspects Demetrius of murder. She casts him in the role of a Macbeth, who, "being o'er shoes in blood," might as well wade further and kill her too (III.ii.47 ff.); as she supposes, the tragic point of no return is behind them. Such suppositions could in themselves, in the absence of comic control, lead to a catastrophe — as the story of Pyramus and Thisby indicates. Demetrius, who hates Lysander as a rival, and is willing to use violent words in speaking of him, is, of course, innocent in terms of action. The contrary pull we saw earlier (when he spoke brutally to Helena while seeking the opportunity to use idealizing language to Hermia) is more acute, and more revealingly ridiculous, at this stage: Demetrius is (literally) accused of murder, and at the same time he refers to his unrequiting and accusing beloved (in a conventional metaphor) as a murdering goddess of love (III.ii.56-61). The problem, which is more acute than it was at the outset, cannot be solved from within — by the characters who are caught in the whirligig of Cupid's influence. It is for the controlling comic force, Oberon (who is a spectator to the scene of errors of love, which have been aggravated by errors in remedial manipulation), to sort out the problem. As the audience already knows, Oberon wants, and has the means, to do that. Indeed, Oberon takes immediate remedial action by anointing Demetrius' eyes, thereby effecting a change which is to be permanent; and Lysander is to be cured, at an opportune moment, with the antidote to "love-in-idleness." However, since the effect of Cupid's flower is automatic and unaffected by circumstances (which would, in a non-saturnalian world, be embarrassing and inhibiting), and since Helena (who is to be fetched by Puck, so that Demetrius' love can be fixed on the proper object) cannot shake Lysander off, the remedial action is bound to aggravate error before the planned solution is finally achieved. For Puck, who is best pleased by things which befall preposterously (i.e., by a natural, unscripted comedy of the human condition), and who is always keen to see spectacles of human folly, the mistiming is a welcome bonus. For us, the complication has the function of providing comic clarification in relation to sentiments and conventional declarations of love, and to idealistic dialoghi d'amore. The more the men protest, in conventional language, that they are truly in love, the more marked this effect is. At the same time, as the complications increase, the comic perspective is se-

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cured by our knowledge that all shall be well and that no real harm is done by error. In the mythopoeic forest of transformations and comic manipulations, we see a mirror image of the initial situation of the two couples, as "two at once woo one" (III.ii.118). Helena, who is convinced that she is ugly and monstrous, because she could not attract love as Hermia did (forgetting her own insight into blind Cupid's ways — of which we later see a vivid comic representation, when Titania is infatuated with a monster), is exposed to earnest courtship both from the man she does not want and from the one she has been desperately pursuing. Roles, including declarations of love and sincerity from the men, are typical and, hence, constant; the characters who step in and out of them change, thereby creating the problems in the love-game. Ironically, Demetrius' new declarations cast Helena in precisely the role of adored mistress that she wanted for herself when she wished to be translated into Hermia (III.ii.137-44). But she cannot believe that these hoped-for words convey the truth; her view is that the men have conspired to put on a show of love in order to mock her. The more earnest the two men are in their conventional (and, hence, similar) pleading and declarations of truthfulness, the more she believes they are playacting. The impasse cannot be resolved by the characters concerned. They do not understand what is really happening with their emotions; their earnest rationalizations are ridiculously inappropriate. And the words they use, to express or to react, are bound to promote a comedy of misunderstanding, because they do not refer to the reality they are supposed to convey. T o complete the disrupted foursome, Hermia appears on the scene where Lysander and Demetrius are competing in their declarations of love to Helena. What the eye cannot see in the dark, she says, the ear should convey all the more powerfully. But, to transmute a line from the lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisby, what does she hear? N o Lysander does she hear. H e r lover rejects her with brutal insults, and ardently courts Helena. If she were as mixed up as Bottom is upon waking up from his vision ("the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen" [IV.i.211-12]), Hermia could not be more at a loss to understand the information conveyed by her senses, and to make love and reason keep company together. No-one in this group can find a way out of this selva oscura of sentiment. Hermia's genuine bewilderment is treated by Helena as proof positive that she is part of the show supposedly arranged to mock her. This

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complicating misunderstanding extends the scope of the emotional clash, of the comedy of errors of sentiment, to a conflict between the women. T h e perturbations created by the manipulative events and errors in the forest bring out one of the major points in the development which the comedy of love traces: the movement from adolescence to maturity. T h e old loyalties are broken up in the turmoil of error, and are brought to the brink of physical violence. Although the underlying error will be removed, and friendly relationships will be re-established, when the transition from adolescence to maturity crystallizes and gains social acceptance in marriage, the old pattern of loyalties will not return. This change is permanent in a fundamental sense. T h e "school-days friendship, childhood innocence" of the two girls, the "double cherry, seeming parted" (III.ii.202, 209) has to split — to make way for new unions, identities, and loyalties. T h e perturbations in the forest become a comic, ultimately resolving, catharsis of the problems of this process of transition, just as they are a catharsis of the problems of misprised love. T h e verbal violence, the exchange of insults between the "counterfeit puppet" (as Helena calls the petite Hermia) and the "painted maypole" (III.ii.287, 296), splits the double cherry. T h e conflict between the women and the rivalry between the men, as well as the frustrations and errors of love to which they are linked, are pushed to the extreme, ad absurdum. But they are not allowed to cross the comic boundary into the tragic territory of irrevocable loss: no real or lasting harm occurs, and when error is exhausted benevolent control can impose solutions. T h e threat of physical violence remains verbal, and the expressions of weary frustration remain for us firmly within the comic perspective. T h e disaster which might have resulted from external or internal problems faced by young love is excluded by comic control. For us, Puck indicates the detached comic perspective, and Oberon represents the comic control. T h e comic manipulation is so evident that, for the audience, the young Athenians are not just unwitting actors in a comedy of love, they become marionettes — with Puck as delighted puppet-master carrying out Oberon's instructions. T h e men's rivalry is ridiculous; and the earnest sentiments of the women, who have remained constant in love and have not been affected by "love-in-idleness" or its antidote, are distanced by our perception of a typical pattern. After Lysander and Demetrius lie down, exhausted by the shadow duel-to-be, and Helena finds in sleep relief from sorrow, Puck exclaims

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with amusement: "Yet but three? Come one more; / T w o of both kinds makes up four" (III.ii.437—38). This is the arithmetic of human affairs viewed from a detached and amused comic perspective, with the reassurance of impending resolution justifying it. The two couples are now to be sorted out. And when Hermia comes in, full of weariness and woe but still loyal to Lysander, Puck comments with mock-sympathy: "Here she comes, curst and sad, / Cupid is a knavish lad, / Thus to make poor females mad" (III.ii.439-41). When viewed with detachment, frustrations of the kind she is involved in are amusing, especially as they are typical; and comic resolution will shortly put matters right. Personalities and problems are so distanced as to show the outlines of a typical pattern of life: the pattern of young love being sorted out after anxieties and conflicts. "Jack shall have Jill," as Puck says (though we would rather say that the loyal Jills have their Jacks), and "nought shall go ill" (III.ii.461-62). T h e "wonderful," mythical control in the play is a representation of the comic view of life, and this provides an image of one of the ordinary and "probable" patterns in life:40 The play is not mimetic/realistic — on the contrary, it uses mythopoesis — and yet the overall pattern as a "symbolic form" (in Susanne Langer's sense) takes an aspect of reality, viewed from a particular (comic) perspective, as its referent: it gives an image of the comic rhythm in life.41 A comic pattern of solutions, of Jacks and Jills being properly paired in spite of intervening problems, is one of the patterns of life (which is not to say that in life it is secured by fairies or other supra-natural forces); just as the tragic sequence of choice, irrevocable loss, and self-consumption is one pattern — the tragic rhythm. Neither pattern is intrinsically more "real," or more inclusive, than the other. When a literary work embodies one of these patterns (as A Dream embodies the comic rhythm), it has a referential relationship to human reality — whether it treats the pattern realistically or not. The perturbations and errors of love are resolved at the end of act 3. At the beginning of act 4, Oberon proclaims that the turmoil the lovers have gone through will seem to them in retrospect as no more than the

See Langer, Feeling and Form, ch. 19; and Cook, The Dark Voyage, esp. ch. 1. For the "comic rhythm," see Langer, Feeling and Form, ch. 18. "Symbolic form" is a concept which Langer uses throughout her book, but it is particularly applicable to what she calls the "great dramatic forms" — comedy and tragedy.

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"fierce vexation of a dream" (IV.i.69) — a releasing, cathartic process, which seems illusory by the standards of the empirical reality available to the senses and to reason. T h e result, as we will see in more detail later, is that the participants in the comedy of love are very limited in their awareness of their own experiences, and of their significance. Comic fortune sees to it that the goal of well-being is secured (independently of degree of awareness), after the comic exploration which reveals the irrationality and instability of love (at least in relation to the men). H o w ever, there is no indication at all that the final remedies and solutions are unstable — as there is in The Tempest, where evil is not extirpated and the renunciation of control means, among other things, that innocence is potentially threatened. T h e comedy of love in A Dream begins with an acute problem, which creates the initial imbalance as the starting point f o r comic action. W h e n it completes the comic trajectory by reaching the point of resolution, the situation is frozen into stability, with no projection of the fiction into a virtual future other than the benediction given by the fairies at the end for procreation and perfection. W h e n Demetrius announces that by some power, which he does not know, his infatuation f o r H e r m i a has been removed, "And all the faith, the virtue of [his] heart, / T h e object and the pleasure of [his] eye, / Is only Helena" (IV.i.169-71), we are detached, and remember the comic exploration we have witnessed, but we do not query the stability of the resolution. T h e external problem confronting love, which was the starting point f o r the comic movement though not the focus of release and clarification, is also resolved: the seemingly inflexible Athenian law is brushed aside, so that the young people can marry according to their wishes and celebrate with Theseus and Hippolyta, as foreordained by O b e r o n (in IV.i.91-92). T h e irate father has not changed, nor has the Athenian law; the time for a resolution has come, and this is accordingly secured. W e have traced the unfolding of the comedy of young love from obstacles via comic release to resolution, mentioning the meta-level of comic control in relation to it. This might have been a complete comedy, but in Shakespeare's play it is only one level; there are other levels, and reflectors, which are essential components of A Dream and indispensable to the clarification it generates. T h e r e are issues, notably the meta-dramatic ones, which emerge primarily on those other levels and in their interaction. In this respect, as we shall see, it is significant that the resolution of the comedy of love occurs considerably earlier than it traditionally does;

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in fact, it comes approximately one act ahead of the usual place (end of act 5). O n e of the reasons for this structure is that the final act in A Dream concentrates on reflectors and meta-dramatic issues, with the comedy of love already completed.

III. R E F L E C T O R S T h e r e is a hint at the beginning of the play, before the senex iratus bursts into the preparations f o r celebration, that the impending marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta is a resolution of problems and of conflicts in the virtual past. 42 As Theseus, who compartmentalizes areas of experience without qualification, says to his bride: Hippolyta, I w o o ' d thee with my sword, A n d w o n thy love d o i n g thee injuries; B u t I w i l l w e d t h e e in a n o t h e r k e y , W i t h p o m p , w i t h t r i u m p h , a n d w i t h r e v e l l i n g . (I.i. 1 6 - 1 9 )

T h e hint is subsequently reinforced in the area of comic release when, in the heat of mutual recriminations, Titania accuses Oberon of infidelity by referring to Hippolyta as his former "buskin'd mistress" and "warrior love" (II.i.71). In words which are even more suggestive of the problematical aspects of love, O b e r o n accuses Titania of having led Theseus through the "glimmering night" in a chain of seduction and betrayals (II.i.77 ff.). It appears that the upholder of reason and order in Athens has had his phase of emotional upheavals — unless we believe Titania's claim that Oberon's accusations are the "forgeries of jealousy" (II.i.81). For the spectators — w h o know that the fictional reality of Athens, which is juxtaposed with the fiction of the forest, is based on legend, and that the Theseus legend includes the misbehaviour which O b e r o n mentions here — the accusations seem true, not forged. However, the issue is not subjected to direct comic exploration in relation to Theseus (the reflector is not developed into a plot-level), and only provides a reveal-

42

For an a c c o u n t of t h e implications of the conflict b e t w e e n the sexes and of the d o mestication of the A m a z o n i a n q u e e n , given in terms of E l i z a b e t h a n and p r e - E l i z a b e t h a n view, see P. O l s e n , "A Midsummer M a r r i a g e , " ELH,

Night's

Dream and the M e a n i n g of C o u r t

24 (1957). Olsen relies f a r t o o heavily (and r a t h e r uncritically) o n

doctrines, and f a r t o o little o n a direct analysis of the play.

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ing qualification f o r Theseus's role as judge in a case of love and, later, as commentator on imagination and on the lovers' "story of the night." T h e r e is, however, a disruption in relations which does unfold as a level and as a reflector in the comedy: the conflict between Titania and Oberon. This is a distinct plot-level, which has its own progression from an initial obstacle, via clarifying comic release, to a resolution; it is integrated into the overall plot of A Dream through direct interaction with the level of the young Athenians and with that of Bottom the weaver; and it is a reflector on errors of sentiment, in juxtaposition with the comedy of young love. Initially, the juxtaposition with the Athenian lovers is not one of direct parallelism, since the conflict between Titania and O b e r o n is not a case of problems and errors of adolescent love. But the cause of the disruption in the marital relationship (Titania's attachment to the mortal woman) is apposite to the splitting of the double cherry — to the collision between love and the friendship of women, which we have seen in the comedy of young love. T h e exclusively feminine world, which Titania evokes when she refers to the mortal woman whose son she has adopted (ILi.122-38), involves a sentimental loyalty which clashes with marital love — thereby producing the casus belli f o r O b e r o n . W h a t follows focuses on a comic reductio ad absurdum of misdirected love — in juxtaposition to the comedy of young love, with which it is connected by the use of the same comic device ("love-in-idleness") and the action of the same comic manipulator (even though here O b e r o n is not a completely detached spectator). T h e r e is also a delightfully comical, and comically clarifying, convergence of the Queen of Fairies and the confident Bottom — while both are in a condition of saturnalian transformation. T h e various forms of folly and saturnalian release extend the scope of comic exploration in the play precisely because they are not exactly parallel. T h e r e is an effect of generalization, which is particularly underlined in mythopoeic terms in Titania's long speech (ILi.82 ff.), where the disorder involved in disharmonious relationships is extended to a disruption in nature and in various human activities of w o r k and festivity. W h e n we first see O b e r o n and Titania, there is a clear indication of an obstacle to well-being, which is also a form of instability that pushes towards action. In order to solve the problem with which he is confronted by Titania's defiant challenge, Oberon decides to engineer a manipulative comedy and cast Titania, without her knowledge, in a ridiculous role, which pushes emotional aberration ad absurdum. Like Petru-

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chio in The Shrew, who creates extravagant saturnalia in order to expose, correct, and control — Oberon intends to put an end to the comedy he creates and directs, once his objective is achieved. "Love-in-idleness" is the means for creating the revealing saturnalia of love, and its antidote the means for terminating the spectacle once Oberon is satisfied. While he plans the didactic (if partially punitive) and, to him, delightful comedy, Oberon becomes the unseen spectator to the spectacle which Demetrius and Helena unwittingly present to him. T h e two juxtaposed levels become connected, as Oberon expresses the benevolent intention to use the means at his disposal to provide remedy for the problems of the young lovers. His less-than-omniscient knowledge, and the fact that he employs his servant to carry out his intentions, create the complications we have mentioned. While the comedy develops on what we may regard as the main, or middle, level — with Puck anointing Lysander's eyes — Oberon arranges for Titania's manipulation as planned. As he squeezes the flower on her eyelids, Oberon gleefully anticipates a spectacle of her ridiculous infatuation with the most inappropriate, gross, and bestial object of love (II.ii.27-34). T h e comic manipulation (in which Oberon leaves room for chance by departing before Titania awakens) provides clarification to us precisely in proportion to the extent to which there is release by a departure from, and an inversion of, ordinary norms. Puck's zest for shaping the reality he encounters by chance into improvised comic spectacles creates an even more revealing, and a more delightful, spectacle than Oberon's imagination anticipates. It also enriches the comic perspective available to us by utilizing the level of foolish wisdom and wise folly which exist in A Midsummer Night's Dream. T h e human reality Puck encounters in the forest is the group of "rude mechanicals" and would-be actors, who struggle with the problem of artistic illusion. All for Puck's delight, and our content, they are there (near Titania's bower), showing their simple skill in the comically lamentable rehearsal of the tragedy of love. Not satisfied with being a mere spectator, Puck intervenes to create his own comedy. Bottom is translated into an image of what he is by getting an ass's head; the other mechanicals are dispersed by Puck, who uses his talent for deceptive mimickry to lead them through a reductive version of slapstick comedy in the glimmering night. Bottom, who stated and demonstrated to his companions his confidence in being able to play any and all parts (including all the human and animal roles in "Pyramus

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and Thisby"), is unwittingly made to play a role in a scenario created by Puck. Much of the ensuing comic clarification comes through the interaction of levels, as Titania and Bottom — both translated, though he is not infatuated — meet. This meeting of two levels (each of which has its own inner development as well) is in turn juxtaposed to the comedy of young love, as it unfolds through its phase of release. Bottom, who is his usual confident self under the ass's head (the only changes he is aware of are the hair on his face and an appetite for hay), becomes a reflector of folly precisely by remaining unaffected by the extravagant saturnalia created through the essence of love. He remains unperturbed and unimpressed while the Fairy Queen declares her love for him, wishing only he had enough wisdom to get out of the forest. As for Titania, she finds his singing angelic, his shape enthralling, and his wisdom equal to his beauty. His virtue forces her, she says, to fall in love with him. Like the Athenian men, when they are under the compulsive influence of "love-in-idleness," Titania rationalizes her sentiments and thereby adds to the ridiculous discrepancy we see. As Bottom says, in a remark which is much wiser than he can imagine, reason and love keep little company together. "Who are a little wise, the best fools be," as John Donne says in another context and another argument. 43 The irrationality of "fancy's images" is a major aspect of the clarification which emerges for us from the comic release in the play, and the clownish Bottom comes nearest to this truth, though he stumbles unawares into it. Like Dogberry in Much Ado, who angrily demands to be written down an ass, the foolish Bottom can bring to light what his social betters cannot see. If he is immune to the desires and aspirations of love, to the kind of loyalty possessed by Hermia and Helena, and the needs which comedy fulfils in the resolution, he is equally immune to the folly of love — which is displayed in the forest. Like his fellow mechanicals, Bottom is a literalist who cannot create or sustain illusion (as we see throughout the preparations for, and performance of, "Pyramus and Thisby"). For him, Mustardseed and Cobweb of fairyland are only mustardseed and cobweb. However, if lack of imagination is foolishly reductive, it can also serve as a foil to the folly of fancy's images — espe-

"The Triple Fool," in John Donne, The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973); the poem is on p. 81.

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dally since even a much more sensitive and less self-centered man than Bottom could hardly be impressed by the idle love of Titania. Titania's emotional translation is ridiculous in itself, but the effect is dramatically enhanced by contrast to the physical, literal translation of Bottom, and by the inappropriateness of her wooing the rude mechanical. This is another version of the loving yet unrequited woman, but is developed beyond the basic point into a saturnalia of comic fancy; it is a stroke of the comic playwright's genius. T h e ridiculous (with the clarification it generates) is combined, as it is on the other level, with indications of threat, danger, and sinister possibilities. It is clear to us that without benevolent comic control there would be destructive implications. T h e Fairy Q u e e n , w h o is enthralled by tender passion to her ass/gentle mortal/angel, finally tires of her beloved's discourse. She instructs her attendants to gag him, and speaks darkly of enforced chastity, as her ass is led into her bower (IILi.196-201). T h e pathetic fallacy of the moon's watery eye and of the weeping flowers is funny, as is the entire situation. But the threat indicates that comic error has its own dynamic, and would push beyond the boundaries of comedy if it were not controlled. Extreme emotion is on the borderline between the ridiculous and the destructive; and saturnalian fantasy would become sinister imprisonment if it were not temporary. " O u t of this wood do not desire to go; / T h o u shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no" (IILi. 152-53), says Titania to Bottom, who wishes he possessed the wisdom to get out of the forest. T o bring out folly, let it w o r k itself out, and clarify it within a comic f r a m e w o r k which is received with detached amusement by the audience, the saturnalia has to be temporary; the comic movement has to proceed f r o m the exacerbation of error to its removal and to a resolution. T h e comic perspective, in which we see all developments in the forest in A Dream, is secure because we anticipate such a sequence — and not the tragic alternative. T h e play, indeed, confirms our anticipation by moving to a resolution after error has been pushed to the extreme (though not beyond the comic boundary). Ridicule is pushed ad absurdum, on this level, in act 4 scene i, as Bottom the ass sleeps in Titania's lap, while the Fairy Queen dozes off as she voices her doting love f o r him in an image which traditionally expresses the proper marital relationship: the ivy clinging to the elm (IV.i.43-45). In this context, the image is an expression of comic inversion. At this point, O b e r o n — the manipulator/spectator, and the hus-

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band who has been teaching his shrewish wife a lesson — no longer has the vindictive motivation for manipulation, and his attitude of detached amusement is replace by pity (IV.i.47 ff.). The lesson has been taught, the desired results have been achieved, and the saturnalian spectacle is to be terminated. Titania's topsy-turvy perception, induced by "love-inidleness," is a "hateful imperfection of the eyes" (IV.i.63), and is to be removed by the antidote. Bottom, too, is to be restored to his normal shape; and all the participants in the saturnalia in the forest are to return to Athens (one of them carrying with him the effect of "love-in-idleness" as a permanent remedy to prior aberration), and "think no more of this night's accidents / But as the fierce vexation of a dream" (IV.i.68-69). Everything is ready for a comic resolution. The comic clarification, however, has not come to an end; what follows is not a merely formal completion of the comic structure through resolution and celebration, though these elements are prominently present in the ending.

IV. R E S P O N S E S IN T H E W O R L D O F T H E PLAY Appropriately for a character functioning on the level of the mythopoeic fiction, Titania, once her manipulation ceases, is the only participant in the comedy of love to be granted the knowledge that the events really happened. "Methought," she says, expressing uncertainty in a word Bottom and the young Athenians also use, "I was enamour'd of an ass" (IV.i.77). Unlike the others who think they have had strange visions, Titania sees her beloved ass on the ground, and does so with corrected vision: "how mine eyes do loath his visage now" (IV.i.79). As she celebrates her reconciliation with Oberon, and both fairy monarchs confer their benediction on Theseus and Hippolyta, as well as on the couples which have just completed their journey through the glimmering night, Titania will hear a full explanation of her comic adventures directly from the manipulator himself. If we regard comedy only as a progression from obstacles through revealing complications to a resolution, A Dream may be said to be virtually complete at the beginning of act 4. The social confirmation of the resolution in marriage, and its festive celebration, follow as a matter of course. 44 But the play is far from complete in Shakespeare's terms. There 44

In the T e r e n t i a n / D o n a t a n tradition, the f o u r t h phase of the plot, the katastasis,

in-

volves the m o v e m e n t t o w a r d s the resolution. Act 4 in A Dream follows this p a t t e r n .

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are responses by various characters to the events in the forest (which we regard as having really occurred within the fiction which is A Dream)-, and there is a mirror, which is explicitly given an internal status as fiction by being a play-within-the-play, with significant implications for the internal responses we are invited to judge. All this exists in addition to levels and aspects which are, by their very nature, available only to us, so that characters in the play do not respond to them. Both the response of characters within the fiction of A Dream and the additional factors are ultimately directed at our response: they are a mirror of and a stimulus to the "reception" level generated by A Midsummer Night's Dream. There are two levels of responses from characters in the play to the mythopoeic reality which, in our perspective, constitutes the clarifying saturnalian phase in the comic fiction. One comes from those who unwittingly acted, or acted out their folly, in the comedy of love in the forest. The other comes from characters who were not involved in the experience, and react to the lovers' "story of the night." The degree of awareness the young lovers have is manifestly limited, although they have benefited directly and tangibly from their dream-like experience. 45 Their desires have been fulfilled, they know not how, and the reality of the intervening process is doubtful to them. For the audience, there is an indication that the comic resolution, which is achieved by comic manipulation and not through the initiative of participants in it, is not conditional upon increased awareness; nor does it induce, in this case, greater sensitivity and self-knowledge once it takes pláce. Within the confines of the comedy of love, clarification is infini-

However, the point is that the resolution is firmly secured, indeed guaranteed, at an early stage; and the play proceeds to provide important clarification after the resolution. 45

We have already referred to one aspect which is comparable to the effect of dreams: catharsis (in the psychological, rather than the medical, sense). Here the issue is reality vs. imagination. Dreams are unreal in comparison to external events, and yet they are ways of expressing and releasing realities. The characters involved in the experience (which did occur in the forest) were not aware of it, or of its causes and significance; and in retrospect they think it was only a dream — an imaginary event. As a contrasting point of reference, we may take Measure for Measure, where dark psychological forces are uncovered: there, the participants know that they go through the experience, whatever their degree of awareness of the full meaning. T h e basis f o r the hypothetical/exploratory situation created by the Duke, which gives the illusion of reality to Angelo, is like a dream — in releasing fantasies of power and lust, of betrayal and sacrifice.

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tesimally small compared to the awareness the audience is able to acquire as a result of seeing the phase of comic release and its aftermath. There is another level, which is both a parallel and a contrast to the responses of the lovers: Bottom, who awakes after the wonderful (and wonderfully comical) events in the forest, under the general edict from Oberon that all the mortals involved will see their experiences as a dream. Bottom's response (at the end of IV.i.) is full of contradictory effects — all for our delight, and not without instructive implications. These contradictions, like the mechanicals' attitude to art, short-circuit the distance between the sublime and the ridiculous. The clownish jumble of St. Paul's words, which hopelessly confuses the senses, and the ambition to turn the bottomless vision, which only an ass would expound, into the ballad of Bottom's Dream — all these are ridiculous. The vision is not understood and is not articulated, though Bottom says to his fellow mechanicals that he is to "discourse wonders" (IV.ii.29). However, in a groping and confused way, Bottom is uncharacteristically modest when he wakes up. If he is an ass, he at least has the sense to admire and not dismiss; and that makes him, in some respects, a lesser fool than the young lovers, or the Duke of Athens (who shows neither modesty nor perception in his magisterial pronouncements). If his desire to turn into art what he cannot articulate is a contradiction which promises little enlightenment, the young Athenians' response is hardly more perceptive or illuminating — though they benefit in practice from what has happened, and Bottom does not. The young lovers do not know what they have been through, but they do give an account (off-stage) of their dream-like experience. The story, told by characters who are not sure whether it has a bottom or not, elicits two responses — representing two attitudes to imagination and reality — from Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus, the man of neat compartmentalizations who does not attempt to harmonize seeming discords between levels of experience, takes a position of anti-imaginative rationalism (V.i.2 ff.). He dismisses imagination as an unreliable faculty, which — he argues — projects images and then mistakes them for reality. All forms of furor, says Theseus, inhabit an unreal, illusory world: either they invent the impossible (as the madman's imagination does), or they falsify reality to the point of inversion (the lover), or they create a world of airy nothing (the poet). Imagination extrapolates from desire to infer a supposed reality, and then believes that projection is reality itself. The "story of the night" is told by

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lovers and, hence, is not real as far as Theseus is concerned; he dismisses it in toto. If the argument had, indeed, to be conducted in terms of the apparently antithetical concepts of imagination vs. empirical reality, Theseus' position could not be dismissed — especially if it were applied by us to the play as a whole. Within the comedy there is ample exposure of the irrationality of love, which transmutes things base and vile into supposed form and dignity, creating ridiculous error. And the poet w h o creates a fairyland seems exposed to the charge, even if he ironically puts it in the mouth of one of his characters, that his material is airy nothing — delightfully entertaining perhaps, but unreal. T h e answer lies, however, in the direction indicated by Hippolyta's response, which removes the simplistic antithesis posited by Theseus and indicates a different criterion for reality. Shakespeare's strategy is to give in the play a range of limited responses precisely in order to point to the more sophisticated and adequate response which the spectator to A Dream is invited to develop. Hippolyta's view (V.i.23 ff.) is the internal pointer to the direction which our response, with the benefit of more awareness and more extensive clarification, is meant to pursue. T h e real issue is not whether fairies exist (though, ironically, they reappear after Theseus says it is "almost fairy time" [V.i.364], and thus have the last word), or whether they manipulate people in the way the play shows. T h e reality, of which Theseus is unaware, is to be found in what is revealed, clarified, and resolved in those human emotions which are explored in the play. T h e importance and suggestiveness of Hippolyta's position are connected with the fact that she does not defend the existence of the fairy world against Theseus' rationalism; she points to the undeniable outcome, which Theseus ignores on the basis of his premisses. Within the play (in relation to the "story of the night") Hippolyta's words point to the existing results which Theseus' rationalism cannot explain and yet cannot deny. For us, in relation to the entire play, Hippolyta's speech points to the heuristic function of comic fiction — to the reality of what is conveyed by means of imagination and even illusion. Fancy's images, as used by the poet, may not themselves be accurate mirrors of factual external details of reality. In this respect, the comedy is not mimetic. But within the artistic form and its perspective, the images become the means f o r bringing out, exploring, and ordering human realities. In the inner fiction of the forest, "fancy's images," which are created by the poet, transfigure minds and produce "something of great constancy . . . how-

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soever, strange and admirable" (V.i.26-27). The comic fiction of A Dream as a whole creates a symbolic form and a perspective which clarify such issues as sentiments and the conventional rhetoric of love. They also clarify the notion of comic fiction itself.

V. T H E M I R R O R O F F I C T I O N The issue of artistic fiction is explicitly raised in the play through the mechanicals. Their main function is to provide evident deconstruction of theatrical fiction. We see all the stages of creating a play: the choice of material, the confrontation with problems of creating and sustaining illusion, a consideration of the expected affective impact, casting, rehearsals, the use of props, staging the play, and the actual (as distinct from the expected) response of the audience. 46 Theatrical illusion becomes "transparent" for us (as Helena is supposed to become for Lysander when he sees her with changed vision in the forest): we observe, with a comic perspective, the mechanics of theatrical fiction. If Oberon's manipulations, with the help of "love-in-idleness" and its antidote, become a metaphor for theatre (as magic often does — e.g., Corneille's Theatrical Illusion and Shakespeare's Tempest), the mechanicals are involved in actual, if not very successful, theatre. For us, their failure becomes an illuminating and entertaining dramatic saturnalia of dramatic creation and performance. The mechanical are guided by a crude character typology (a tyrant is to be played in the Ereles vein, a lover needs "some tears in the true performing" [I.ii.25-26]), and by a view of poetic language which produces empty padding and a self-defeating straining after pathos. Attempted pathos produces a comic, bathetic effect both through exaggeration and through inconsistency and sheer incompetence. Such inadequacies are compounded by the basic inability of the mechanicals (especially of the self-confident Bottom) to be anything but themselves. Therefore, in a fundamental sense they cannot be actors — except inadvertently, all for our delight. For us, part of the joke in Snug showing his face through the lion's mask (to speak to the ladies in the audience, and

46

Even the performance of the play in honour of a noble wedding, which may have been the occasion for a performance of A Dream, though not the raison d'être of the play, is mirrored by the play-within-the play.

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reassure them he is not really a lion) is that the faces, voices, and behaviour of the entire amateur company are evident through their roles. They sabotage playacting and dramatic illusion as effectively when they earnestly try to play their parts as when they step out of them to explain to the spectators or reassure them, or when they inadvertently show themselves through their fictional identities. The stepping out of roles, whether by design or by sheer inadequacy, creates a game with illusion which is comical — in marked contradistinction to the tragic decorum specifically required for "Pyramus and Thisby". More generally, the artisans cannot create the consistency required for any kind of fiction. In their production, the mechanicals ignore or mishandle the semiotic function of objects on the stage. Either they go to one extreme, of simple-minded realism, by wanting to represent a wall by plastering a man with loam and roughcast, or to have moonlight in the play by opening a window to show the moon (since they are lucky to have a full moon on the night of the performance). Or they go to the opposite extreme, of crude emblematism, by using the man in the moon to present moonshine (and when Pyramus/Bottom exclaims "Moon, take thy flight!" Moonshine obeys by leaving the stage). Either way, the mechanicals sabotage the dramatic illusion, and do not avail themselves of the power of imaginative poetry to create fiction. Their inability to achieve consistency and appropriateness in language and action plays havoc with dramatic fiction as effectively (if unwittingly) as the malapropisms and confusion of a Dogberry do with language and logic. "Showing" and "telling" are ludicrously superimposed — with explanation and apology offered in abundance, and with perambulating and loquacious props, animals, and abstractions speaking, acting, and reacting. If in the enchanted forest of A Dream emotional realities are made comically palpable for us through imaginative saturnalia, in "Pyramus and Thisby" objects become incongruously animate and turn, together with other inadequacies, a sad story into a lamentable comedy and a failed theatrical fiction. As in the mispunctuated Prologue, the artisans' intention is earnest, and the hilarious comedy is an unintended result. The contrast between intended poetic tragedy and actual broad comedy is given a vivid illustration at the end of "Pyramus and Thisby". The lovers are finally dead, after their pathetic speeches and respective suicides, accompanied by verbose explanation ("Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. / Now I am dead, / Now am I fled; / . . . Now die, die, die, die, die," says Pyramus) and by leave-taking ("And farewell, friends; / Thus

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Thisby ends; / Adieu, adieu, adieu," says the lady). The mechanicals have managed to bring the play to the tragic catastrophe, albeit not without jarring effects: the protagonists are dead, and the only survivors are Moonshine, Lion, and Wall. At this point Bottom, in propria persona, jumps up — quite appropriately for a clownish, indomitable comic figure,47 but hardly for the tragic role he has played — to assure the sarcastic audience that "the wall is down that parted their fathers" (V.i.351-52), and to offer a dance as further entertainment. The kind of removal of obstacles which becomes ironically available in Romeo and Juliet, after the tragedy takes its full course, is inextricably connected here with a clownish undermining of tragic decorum. As with the repeated reminders that the actors-in-the-play are only actors in the play, this contrast between necessary decorum and actual performance disrupts the illusion to the point of destroying it. At no point do the mechanicals rely on the spectators' ability to use their imagination, and the disruptions become an active obstacle to the use of this vital faculty. The mechanicals' failure functions as a contrast to A Midsummer Night's Dream. The internal meta-dramatic pointer actively encourages us to be aware of the achievements in imaginative creation, articulation, variety-within-unity, and consistency in the comic form and perspective in Shakespeare's play. The implications of the contrast between the play and the play-within-the-play are extended, as the mechanicals provide a parody of the inadequacies on the pre-Shakespearean stage. Shakespeare writes as a master who is conscious of his ability, and who can use his masterpiece to invite his audience to poke fun at the work of incompetent apprentices and journeymen in the craft of drama. The spectators' awareness of the achievement embodied in the comedy they see is given an evaluative historical context. However, since the flaws of earlier plays, which are parodied through the mechanicals, are identifiable and definable in general terms (such as crude and restrictive typology, a mix-up of generic categories, padded and pretentious yet empty and clumsy poetry, the disruption of illusion), the evaluative context need

47

Cf. L a n g e r ' s observation t h a t the b u f f o o n is "the indomitable living c r e a t u r e f e n d i n g f o r itself, tumbling and stumbling (as the clown physically illustrates) f r o m o n e situation t o a n o t h e r , getting into scrape a f t e r scrape and getting o u t again . . . he is the personified élan vital"

(Feeling and Form, p. 342). In this case, the c l o w n is n o t get-

ting in and o u t of scrapes in fictional reality, but stumbling in and o u t of t r a g e d y o n the stage.

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not remain strictly historical, and can be put on a synchronic scale. Even without a knowledge of the pre-Shakespearean drama, one can recognize what is parodied, and what, by contrast, is achieved in Shakespeare's play; just as one is aware that the failure of "Pyramus and Thisby" is a delightfully comic masterpiece of clumsiness deliberately employed in A Dream. The mirror of fiction presented in A Dream through the mechanicals relates to the creative aspect (which is a function of the author's imaginative ability), to the form and perspective of a play as a work of literary fiction, and to the play as theatre (which depends on the producers'/performers' imaginative ability). It also points, by contrast to its own failure, to the achievement of A Dream. Furthermore, this level is fully integrated in the overall comic plot of the play; specifically, it gives the internal indication of the contrary valuation. The material which the artisans turn into a play, the Ovidian story of Pyramus and Thisbe, is a fiction which indicates the alternative possibility to the comedy of love in the mythopoeic forest. It unfolds the disastrous possibilities, which are averted by comic control in A Dream, contained in the combination of parental opposition to young love and the lovers' initiative against this opposition. T h e story of the legendary "star-crossed" lovers presents a significant mirror of complementarity to the fortunate lovers who celebrate their nuptials by watching the artisans' play — though the presenters are incompetent, and their audience is not perceptive. The issue of awareness is, as we have seen, dealt with in the play in relation to the experiences through which characters go — even if they regard that "reality" of theirs as fiction, or as a mystery. N o less important is the response to fiction presented as such within the play, especially as it explicitly creates a meta-dramatic mirror, or pointer, for the significance of audience response to A Dream — and, by implication, to a work of theatrical fiction generally. This emerges with particular emphasis in the final act, and then the meta-dramatic effect is continued in the Epilogue. W e are encouraged to realize that a play is not only a function of the artist's imagination and creativity, of generic form and perspective, and of the relationship to reality; the audience has an important function in the cooperative enterprise involved in the presentation of the play. "Pyramus and Thisby" is a mirror which works by contrast, because of its failure as a play, but a stimulating mirror nonetheless in raising this issue for us — as we observe the responses of Theseus, Hippolyta, and the two other couples to the artisans' play.

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Theseus, who dismisses imagination in principle and is only willing to exercise good will as a ruler accepting homage from his subjects and not as a spectator to a play, is not a discriminating and perceptive critic. The best and the worst in the theatre are practically alike in his opinion, and Theseus does not expect to gain insights from any play. The Platonic notion of shadow is used to dismiss plays as unimportant ("but shadows"), without even regarding theatrical illusion as dangerous (V.i.211—12). The function of the spectators' imagination is mentioned, but in a destructive combination, which denies value, referentiality, and difference: the poet creates mere shadows (like the lunatic and the lover), and the spectator improves deficiencies so that no play can be worse than a shadow. Hippolyta, the most perceptive character in A Dream and the one who knows that if a spectator amends the play he does so by projecting his imagination onto an unimaginative piece (V.i.213-14), responds for a moment to the tragedy and not to the artisans' lamentable performance. "Beshrew my heart," she says, when Pyramus sees the bloodstained mantle of Thisby and launches into tragic rant, "but I pity the man" (V.i.290). But even she has no insight into the significance of "Pyramus and Thisby" in connection with the "story of the night." All the spectators to "Pyramus and Thisby", including Hippolyta, deride the play and the performance, and complete the destruction of the abortive theatrical illusion by removing the distance between stage and audience, as they voice responses, and interfere with the performance. They take down the invisible wall which usually exists between the world of the play and the spectators. The ridicule is not unwarranted, but it also demonstrates a lack of perceptiveness which should serve as a foil for the response of the audience to A Dream. Like Bottom's folly in the comedy in the forest, the amusing incompetence of the mechanicals in staging the tragedy is not without significance. Their efforts provide for us simultaneously a reductive parody of theatrical illusion, and a dramatic vehicle for some important clarification. Just as the phrase "reason and love keep little company together" is not the least illuminating observation in the midst of the errors of love, so the contrary valuation and the confrontation with the problems of theatrical fiction are not the least important for the play. In both cases, the mechanicals are not aware of the implications; the clarification is directed at the audience. O u r response has to recognize the implications, as well as to relate these indicators to other levels in the play.

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As the play draws to a close, the issue of the significance of the multi-level fiction and our imaginative response to it comes to a head with two elements which complete the play, deconstruct it, and invite us to consider retrospectively the heuristic fiction created by the dramatic illusion. The play presented in honour of Theseus and his bride comes to an end, and the players as well as the celebrating spectators leave. But even now, some time after the comedy of love has ended in resolution, and after the play-within-the-play is over and the internal responses to it have been voiced, A Midsummer Night's Dream is not quite finished. If we thought that the fairies constituted the inner fiction, which is contained within the fiction of the play and framed by the 'reality' of Athens, and if we thought that the inner fiction was dismantled after fulfilling the saturnalian and resolving function — at the end the play turns the levels of fiction inside-out: the inner fiction finally frames the supposedly outer fiction. T h e mythopoeic fiction, which was used to bring out folly and to arrange fortunate solutions, is now used to express, and celebrate in song and dance, a festive benediction for procreation and perfection. This is less an extension into a virtual future (other than a dramatic version of the formulaic "they lived happily ever after"), than (mostly) a masque-like combination of manifest fiction and celebration. If the first night of A Midsummer Night's Dream was in honour of a noble marriage, then the dimension of masque was particularly evident on that occasion, and involved — at the end of the play — a reduction of the gap between stage and audience. The invisible wall comes down, as the celebration of a noble marriage in the play becomes a celebration of a noble marriage by the play. The fairies do gracefully and successfully what the artisans failed to do. A masque, however, is also the most transient of dramatic illusions. Like Prospero's "cloud-capped towers," it is an "insubstantial pageant", which fades and leaves not a rack behind; a show created by an artist/ magician, which ceases to exist once it comes to an end. A Midsummer Night's Dream is not ultimately a masque, even if it functioned so in the first performance. It is a play written by a professional playwright and acted by professional actors on the public stage, where performances are repeated. When Puck speaks the Epilogue, he addresses the audience from within the inner level of the fiction, but — in a complex sense which was not available to the mechanicals — the actor is now seen through the role. H e speaks partly in his role of prankster, and partly on behalf of the playwright and the actors, inviting the audience to express

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its appreciation. The Epilogue, which ironically invites us to regard the dramatic illusion as a dream (and, thus, to respond to the play as the young lovers responded to their experience), also challenges us to consider what the play "yields." T h e issue is not whether we consider the world of the play as substance or as shadows — whether we believe in fairies, or regard them as manifestations of the poet's "strong imagination." The issue is the insight and clarification which the delightful comedy yields, and which can be assessed retrospectively when the performance ends. Illusion becomes a heuristic device, and clarification the valuable result, which remains when the device disappears. T h e play is also a durable text. It exists as a script for performances, and as a literary work. T h e fiction does not end forever with the end of a unique performance, as if this were an ephemeral masque. It can be recreated — in performance and in reading — and it can be analyzed. Each performance functions in time, and comes to an end. T h e permanent script (which is also experienced in time, if it is read sequentially as a play) indicates this temporal dimension at the conclusion of the play: it gives the "sense of an ending". It also makes the point, by way of a challenge, that the significance of the exploration of sentiments and of conventions by comic release, and the meta-dramatic exploration of comedy in comedy, are permanently available and valuable.

MANFRED PÜTZ

Dramatic Elements and the Problem of Literary Mediation in the Works of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

I The works of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur have had their own careers in literary history. Of the three major books, only the Letters from an American Farmer has become a classic of American literature; Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, published posthumously in 1925 as a collection of pieces not included in the Letters, has stimulated far less interest; and the Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York, perhaps the author's most ambitious project, has been all but relegated to the obscurity of occasional scholarly remarks. Equally diverse have been the critical approaches to Crévecoeur as a literary figure and to the stature and meaning of his works. 1 Among the earlier responses, we find efforts to combine biography and criticism, 2 to deal with the author's place on the vast map of eighteenth-century thought, and to bring light to the intricate publishing history of his literary productions. 3 Parallel to this, critics engaged in a discussion which emphasized questions of historical, political, and philosophical import, stressing the content matter or the contemporary background of Créve-

1

2

3

For a chronological listing of critical works on Crevecoeur see Rose Marie Cutting, John and William Sartram, William Byrd II and St. John de Crevecoeur: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1976), pp. 107-47. Cf. Robert de Crévecoeur, Saint John de Crevecoeur, sa vie et ses ouvrages (Paris, 1883); F. B. Sanborn, "The 'American Farmer' St. John de Crévecoeur and his Famous 'Letters' (1735-1813)," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 30, No. 3 (1906), 257-86; Julia Post Mitchell, St. Jean de Crevecoeur (New York: Columbia U. P., 1916). One of the best studies covering all of these aspects is still: H o w a r d C. Rice, Le Cultivates américain, études sur l'oeuvre de Saint John de Crévecoeur (Paris, 1933). For a much shorter recent treatment of enlightenment doctrines and how they are exploded in Crévecoeur, see Mary E. Rucker, "Crévecoeur's Letters and Enlightenment Doctrine," Early American Literature, 13, No. 2 (1978), 193-212.

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coeur's books. 4 Thus, his role as a reliable or not so reliable historiographer of eighteenth-century American life,5 his stance on the political issues of his time, his role as a proponent of eighteenth-century ideals, and his function as a contemporary myth-maker came under close scrutiny.6 Certain stereotypes, if not prevalent clichés, of more recent criticism can still be traced back to this discussion. Was Crèvecoeur a creator or a debunker of the agrarian myth? Was he the historian or the ideologist of early American experience? Did he intend to further the patriots' or the loyalists' cause? Did he picture America as the ideal society come true or as the epitome of Utopian dreams turned nightmare? Was he, as one scholar put it, "Critic or Panegyrist," 7 or perhaps both at the same time? 4

Among the most influential contributions were: Moses Coit Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, Vol. II (New York and London: Putnam's, 1897), pp. 347-58; Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, Vol. I: The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800 (New York, 1927), pp. 140-47; Henry S. Canby, Classic Americans (New York, 1931), pp. 45-49; D. H . Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923; rpt. H a r m o n d s w o r t h : Penguin, 1971), pp. 28-39. Lawrence occupies a special place on the map of Crèvecoeur criticism. O n the one hand, he did much to rekindle interest in Crèvecoeur; yet on the other, he made him a straw man for his own, highly idiosyncratic views of literature. For a more recent form of contentoriented criticism, see Russel B. Nye, "Michel-Guillaume St. Jean de Crèvecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer," in: Hennig Cohen, ed., Landmarks of American Writing (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 32-45; and Marcus Cunliffe, "Crèvecoeur Revisited," Journal of American Studies, 9, No. 2 (1975), 129-44.

5

As one of the earliest examples of this kind of approach and, unfortunately, as a forbidding example of the nitpicking controversies over Crèvecoeur's factual accuracy in detail, see [Samuel Ayscough], Remarks on the Letters from an American Farmer; or a Detection of the Errors of Mr. J. Hector St. John. .. (London: John Fielding, 1783). For more balanced and informative views on the subject, see H . C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, pp. 141 ff. and passim; Percy G. Adams, éd., Crèvecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania & New York (Lexington: U. of Kentucky Press, 1961), pp. xxxiii ff.; Adams, "The Historical Value of Crèvecoeur's Voyage...," American Literature, 25, No. 2 (1953), 152-68. See also Percy G. Adams' treatment of related problems in "Crèvecoeur — Realist or Romanticist," The French American Review, 2, No. 3 (1949), 115-34.

6

For a discussion of political aspects in Crèvecoeur, see notes 56 and 57. Among the many contributions dealing with Crèvecoeur the myth-maker, see Russel B. Nye, "Michel-Guillaume St. Jean de Crèvecoeur," pp. 32-45; and Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford U. P., 1964), pp. 107-16. Norman A. Plotkin, "Saint-John de Crèvecoeur Rediscovered: Critic or Panegyrist?", French Historical Studies, 3, No. 3 (1964).

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Only in the past three decades has the wave of content-oriented criticism of Crèvecoeur's works been supplemented by investigations of their literary and aesthetic dimensions. Adumbrated by somewhat rudimentary earlier attempts to draw attention to the literary art of the author, 8 critics such as Stone, Kaul, Philbrick, and Christadler began to discuss formal problems of technique and genre affiliation in Crèvecoeur. 9 Such critics came to identify the Letters as an early work of fiction, a préfiguration of the American novel or, perhaps, the American romance. In reference to what Everett Emerson called "a complex work of art, . . . [an] embryonic symbolic fiction,'" 0 they dealt with aspects such as plot, symbolical and/or allegorical design, the role and development of the central narrator, and the implications of genre models such as the story of initiation and the romance." However, partly on account 8

As well as H. C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, see: Stanley T. Williams, "Crèvecoeur as a Man of Letters," in: Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, eds. Henri L. Bourdin, Ralph H . Gabriel and Stanley T. Williams (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1925), pp. 25-35; Percy G. Adams, "Introduction" to Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania & New York, pp. xxviii-xxxv.

9

Albert E. Stone, "Crèvecoeur's Letters and the Beginnings of an American Literature," The Emory University Quarterly, 18, No. 4 (1962), 197-213; Stone, "Foreword" to Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America (New York: Signet Classics, 1963), pp. vii-xxvi; A. N. Kaul, The American Vision (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1963), pp. 18-28; Thomas Philbrick, St. John de Crèvecoeur (New York: Twayne, 1970); Martin Christadler, Der amerikanische Essay, 1720-1820 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1968), pp. 145-51; Christadler, "St. John de Crèvecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer und die Anfänge des amerikanischen Romans," Geschichte und Fiktion: Amerikanische Prosa im 19. Jahrhundert, eds. Alfred Weber and H a r t m u t Grandel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), pp. 42-63.

10

Everett Emerson, "Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and the Promise of America," in: Forms and Functions of History in American Literature: Essays in Honor of Ursula Brumm, eds. W. Fluck, J. Peper, W. P. Adams (Berlin: Schmidt Verlag, 1981), p. 44. Apart from Stone, Kaul, Philbrick, and Christadler, see also: Marius Bewley, "The Cage and the Prairie: T w o Notes on Symbolism," The Hudson Review, 10, No. 3 (1957), 405-08 (reprinted in his book The Eccentric Design, N e w York, 1959); Elayne A. Rapping, "Theory and Experience in Crèvecoeur's America," American Quarterly, 19, No. 4 (1967), 707-18; Joel R. Kehler, "Crèvecoeur's Farmer James: A Reappraisal," Essays in Literature, 3, No. 2 (1976), 206-13; Joseph C. Schopp, "Angloamerikanische Bauernbriefe des 18. Jahrhunderts: Genese und Funktion eines literarischen Genres," Amerikastudien, 21, No. 2 (1976), 187-200; Harold Kulungian, "The Aestheticism of Crèvecoeur's American Farmer," Early American Literature, 12, No. 2 (1977), 197-201; Jean F. Beranger, "The Desire of Communication: Narrator and Narratee in Letters from an American Farmer," Early American Literature, 12, No. 1 (1977), 73-85.

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of their preference for the Letters, and partly owing to their fascination with the fictional aspects of the book, these critics failed, for the most part, to notice or at least to elaborate on other forms of literary mediation and other genre affiliations in Crèvecoeur's works. Yet, these are either tacitly made use of or explicitly referred to by the author. 12 Though Thomas Philbrick, at the end of his treatment of the Sketches, briefly discusses such forms as drama, the descriptive poem, the tableau, the vignette, as well as the fusion of literature and the visual arts,13 his accompanying plea for a re-appraisal of Crèvecoeur under the perspective of formal complexity has, by and large, remained unanswered. There is as yet no study of the interrelation between Crèvecoeur's prose writings and the poetry of his time, much less of the pervasive influence of the visual arts or, for that matter, of the role of dramatic elements in his works. 14 In order to fill one of these gaps, I would like to investigate some forms and functions of the dramatic in Crèvecoeur. In this context, however, I do not want to argue that Crèvecoeur has mistakenly been classified as a prose writer while he actually wrote drama. The term dramatic should not be taken here in its narrow sense, but rather in the wider sense of pertaining to techniques and forms of mediation which are dramatic in orientation though not exclusively the property of drama as a genre.

12

13 14

References to drama and to the visual arts are frequent throughout the Sketches. Other references deal with the essay, the journal, the memoir, and the art of the biographer or the historiographer. Philbrick, St. John de Crevecoeur, pp. 126-32. Crevecoeur's affiliation to drama has, of course, not entirely escaped critical notice. Beside Philbrick's remarks on the subject (cf. St. John de Crevecoeur; pp. 119-20, 126 ff., 131-32), Stanley T . Williams, in one of the introductory essays to the Sketches (pp. 25 ff.), refers to it in passing, just as do John Brooks Moore in "The Rehabilitation of Crevecoeur," The Sewanee Review, 35, No. 2 (1927), pp. 225, 227-28; A. W. Plumstead in "Crevecoeur: A 'Man of Sorrows' and the American Revolution," The Massachusetts Review, 17, No. 2 (1976), p. 295, and in "Hector St. John de Crevecoeur," American Literature 1764-1789: The Revolutionary Years, ed. Everett Emerson (Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1977), pp. 222, 224, 227, 230; and Percy G. Adams in his "Introduction" to Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania & New York, pp. xxviii, xxxii-xxxiii; Martin Christadler, too, employs the terms drama and melodrama frequently in his discussion of Crevecoeur; he uses them in the general sense of signifying something that implies conflict and the clash of opposites. See his article "St. John de Crevecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer und die Anfänge des amerikanischen Romans," pp. 49, 50, 51-52, 59.

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II Among all of Crevecoeur's works, perhaps the most interesting for a study of dramatic influences is his posthumously published Sketches of Eighteenth Century America.15 Of course, the conglomerate of shorter pieces known under this title has to be approached with due care. It is one of the ironies of literary history that the very sketches presented — pieces which had been omitted from the initial English publication of the Letters on grounds of structural and/or thematic incompatibility — should later appear in a form which again does not reflect the potential unity and arrangement their author might have had in mind for them. 16 However, this point is not of decisive importance in the context of the ensuing investigation, because, for our purposes, the selection can be supplemented by considering those pieces which were excluded from the Sketches by the editors, 17 and the arrangement of the individual contributions has little or nothing to do with the problems here pursued. Forms of dramatic presentation and dramatic influences are pervasive throughout the Sketches. I would like to identify and briefly discuss

15

16

17

Sketches of Eighteenth Century America, eds. Henri L. Bourdin, Ralph H . Gabriel and Stanley T. Williams (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1925). In his chapter on "The Crevecoeur Manuscripts" (Sketches, pp. 14-24), Bourdin stresses that several of the essays he found among the three-volume manuscripts of Crevecoeur have not been included in his edition and that one has been cut down considerably. Yet he is strangely reticent about the principles of selection and arrangement for the remaining pieces. O n the problem of selection, see also Thomas Philbrick, St. John de Crevecoeur, pp. 108-09; A. W. Plumstead, "Hector St. John de Crevecoeur," pp. 219 ff., 225, 228-29. The Bourdin edition gives a list of the essays excluded (pp. 22-23). Moreover, the editors have published several of the excluded pieces separately: "Crevecoeur the Loyalist. The Grotto: An Unpublished Letter from the American Farmer," The Nation, 121, No. 3142 (1925), 328-30; "Crevecoeur on the Susquehanna, 1774-1776," The Yale Review, 14, N o . 3 (1925), 552-84; "Hospitals [During the Revolution]: An Unpublished Essay by J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur," Philological Quarterly, 5, No. 2 (1926), 157-65; "Sketch of a Contrast between the Spanish & the English Colonies," University of California Chronicle, 28, N o . 2 (1926), 152-63. For further information on the now inaccessible manuscripts, especially the remaining five essays which have not been published so far ("Rock of Lisbon," "Sketches of Jamaica and Bermudas," "An Happy Family Disunited by the Spirit of a Civil War," "Ingratitude Rewarded," "The Commissioners"), see also Everett Emerson, "Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and the Promise of America," Forms and Functions of History in American Literature, pp. 50 ff.

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four techniques of predominantly dramatic inclination, before turning to an analysis of their meaning and literary function: they are the dramatic script, the tableau, the antithesis, and the dialogization of voices and protagonists. 1) The most obvious example of a dramatic script in the Sketches is found in "Landscapes." 18 The text consists of six individual scenes loosely strung together; the stage directions, the listings of dramatis personae at the head of each scene, and the exeunt-formulas leave no doubt as to Crèvecoeur's intention of presenting a little self-contained drama. The action takes place in Orange County in the year 1778,19 and the plot centers on a relentless satirical disclosure of the questionable motives and machinations of certain patriots during the upheaval of the American revolution. Though political in content and openly partisan in its sympathies, "Landscapes" does not take the form of an early problem play or a thesis play, where a social problem is usually illustrated and a solution suggested, but rather follows the pattern of the chronicle play with its comprehensive documentation of certain historical occurrences and prevalent character stereotypes. Crèvecoeur's experiment with the dramatic form is also remarkable in two other ways. First, though the author worries that "these obscure scenes are scenes without purpose, and exhibit characters without meaning," 20 there is little reflection upon the meaning of the action presented within the play itself. Instead, the reflection on the encompassing political and social issues is relegated to the five-page essay-style introduction preceding the play. Crèvecoeur thus adumbrates, in a way, the technique of George Bernard Shaw and others, who frequently supplement their plays with lengthy essays addressed to the philosophical, political, and formal implications of the issues raised. Second, the interrelation between the drama proper and the author's introductory comments may serve as an epitome for the complex formal interrelation between the visual and the dramatic arts in Crèvecoeur. The author explicitly calls the six scenes of his little play American Landscapes, suggesting a form of verbal landscape painting. H e also emphasizes the comparison of his endeavors to the works of

18 19

20

Sketches, pp. 250-332. Thomas Philbrick, "Crèvecoeur as New Yorker," Early American Literature, 11, No. 1 (1976), 28; H . C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, p. 230, gives 1777 as the approximate date of composition. Sketches, p. 253.

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painters such as Salvator Rosa and Claude Lorrain. 21 Yet, what follows has almost nothing to do with landscape painting but, rather, centers on a dramatic action appropriate to the stage. Typically for Crevecoeur's confusing artistic strategy, which is also reflected in other passages, he says "painting" but means "drama." All in all, it might be somewhat capricious to agree with John Brooks Moore that none of the genuinely dramatic efforts of the American eighteenth century (including Royall Tyler's The Contrast) "can sustain a five minutes' comparison with Crevecoeur's 'Landscapes' as an effective work of art."22 Yet we are certainly justified in classifying Crevecoeur's effort, in the context of American literature, as a very early attempt at using the genre of drama as a distinct and, at that time, rare form of literary expression; 23 a form, moreover, that was not a by-product or a negligible experiment, but meant, rather, to be performed as a drama. 24 2) Not drama proper but at least a technique of partly dramatic extraction is the tableau, which, in Crevecoeur's Sketches, becomes a standard device for intensifying the impact of a memorable scene upon the reader. In several of the Sketches extensive dramatic tableaus are worked into the text, often as the culmination point of a preceding scene of action, as in the following example from "The Man of Sorrows": W h a t a subject f o r a painter w h o delights to represent m o u r n f u l events! W h a t a field f o r a judge and a master of the passions! A man leaning against a tree, hardly recovered f r o m the agonies of death, still visible in the livid hue and altered lineaments of his face, still w e a k and trembling, his mind agitated with the most tumultuous thoughts, w r a c k e d by the most anxious

21

Sketches, p. 250.

22

John Brooks Moore, "The Rehabilitation of Crèvecoeur," The Sewanee Review, 35, No. 2 (1927), 227. For a more cautious evaluation of the play, see Philbrick, Crève-

23

"Landscapes" was probably not Crevecoeur's only effort at the dramatic script. Everett Emerson describes the first part of the unpublished sketch "The Commissioners" as "a little drama" (see "Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and the Promise of America," p. 53). I have not been able to substantiate whether Emerson here uses the term drama in its narrow technical sense of stage script or in a more general sense. For a similar description of "The Commissioners" see A. W. Plumstead, "Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur," pp. 226-27. Crèvecoeur's directions about four copper plates at the end of "Landscapes" (Sketches, pp. 331-32) are indicative of his intention to have the piece published, possibly even performed.

coeur, pp. 126 ff.

24

118

Manfred Pütz suspense, hearing his third and final d o o m . At a little distance his wife, sitting on a log, almost deprived of her reason. At a more considerable distance, his house, with all his children crowded at the door, restrained by a m a z e m e n t and fear from f o l l o w i n g their mother, each exhibiting strong expressions of curiosity and terror, agreeable to their different ages. I can conceive the peculiar nature of all these colourings, but where w o u l d the painter find the originals of these faces w h o , unmoved, could behold the different scenes of this awful drama? 25

Crevecoeur usually draws the reader's attention to his tableaus by using the imperative form of verbs of visual perception ("behold") a n d / o r by direct reference to the art of painting. 26 This technique has led critics to conclude that he wishes to emphasize the analogy between certain verbal messages and the object of the visual arts, and that his tableaus are primarily elaborate word pictures. 27 However, the interrelation between painting and dramatic technique observed in "Landscapes" can also be discovered here in the analogy between the author's painterly descriptions and the dramatic tableau. 28 For Crevecoeur almost invariably makes use of the tableau when his episodes approach the end or the climax of a dramatic action and when he wants to impress this action upon the reader. In a way, the essence of a dramatic episode is thus frozen as a final picture epitomizing the preceding events. In this process, Crevecoeur does not stimulate the contemplative and aesthetic distance called forth by a painting, but his stationary, silent groupings of performers aim at the emotional involvement and the momentary inner turmoil of the audience of drama. 29 Hence, in the reflections which surround the presen-

25

26 27

28

29

Sketches, p. 191. Other obvious instances of the tableau technique occur in "The Wyoming Massacre" (pp. 200-01, 205-06), in "The American Belisarius" (p. 245), and in "Hospitals" (p. 159). Cf. Sketches, pp. 184, 190-91, 197, 200, 204, 205; "Hospitals," p. 159. See Norman A. Plotkin, "Saint-John de Crevecoeur Rediscovered," p. 392; Thomas Philbrick, Crevecoeur, pp. 130 ff.; Stanley T. Williams, "Crevecoeur as a Man of Letters," Sketches, pp. 25-35. Stanley T. Williams was the first to draw our attention to the fact that "Crevecoeur's love of the pictorial is perhaps merely another name for his dramatic instinct" (Sketches, p. 32). See also Philbrick, Crevecoeur, p. 131, where the term "dramatic tableau" is employed in the discussion of Crevecoeur's painterly qualities. Crevecoeur's awareness of this shift away from the detached pose of the artist clearly speaks from the following interjection: "What a scene an eminent painter might have copied from that striking exhibition, if it had been a place where a painter could have

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tation of his tableaus, 30 the author says "painting" but in the same breath emphasizes "drama." Thomas Philbrick is right when he states that, in some of the Sketches, "the analogy to the subject of a painting is drawn and then denied." 31 But, one would also have to add that in inverse proportion to the denial of this analogy, another analogy is evoked: namely, that between Crevecoeur's verbal tableaus and the art of staging. Crevecoeur's specific use of the tableau wakens associations with a semi-dramatic form of the literary tradition. It points to the tableaux vivants of the French tradition (Contesse de Genlis) as much as to the attitudes of the later English tradition. In both forms — which, in turn, refer back to classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance — decisive scenes of history, mythology, or other traditional contexts are staged as silent groupings of live actors. Here, as much as in Crevecoeur's descriptive equivalent of the tableau, the emphasis is on a spectator-oriented and not on a reader-oriented form of presentation; hence staging (in Crevecoeur: the envisioning of staging) becomes the point of orientation for these forms. 32 3) A third technique reminiscent of the orientation of drama lies in the frequent use of antitheses in Crevecoeur. The structural groundplan of the author's works embraces frequent juxtapositions of episodes, actions, and events in such a way that they are brought into marked contrast to each other. If we see the clash of opposing elements acted out in ensuing conflicts as the essence of drama, then Crevecoeur's antithetical juxtapositions clearly have a dramatic twist on various levels of abstraction. 33 Yet, the principle of contrast is often difficult to identify, since the

calmly sat with the palette in his hands!" (Sketches, p. 200). A. W. Plumstead, "Crèvecoeur: A 'Man of Sorrows' and the American Revolution," calls such passages in Crèvecoeur "pathetic scenes" of melodramatic intent which are meant "to stir passion" (p. 295). 30

Dramatic terms such as scene, spectator, spectacle, exhibition,

and drama are frequent in

these reflections. Cf. Sketches, pp. 190, 191, 200. 31

Philbrick, Crèvecoeur,

32

See Kirsten Gram Holmstrôm, Monodrama,

p. 132.

some trends of theatrical fashion 1770-1815 33

Attitudes,

Tableaux

vivants:

Studies

on

(Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1967).

For the most part, Crèvecoeur outlines conflicts in the course of dramatic episodes which actually show opposing forces clashing in action-charged situations. Yet, on another level of abstraction, the idea of conflict is also carried over into the realm of opposing ideas or conflicting images of America, establishing, in a way, an overall picture of dramatic conflict in a secondary sense.

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corresponding items of opposition are sometimes, though not always, distributed over more than one work. Thus, "The History of Mrs. B.," "The American Belisarius," and "The Man of Sorrows" of the Sketches present actions which function as antitheses not only to the "Reflections on the Manners of the Americans" of the same text but also to the "History of Andrew, The Hebridean" of the Letters.M The problematic role of nature and the everything-but-pastoral scene of farm life, outlined in "A Snow Storm as it Affects the American Farmer" and "Thoughts of an American Farmer on Various Rural Subjects" of the Sketches, find their counterparts in the various idyllic representations of the same subjects in the Letters. Some examples of the cruelty of human nature and the destructive inhumanity of civil war seem to generate their corresponding antitheses out of themselves, such as in the episodes of unexpected humanity in the midst of a massacre, and in the touching responses of the frantic loyalist to the frontier woman's plight.35 Moreover, the changing presentation of the loyalists' and the patriots' actions, the conflicting views on the freedom of religion in America, 36 the contradictory depiction of the attitude of newly arrived immigrants, 37 the shifting evaluations of life in the Old and in the New World, 38 and the alternative presentation of America as paradise or as hell, all work towards a confusing presentation of opposites, the structural unity of which seems to lie in antithetical contradiction rather than in well-rounded harmony.

34

35 36

37

38

T h e situation is, of course, further complicated by the author, since he included some of the former sketches in the later French editions of the Lettres d'un cultivateur américain (1784-87). See Sketches, pp. 201, 224. Cf. the picture of religious tolerance and the beneficial social effects arising from it, as sketched in Letters, pp. 48 ff., and in Sketches, pp. 62 ff., with the picture of disruptive controversies and the schisms that follow from the same freedom of religion in Sketches, pp. 156 ff. The edition of the Letters here quoted is: Letters from an American Farmer (London: Dent, 1971). Cf., among other passages, Letters, pp. 69-70, 73 ff., where immigrants are described as distressed, yet very polite and eager to work, with Sketches, p. 83, where it is said: "I have often seen Irishmen just landed, inconceivably hard to please and as greedy as wolves." The general picture of Europe compares unfavorably to the conditions offered by the New World in the Letters (cf. pp. 40 ff.). Yet in the Sketches Europe is suddenly superior to America in many respects (cf. pp. 51 ff., 86 ff.). T h e inversion perhaps culminates in the verdict: " . . . the temperate zones of Europe are much superior to i t . . . here one sees and feels nothing but extremes." (p. 53).

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Crevecoeur's world of opposites waging war on each other takes the shape of a "cosmic battle of polarities" 39 on almost every ground, and the antithetical juxtapositions function as the expression of a symbolic world view that envisions conflict and strife as the moving principle of the universe. Hence, the overall effect of the antithetical presentations is that they invoke the impression of a world drama in which concrete actions and situations merely serve as graphic images for the author's general contentions regarding life.40 What at first might appear to be an almost random technique reveals itself as grounded in quasi-philosophical propositions. 4) The juxtaposition of conflicting elements is also carried over into the narrative mediation of the Sketches. The predominant point of view which the Letters found in the perspective of James, the American Farmer, becomes increasingly overshadowed by various other perspectives and voices speaking mainly for themselves, being engaged in a continuous "dialogue" of uncertain frame and reference. Besides James, who is no longer foregrounded as the central narrative consciousness of all sketches, we suddenly find the independent voices of Mrs. B., Mr. P. V., 4 ' of the anonymous loyalist of "The Frontier Woman," and of the various dramatis personae of "Landscapes." The interrelation of these voices eventually leads to what one could call the multiperspectivism and the dialogization of the Sketches in opposition to the predominant single perspective and the monologization of the Letters. This observation holds true even if one considers that the perspective of the Letters is not as unified as it might first appear. Mary E. Rucker has argued in a perceptive essay that the fabric of the Letters is artfully woven as a concert

39

A. W. Plumstead, "Crevecoeur: A 'Man of Sorrows' and the American Revolution,"

40

As emphasized before, Martin Christadler in "St. John de Crevecoeurs Letters from an

p. 299. American Farmer und die Anfänge des amerikanischen Romans," extensively discusses this aspect of Crevecoeur's message and technique (cf. pp. 4 9 - 5 2 , 57 ff.). H e interprets it as a development towards melodrama (cf. p. 52), which in turn he defines with Richard Chase as the drama of unresolved conflicts or contradictions. 41

T h e sketch "Ant-Hill T o w n " in which Mr P. V . appears is a somewhat curious item. Presumably written in 1769, it follows the epistolary convention of the other letters in referring to the correspondence between an American and an Englishman (Sketches, p. 61); but on the other hand the style and the learned allusions of this letter as much as Crevecoeur's note "Virginia 1769, from Mr P. V." (Sketches, p. 51) indicate that James is not to be seen as its author.

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of two conflicting voices representative of two different states of consciousness: on the one hand, James' naive, sentimental, self-indulgent and optimistic frame of mind; and on the other, a corrective authorial consciousness that undercuts James' beliefs through irony and displacement, presenting itself as rational and pessimistic.42 It is precisely this dialectical unity of the two voices to which the Crevecoeur of the Sketches can no longer hold on. Here, the voices are no longer in concert; instead, we get a dissonant turmoil of many views and contributions, which are frequently at loggerheads with each other. And even when in some sketches the authorial voice of the frame is joined to the detached individual voices of the inner stories, they tend to be dissociated to a degree that they seem to sound notes on different scales. Consequently, the polarization of voices between the different pieces of the Sketches (and sometimes within the same piece) is developed to a point where a pronounced multiperspectivism prevails over the dialectical interaction of the two voices of the Letters. This multiperspectivism, of course, may at first be reminiscent of certain narratological features of the modern novel. But the comparison is deceptive. What is familiar to us from narrative texts of the twentieth century was certainly not a standard procedure in narrative texts of the eighteenth century; it was, rather, reminiscent of other genre affiliations. More importantly yet, the multiperspectivism in Crevecoeur is not merely a technical device of mediation, but also concerns the action as such. The various protagonists in Crevecoeur do not simply put forward their conflicting views, but instead work out their opposing views and images of America in concrete scenes of action. Thus, the emphasis is not so much on different voices talking as on different actors doing, and what they do invariably leads to the dramatic clashes which are so typical of Crevecoeur's picture of the state of affairs in America. Considering the frequency and the accumulated impact of the above tendencies of presentation, one might argue that the Sketches mark a distinct move away from the essay-like and narrative orientation prevalent

42

M a r y E. R u c k e r , " C r e v e c o e u r ' s Letters and E n l i g h t e n m e n t D o c t r i n e , " Early Literature,

American

13, N o . 2 (1978), 193-212. F o r a similar view of the d e v e l o p m e n t in the Let-

ters f r o m h o p e f u l idealism t o disillusionment — yet n o t p r o b i n g t h e depth of n a r r a t o logical implications in this shift — see also James C . M o h r , "Calculated Disillusionm e n t : C r e v e c o e u r ' s Letters (1970), 3 5 4 - 6 3 .

R e c o n s i d e r e d , " The South Atlantic

Quarterly,

69, N o . 3

Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

123

in the earlier work of Crèvecoeur. The author seems to be aware of this, and hence he reverts to a terminology related to genres other than fiction or essay when dealing with the content or the intentions of his work. The term scene and its derivatives — here referring to the nomenclature of the visual and the dramatic arts — is among the most frequently used words in the Sketches.43 However, it would be rash to conclude from this that a tendency towards dramatic or semi-dramatic elements is exclusively the watermark of the Sketches. For the Letters, and in particular the French editions of the Lettres, as well as the Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York, display, at least in rudimentary form, similar phenomena. Thus, the Letters exhibit a marked juxtaposition of antithetical elements, 44 as well as the beginnings of a diversification of perspectives and actors. 45 The French Lettres, moreover, sacrifice James as the center of narrative mediation, and substitute for him a contourless figure named "St. John" who in no way provides a unity comparable to that of the earlier work. Consequently, we get in the French Lettres a compilation of materials that will not fall into a unified pattern but, rather, presents a proliferation, if not cacophony, of voices and protagonists which anticipate the confusion of the Sketches.46. In Crèvecoeur's third major work, the Voyage," this proliferation of protagonists in free dialogue 43

44

45

46

47

Terms such as scene and scenery occur some forty times in the Sketches where we also find scene in conjunction with spectators (p. 190), with spectacle (p. 200), exhibited and exhibition (pp. 198, 200), and with drama (p. 191). Compare the contrast of the initial idyllic scenes of the Letters to the skeptical and disillusioned view of Letters IX and XII. As representative of what many critics make of this polarization, see Martin Christadler, "St. John de Crèvecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer und die Anfänge des amerikanischen Romans," pp. 47 ff., 51 ff.; and Elayne A. Rapping, "Theory and Experience in Crèvecoeur's America," American Quarterly, 19, No. 4 (1967), pp. 708, 711 ff. See Letter XI, which is presented as a first-person report by Mr Iw-n Al-z. For a perceptive explanation of what made this shift neccessary in the Letters, see Elayne A. Rapping, "Theory and Experience in Crèvecoeur's America," pp. 713 ff. See Lettres d'un cultivateur américain, 2 vols. (Paris, 1784), and 3 vols. (Paris, 1787). See also Philbrick, Crèvecoeur, pp. 136, 140-41. Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'état de New-York (Paris, 1801). The complete work was first translated in 1964 by Clarissa Spencer Bostelman under the title Journey into Northern Pennsylvania and the State of New York (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964). See also the earlier English translation of selected chapters in Crèvecoeur's Eighteenth-Century Travels in Pennsylvania & New York, ed. Percy G. Adams (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1961).

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comes to a peak with the introduction of even more characters with their own points of view. Though the Voyage shows its allegiance to narrative literature by making use of such standard novelistic devices as the found manuscript, the imaginary journey, and the editor convention, it is also noted for the dramatic interplay of a welter of protagonists putting forward their own views, and pursuing their own courses of action, almost completely overshadowing the mediation of the marginal firstperson narrator. 48 If one considers, furthermore, that the Voyage also makes use of the tableau technique 49 and of the dramatic episode, and that, as Thomas Philbrick has shown, its overall structure can best be described as the tripartite scheme of a world drama of all-embracing historical dimensions, 50 then the impression cannot be denied that we are again confronted by a work which is inherently more dramatic than epic. However, it remains open to investigation which motivational forces have stimulated the apparent shift from the predominantly narrative and essay-like orientation of the earlier work towards the increasing importance of dramatic modes of representation in the Sketches and the Voyage, and what functions are served by this shift.

Ill If we follow H . C. Rice in his dating of the individual contributions to Letters and Sketches,51 and if we add to this our knowledge of the publication history of the Voyage, we see that the Letters incorporate pieces dating back to Crèvecoeur's earlier years at Pine Hill, whereas the Sketches, for the most part, were written during the later years of revolutionary turmoil, and the Voyage is a product of the years after Crèvecoeur's second and final return to Europe. 52 Yet, it was precisely during 48

49 50

51 52

The different protagonists and interview partners in the Voyage are too numerous to be listed here. It might suffice to notice that in numbers and variety they exceed anything Crèvecoeur has ever attempted in polyphonic perspectivism. Compare the English translation Journey, pp. 291-92, 295, 383-84, 466-67. See Philbrick, Crèvecoeur, pp. 152 ff. For a similar view, emphasizing that in Crèvecoeur's historical scheme the idea of progress is revealed as a myth, see Elayne A. Rapping, "Theory and Experience in Crèvecoeur's America," pp. 715 ff. See H . C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, pp. 229-30. Apparently, the author wrote the Voyage after his final return to Europe in 1790. The datelines given in the book and other internal evidence establish that the events described took place in the 1780's and 1790's.

Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

125

the time of the revolutionary war, which is also seen as a civil war, that Crèvecoeur's political and philosophical attitude towards America changed under the impact of events. In the Letters he still had a vision, put forward through his persona James, of America as an actual or at least a potential paradise. This vision, which is already clouded in Letters I X and X I I , gets almost entirely lost for the author and for the fictional persona of the Sketches; a loss that would eventually lead to serious problems concerning the act of literary mediation. Contrary to what some critics have held, Crèvecoeur does not find it easy to take sides in the clashes between England and America and between the Americans themselves, 53 but rather becomes increasingly disillusioned with man as a political creature and with human nature as such. His picture of the patriots' and loyalists' mutual depravity and suffering, though lopsided in individual sketches, addresses its criticism to both sides, and both parties emerge from this picture as epitomes of man's counter-rationality and cruelty towards his own species.54 The different political factions of the revolutionary war serve in turn as villains in this drama of social and political upheaval, 55 and the observer is left in a state of confusion vis-à-vis so much debasement. There has been much speculation as to where the actual Crèvecoeur may have stood in the political controversies of his time. I think that the evidence of his writings suggests that at times he was too confused to make up his mind, that at

53

John Brooks Moore has argued in "The Rehabilitation of Crevecoeur" that the author of the Sketches was indisputably pro-loyalist in his sympathies (pp. 221-22, 224-25, 227—28, 230). Yet his argument is loaded, since he quotes from a very selective sample of sketches, and tones down the contrary evidence of others (cf. his treatment of "The Frontier Woman," 226-27).

54

See, for instance, the general introduction to "The Man of Sorrows": "In every country it [revolution] has been a field pregnant with the most poisonous weeds, with recriminations, hatred, rapidly swelling to a higher and higher degree of malice and implacability. H o w many have I seen which it has converted into beasts of prey, often destroying more from a principle of ferocity than from notions of gain! T o o many of these vindictive fiends on both sides have stained the cause they have espoused." (p. 179). Compare "The Man of Sorrows," "The History of Mrs. B.," "The American Belisarius," "Landscapes," and "The Grotto" with "The Wyoming Massacre" and "The Frontier Woman."

55

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other times he merely followed the fashion of the day, 56 and that for the most part he was, as H . C. Rice would have it, "a pacifist or conscientious objector" w h o wavered between loyalist and anti-British leanings. 57 However, Crevecoeur's given attitude at a certain time tends to expand into a highly generalized philosophical view of human nature as such and, moreover, to leave its mark upon the various works in question. In the Letters, his "general review of human nature"58 at first sounds a predominant note of optimism and benevolence, though we are also allowed to catch glimpses of Crevecoeur's skepticism and despair, as in the following verdict: "Good and evil I see is to be found in all societies, and it is in vain to seek for any spot where those ingredients are not mixed." 59 In the Sketches, this pattern is reversed. The pessimism becomes all-pervasive, and it culminates in the representation of actions and events which "show mankind in the worst light possible," 60 though there are occasional glimpses of, and hopes for, a better world. In the Voyage, finally, the distance from the chaotic events of the revolution is greater

56

57

58 59 60

This can be seen, perhaps most obviously, in the transition from the English Letters to the French Lettres, where in some passages Crèvecoeur changes his tone of wavering neutrality to anti-British attacks, simply following the prevailing mood of the day in France. See also Philbrick, Crèvecoeur, pp. 136 ff.; Marcus Cunliffe, "Crèvecoeur Revisited," p. 138; and H . C. Rice, Le Cultivateur américain, pp. 83-84, 166 ff., 174-75. H . C. Rice, "Some Notes on The American Farmer's Letters," The Colophon, 18 (1934), no page numbers. See also the discussion of Crèvecoeur's sometimes neutral, sometimes ambivalent attitude in Julia P. Mitchell, St. Jean de Crèvecoeur, p. 45; Philbrick, Crèvecoeur, pp. 123-24, and "Crèvecoeur as New Yorker," pp. 24-25; Henri Bourdin, "Crèvecoeur and His Times," Sketches, pp. 7, 10 (but on Crèvecoeur the loyalist, cf. pp. 8 - 9 ) ; Norman A. Plotkin, "Saint-John de Crèvecoeur Rediscovered," pp. 391-92, 399, 400; A. W. Plumstead, "Crèvecoeur: A 'Man of Sorrows' and the American Revolution," pp. 291, 299; Everett Emerson, "Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and the Promise of America," p. 51 ; Mary E. Rucker, "Crèvecoeur's Letters and Enlightenment Doctrine," p. 201 ff.; and Marcus Cunliffe, "Crèvecoeur Revisited," pp. 135, 139. A different view of Crèvecoeur's political leanings is taken in Myra Jehlen, "J. Hector St. John Crèvecoeur: A Monarcho-Anarchist in Revolutionary America," American Quarterly, 31, No. 2 (1979), 204-22. For primary evidence of Crèvecoeur's rather neutral stance, frequently coupled with the criticism of outrageous actions committed by both sides, see Sketches, pp. 178 ff., 191, 225-26, 247, 306 (Iwan's view); and "Hospitals," with its bleak picture of the effects of war. Letters, p. 171. Letters, p. 21. Sketches, p. 229.

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again and, consequently, Crevecoeur returns to a more balanced picture of the mixture of good and evil in human nature. It is in proportion to these general shifts of the author's prevailing philosophical convictions that certain problems of mediation take shape in his different works. T h e narrative unity of the Letters, as we have seen, is mainly a unity of perspective or, more precisely, a dialectical unity of two voices in constant interaction. By using James as a fictional persona to put forward certain beliefs, and an authorial voice of skepticism to countermand these beliefs, Crevecoeur was able to present a picture of reality which was at once diversified and unitary, ultimately suggesting an allegorical view of existence at variance with man's highest ideals and most cherished convictions. When both agents are no longer able to hold on to their dialectically interrelated views in a convincing manner, the whole structure collapses and is dissolved into a cacophonic concert of many dissociated voices bearing witness to the incomprehensible nature of experience. T h a t the former happens much more intensely in the Sketches than in the Letters can be seen from various indications. T h e persona James either slowly fades out of the Sketches or, where still present, becomes increasingly subject to disorientation. On the formal level of narrative mediation, this is reflected in several ways. James is frequently absent from certain sketches or, alternatively, his role as a commentator is pruned down to a few accompanying remarks ("History of Mrs. B.," " T h e Frontier W o m a n , " "Ant-Hill T o w n , " "Landscapes"). Then again, there are passages where he presents himself as a character in the very act of presenting his subject matter, yet he does so in a way that stresses his absence rather than his presence. H e virtually retreats from the scene of horror depicted in " T h e Wyoming Massacre," and marks this retreat with the words: "I cannot proceed." 6 1 Much of this may be due to his customary pose as a "man of feeling." 62 However, one would also have to note that he has now overstrained this pose, to the paradoxical point where he can no longer speak of what he intended to speak of. Similarly, the recurrent tableaus function as a device to suspend commentary by the narrative persona and yet to pass on a vivid and

61

Sketches, p. 203.

62

For an analysis of Crevecoeur and his narrators as "men of feeling," see David M. Larson, " T h e Expansive Sensibility of Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur," tion: Journal

of the MLA

(1974), 3 6 - 5 1 .

Special Session on the Literature

of Exploration

Explora-

and Travel', II

Manfred Pütz

128

moving scene to the audience. In such passages James, the sentimentalist, simply withdraws from the scene in speechless horror, only to confront his audience with this very scene as an independent spectacle of highly emotional appeal. Finally, the phenomenon of the retreating narrator is emphasized in a third way. In the course of his sketch "On Various Rural Subjects," he admits to the lack of method in his descriptions63 and in "The American Belisarius" he confesses that the "object of contemplation" is too extensive for his limited sensibilities.64 Subsequently, he is able to withdraw to a considerable degree from his role as an agent giving structure to his descriptions. Again, absence becomes the principle of his presence. And it is this absence of the central narrative persona which intensifies, if not instigates, the development away from modes of a unified narrative and/or essay-style mediation towards a kind of independent and unmediated dramatic presentation which seems to take the dramatic chronicle as its model. Paralleling this phenomenon of the retreating narrator, there is a growing disorientation of the authorial voice formerly supervening it. In the Sketches (as in part of the Letters), there are passages which force one to conclude that somebody other than James, the humble American farmer, is speaking. The learned allusions and the extensive knowledge of history and the world displayed in some of the comments point to the presence of an author figure much like the educated, well-read, and knowledgeable Crevecoeur himself. However, in the Sketches this figure fares no better than James in respect to a scheme of convictions he can hold on to. The voice representing this figure becomes feeble and is no longer sure of what he is to conclude from the chaos related in the Sketches, except, perhaps, some scattered lamentations about the general perverseness of human nature interspersed with occasional voicings of hope. Just as the persona of the later sketches is unable to find a meaningful unity in the disjunctive experiences of life, so the author figure is unable to forge a meaningful and consistent philosophical synthesis out of what he is confronted with. Consequently, the scenes of action and the self-contained dramatic episodes which are surrounded by his general reflections gain our attention in proportion to the degree to which the authorial comments forfeit our interest. The upshot of this develop-

"

Sketches, p. 126.

64

Sketches, p. 228.

Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur

129

ment eventually marks a decline in the functions of a potentially centralized epic mediation, in favor of an almost unmediated presentation of action. Eventually, the various episodes of the Sketches leave both mediator figures, James as much as the author/commentator, helpless in the face of adversity. Whereas the James of the Letters, notwithstanding his apparent confusions, was still able to act (as his somewhat tentative decision at the end of the Letters demonstrates), the narrator of the Sketches seems to have lost all capacity for decisive action. Faced with an incomprehensible disorder, he retreats from the scene of action and leaves activity to others. His diminishing competence as an independent agent of change disqualifies him as active participant in the drama of life, and the eclipse of the world unfolds in a clash between antagonistic forces and dramatis personae without a recognizable center of regulation. What are we to conclude, then, from the spectacle of Crevecoeur's shifting orientation towards techniques of mediation which have a peculiar dramatic twist, though they are by no means the sole property of drama as a genre? I think that the main conclusion would have to be that the author was groping for adequate literary forms to express his rapidly changing attitudes on political and philosophical issues of larger import. The objectives of the Letters were manifold and the methods of presentation well suited to address them.65 In so far as Crevecoeur wanted to give a realistic picture of everyday life in America, he chose the descriptive essay as a vehicle. In so far as he wanted to evoke a more universal picture of human nature, he had recourse to the reflective essay. In so far as he sought for a narrative unity and a coloring of personal experience in all this, he employed the devices of the narrative persona and the framework of the narrative plot. Only when these objectives seemed no longer attainable was Crevecoeur forced to experiment with other forms of mediation. And he found them in the dramatic shiftings and presentations which are so typical of the Sketches and the Voyage. In this respect, the drama proper, the tableau, the antithesis, and the dialogization of voices and protagonists are merely the external indications of an internal change of attitude. This change, in turn, spells disruption and lack of

65

For a somewhat different analysis of the objectives of the Letters and of the literary forms that might be correlated with them, cf. Martin Christadler, "St. John de Crèvecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer und die Anfänge des amerikanischen Romans."

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orientation throughout the Sketches, whereas it indicates a new overall vision of growing coherence in the Voyage. Appropriately then, the Sketches were never seen as a finished work by their own author and remained in their posthumously published form a panorama of scattered views, an amorphous body of dramatic facets, and a monument to the unresolved tensions of reality, whereas the Voyage — notwithstanding its similar appearance — achieves a new unity which carries the author's vision beyond chaos into a world where the drama of history again suggests sense. In both cases, however, it is Crevecoeur the writer of dramatic leanings who emerges as a new figure from the collapse of the mere narrator and essayist he could no longer be.

E V E R A R D H. K I N G

Wordsworth and Beattie's Minstrel: The Progress of Poetic Autobiography

The manuscripts and published versions of much of Wordsworth's poetry reveal a pronounced and enduring preoccupation with a popular poem of his youth entitled The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius (1771-1774) by the Scottish philosopher, critic and teacher James Beattie (1735-1803). 1 As the first attempt in English at sustained poetic autobiography, The Minstrel provided Wordsworth with a fascinating picture of the figure of the poet in the midst of appropriate settings, characters and themes. The young Wordsworth discovered in Beattie's poem imaginative adventures with nature that must have seemed to be the very

1

This article is a condensed version of the chapter on Wordsworth in my forthcoming book about The Minstrel and its role in the growth of Romanticism. The reader may refer to the following articles, which deal in greater detail but from a different perspective with Wordsworth's early poems and The Excursion: "James Beattie's The Minstrel (1771, 1774): Its Influence on Wordsworth," Studies in Scottish Literature, VIII. No. 1 (July 1970), 3 - 2 9 ; and "Beattie's Minstrel and Wordsworth's Excursion: What the Critics Overlook," Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 83, No. 3 (Autumn 1980), 339-59. The reader is also referred to my book James Beattie, Twaynes' English Authors Series 206 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977), Chapter 8 ("The Influence of The Minstrel, " pp. 107-33), for a demonstration of the use of Beattie's poem as a model by Shelley, Byron, Burns, Scott, Keats, and Coleridge, as well as by Wordsworth. Apart from these publications, The Minstrel has received little significant treatment in this century, with two notable exceptions: T . J. Roundtree, "Wordsworth and Beattie's Minstrel," The South Atlantic Quarterly, 69, No. 2 (Spring 1970), 257-63, which shows in general terms some of the many ideas that Wordsworth may have derived from Beattie; and Abbie F. Potts, Wordsworth's Prelude: A Study of Its Literary Form (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1953), which gives credit to The Minstrel is an important source of The Prelude (see Chapter 3, "Minstrel and Bard," pp. 63-76). The present article attempts to show that the influence of Beattie's poem on Wordsworth's early poetry, as well as on The Prelude and The Excursion, is more extensive and pervasive than has been hitherto supposed even by Roundtree and Potts. All quotations from The Minstrel in this article are taken from The Poetical Works of James Beattie (London: William Pickering, 1831).

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echo of his own youthful experiences even before he attempted to record them in his own verse. Dorothy Wordsworth saw such great similarity between her seventeen-year-old brother and the hero of Beattie's poem that she described William as another Edwin in a letter to Jane Pollard on 10 July 1793: '"In truth he was a strange and wayward wight fond of each gentle etc. etc.' That verse of Beattie's Minstrel always reminds me of him; and indeed the whole character of Edwin resembles much what William was when I first knew him — after my leaving Halifax — 'and oft he traced the uplands etc. etc. etc.'" 2 The life-like figure of Edwin and its pronounced resemblance to Wordsworth are the principal clues to one's comprehension of the important role of The Minstrel in the poet's attempts to write poetic autobiography, especially in The Prelude. As the record of the poet's own imaginative insights and experiences as expressed by the personality and adventures of a fictional hero, The Minstrel became for Wordsworth, in his earliest compositions and later, an appropriate model of the poetic life. The great many verbal echoes of the poem, as well as several Beattian themes and thoughts, to be found throughout Wordsworth's poetry indicate a certain familiarity with it

2

The Early Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, 1787-1808, ed. Ernest de Selincourt ( O x f o r d : Clarendon, 1935), pp. 97-98. The complete stanzas indicated by Dorothy are as follows: In truth he was a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene. In darkness, and in storm, he found delight; N o r less, than when on ocean wave serene The southern Sun diffus'd his dazzling shene. Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul: And if a sigh would sometimes intervene, And down his cheek a tear of pity roll, A sigh, a tear, so sweet, he wish'd not to control. (I.xxii) And oft he trac'd the uplands, to survey, When o'er the sky advanc'd the kindling dawn, The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray, And lake, dim gleaming on the smoky lawn: Far to the west the long long vale withdrawn, Where twilight loves to linger for a while; And now he faintly kens the bounding fawn, And villager abroad at early toil. But, lo! the Sun appears! and heaven, earth, ocean smile. (I.xx)

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133

and underscore the fact that, as a poet of similar temperament and imaginative inclination, Beattie provided in The Minstrel a persistent reminder that the literary reconstruction of remembered experiences with nature could often become an important stimulus to the poet's imagination. W o r d s w o r t h ' s life-long struggle to write autobiographical verse had its origin to some extent in the picture of himself that he discerned in Beattie's autobiographical hero; and, in addition, the shaping in verse of Wordsworth's own poetic identity was achieved to a remarkable degree by his repeated attempts to progress beyond mere imitation of the Beattian model. T h e exploration of Wordsworth's poetry f r o m the perspective of his use of The Minstrel as a role model not only illuminates the development of his autobiographical poetry but also enables one to reveal interesting and sometimes startling ideas about its composition. In addition, the nature and scope of Wordsworth's greatness as a poet are more clearly discerned by contrast with the modest originality and the incompleteness of Beattie's poem.

W O R D S W O R T H ' S EARLY P O E M S Editors of W o r d s w o r t h ' s poetry often note echoes of The Minstrel in the early poems; but, after collecting all of these notations f r o m the various editions, one is left with the impression that W o r d s w o r t h sometimes recalled phrases and images f r o m Beattie's poem (as he did f r o m many poems) and nothing more. While one may readily add to the editorial gathering of such minor similarities, the truth is that W o r d s w o r t h ' s earliest attempts to write about his life as a poet in "The Vale of Esthwaite," "An Evening W a l k " and "Descriptive Sketches" often use The Minstrel as a model of poetic introspection and self-appraisal. 3 "The Vale of Esthwaite," which the seventeen-year old W o r d s w o r t h began in 1787 at the very time when D o r o t h y saw him as another Edwin, is a reworking of Beattie's great theme of recreated childhood and youthful experiences that illustrate the growth of poetic sensitivity. Many passages in the poem show not only that W o r d s w o r t h ' s reading of The Minstrel brought to his mind vivid recollections of his own ramblings in nature but also that Beattie's poem helped to bring his imagination into focus upon them

3

All references to these poems may be found in The Poetical Works of William worth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940).

Words-

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as he contemplated Edwin as a kind of personification of himself. The Minstrel ends at the point in Edwin's life when he must face the problems of his poetic identity if he is to mature as a poet. T h e manuscript of "The Vale of Esthwaite" shows Wordsworth attempting to pursue such concerns beyond the limits of Beattie's poem in a manner which indicates his dependence on it. Wordsworth copies onto a blank sheet two of Beattie's valedictory lines from the conclusion of The Minstrel: Adieu, ye lays, that Fancy's flowers adorn, T h e soft amusement of the vacant mind! (II.lxii.1-2)

He next writes out several poetic passages under the headings "Pity, Hope, Sentiments of Affection for inanimate Nature, [and] Evening Sounds." The central theme of these extracts is the Beattian expression of great concern over the difficult task of the poet in coping with life. As a consequence, the poet of "The Vale" begins to see in human experience the possible reconciliation of reason and love. Beattie's formal farewell to poetry is in a sense an admission of his failure to deal adequately with the problems of his own poetic nature. By copying this valediction as a kind of beginning for his latest poem, Wordsworth indicated that he had accepted the challenge, implicit in the unfinished state of The Minstrel, to become another Edwin, who would grow into a mature poet. In "An Evening Walk," written concurrently with "The Vale" in 1787 and published in 1793, Wordsworth employed a different method of coping with the need to explore in verse his poetic life. As a consequence, the poem is a deliberate collection of adaptations from several landscape poets, with many of the borrowings indicated in footnotes, including one reference to The Minstrel. In addition to such evidence, Beattie's poem supplied Wordsworth with the basic pattern for his poem, as "An Evening Walk" celebrates the sounds of evening in the same manner that Beattie deals with the sounds of morning. Dependent on The Minstrel to some extent for their impulse and form, then, Wordsworth's two poems show deliberate borrowing as a means of developing poetic skill as well as self-knowledge. When Wordsworth returned to these poetic concerns in 1791-92, the results as recorded in "Descriptive Sketches" (published in 1793) indicate that the twenty-one-year-old poet was still dependent on The Minstrel for his view of the figure of the poet wandering over the landscape. Of the several scenes in "Descriptive Sketches" that are similar to pas-

W o r d s w o r t h and Beattie's

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Minstrel

sages by Beattie, a few are of special significance because Wordsworth's deliberate appropriation of them as models seems to be proved by a small notebook kept by Christopher Wordsworth to which his brother William had contributed some entries. The notebook, first published in 1958, is a tiny volume of only a few pages, containing references to poets by name, copies of certain poetic passages, and outlines of related poetic themes.4 The Minstrel is named three times, with a typical entry reading as follows: Gilpine Description of the mists Beatties Mins. Winter. Snow, sleet, rain, storm Ice. etc. Storm description of . . . (79)

Because Christopher's notebook contains the working outline of "Descriptive Sketches," it offers strong evidence that William knowingly gathered together ideas and passages from Beattie's poem to aid in the composition of his own poem. Such debts as are indicated by this notebook point to a characteristic habit of Wordsworth's apprenticeship in his juvenile poems that was to remain with him throughout his long life of writing. For, in composing these poems, he learned the value of allowing himself to be stimulated by minor poems that interested him, just as he was later to be affected by the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, as well as by his own poems as he reread and often rewrote them. This was a process of reading and composition that enabled him gradually to find his own distinctive voice and to shape his characteristic style. But Wordsworth's claim that he had left behind him such minor writers as Beattie and would henceforth look only to great writers for inspiration is to some extent a contrived fiction that expresses his yearning to become a great poet and ignores the important effects of poems like The Minstrel on his composition throughout his writing career.

THE MINSTREL

AS A MODEL FOR THE

PRELUDE

The Prelude is similar to The Minstrel in some striking ways. The great theme of the pursuit of the poetic life gives rise in both poems to a pro4

The Early

Wordsworthian

entries by William

Milieu: A Notebook

Wordsworth,

of Christopher

Wordsworth

ed. Z. S. Fink ( O x f o r d : C l a r e n d o n , 1958).

with a few

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cess of poetic self-evaluation by which each poet discovers in nature a remarkable power to stimulate the development of moral character as well as to shape the plastic mind. Each poet recreates his youthful experiences with nature as the means of picturing and exploring his inner life. As a result, the persistent metaphor of a journey which is based on the author's knowledge of actual places and events tends to unify each poem as well as to reflect the poet's act of composing his poem as a way of imaging the operation of his own mind. As such The Prelude is to some extent an admirable completion of The Minstrel\ as Wordsworth achieves the reconciliation of reason and love and thereby fulfills Beattie's hope of speaking truth "from the lips of love" (II.liii.9). Beattie's aim "to trace the progress of Poetical Genius" (1771 Preface) through recollections of his own experiences became Wordsworth's aim as "he undertook to record in verse, the origin and progress of his own powers." 5 The writing and revision of The Prelude from 1798 to 1850 reflect Wordsworth's great struggle to solve the problems of his poetic life, which he first encountered in the composition of "The Yale of Esthwaite" in 1787. Both "The Vale" and The Minstrel presented him with the fundamental difficulty of the poet's life that had to be confronted and resolved if he were to become, and sustain himself as, a great poet. By writing The Prelude Wordsworth in a remarkable way made himself into the kind of mature poet that Edwin shows early promise of becoming. One may find many such similarities between the two poems; but modern readers of The Prelude are not often aware of them, partly because The Minstrel is now so little known and mainly because Wordsworth was so successful in becoming another Edwin and thereby making great poetry out of their common experiences. T h e process by which Wordsworth exorcised the spirit of Beattie's hero from his composition can be traced fully, in fact, only through the various manuscripts of The Prelude.6

5

The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, revised by Ernest de Selincourt, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 589. Hereafter referred to as Poetical Works.

6

Unless otherwise indicated quotations from The Prelude are taken from William Wordsworth: The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850, ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill (New York: Norton, 1979).

Wordsworth and Beattie's Minstrel

T H E T W O - P A R T PRELUDE

137

(1798-99)

The recently-published Two-Part Prelude is in some ways much more similar to The Minstrel than the 1850 Prelude, the only published version of the poem until de Selincourt printed the 1805 manuscript in 1926. De Selincourt traces the origin of the poem to 1788, the poet's second year at Cambridge, on the evidence of a passage in Book VI in which Wordsworth recalls his high hopes of becoming a great poet: The Poet's soul was with me at that time; . . . Those were the days Which also first emboldened me to trust With firmness, hitherto but lightly touched By such a daring thought, that I might leave Some monument behind me which pure hearts Should reverence . . . (1850, VI, 42-57) 7

Since at the time he had recently written "The Vale of Esthwaite" (1787) and "An Evening Walk" (1787), in which his struggles to view his poetic life are to some extent derivative and inconclusive, one wonders at the great, retrospective faith in his poetic destiny that Wordsworth displays in this passage. When he wrote it, of course, he had already become a great poet, for he was then well into the 1805 Prelude and had just completed the "Intimations" Ode. Wordsworth's hindsight seems to deflect attention away from his dependence in 1787-88 on The Minstrel as a model of the poet's life and onto himself and the development of his poetic hero, as if he were the unique product of his own individual will. But the extent to which he was forced to measure himself in the image of Beattie's hero is indicated not only by the failure of Wordsworth's two juvenile poems to move much beyond the view of poetic identity in The Minstrel but also by Dorothy's close identification of her brother with Edwin at this time. One may claim that the "Poet's soul" (1850, VI, 42) which Wordsworth recalls as being with him in 1788 was very much like Beattie's soul as revealed in his poem and that Wordsworth's "daring thought" (1850, VI, 55) of someday writting great poetry was to some extent derived from Beattie's aspirations for Edwin.

7

See The Prelude, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd ed. revised by Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), p. xxxiv. Quotations from MS. Wand MS. y a r e from this edition; hereafter referred to as de Selincourt.

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As Stephen Parrish claims, the "origins of The Prelude lie in Wordsworth's boyhood experience of nature in the north of England"; 8 but it seems clear also that The Minstrel, as the record of Beattie's early experience of nature in the north of Scotland, provided an incentive to Wordsworth to trace the growth of his poetic mind by encouraging him to investigate his memories and their sources. As a result, Book I of the Two-Part Prelude, like Canto I of The Minstrel, contains recollections of childhood that help the poet to explore the implications of such experiences; while Book II, like Canto II of Beattie's poem, reviews the poet's life through adolescence to the point at which he becomes aware of how difficult it is to realize one's poetic potential. Both poems grew out of two important considerations that tended to unify the poet's attempts to deal with them. The first of these central themes in Wordsworth's poem shows the poet agonizing over the possibility that he may have misread his early experience of nature as a compelling sign of his vocation as a poet in much the same manner in which Beattie had confronted Edwin's calling: "I long, where Love and Fancy lead, to go" (II.xxxix,8). The second important preoccupation of both poems is the attempt to discover the relationship of such experience of nature to the imaginative creativity of the adult poet. MS. JJ, the original draft of Part I of the Two-Part Prelude, shows Wordsworth's continuing perplexity over this crucial problem: N o r while, thou[gh] doubting yet not lost, I tread T h e mazes of this argument, and paint H o w N a t u r e by collateral interest A n d by intrinsic passion peopled first M y mind with beauteous objects may I well Forget what might demand a loftier song. ( 1 1 8 - 2 3 ) (Parrish, 126)

Unable to devise a solution to this dilemma of the poet's life, Beattie abandoned poetry forever with the publication of Canto II of The Minstrel in 1774; but Wordsworth, immediately after the above passage, wrote a magnificent commentary on the problematic nature of the poet's imaginative life in the celebrated "spots of time" sequence. It is assumed by modern editors that the "loftier song" (123) which Wordsworth fears he may have to set aside in order to "paint / H o w

« William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1798-1799, ed. Stephen Parrish (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 3. Hereafter referred to as Parrish.

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Nature . . . peopled first / [His] mind with beauteous objects" (119-22) probably refers to The Recluse; but The Minstrel, with its challenge to create the life of poetic excellence, seems also a likely work to fit Wordsworth's strong desire to write poetry that would reveal his inner life as a poet. In the later MS. R V, the original fair copy of Part II belonging to late 1799, Wordsworth focuses on his sense of being separated from his childhood, so that sometimes he seems to be "two consciousnesses, conscious of myself / And of some other being" (Parrish, 169). The following accounts in this manuscript of his boyhood experiences with nature that are cast in the Beattian mode strongly suggest that the "other being" may to some extent be identified with Edwin as the literary prototype of such adventures. The Minstrel seems to have provided reminders to Wordsworth of his commitment to become a better poet by writing about himself; but his abandoning of the Two-Part Prelude suggests that at this time he was not capable of taking the investigation of his imaginative growth any further than Beattie had traced the development of Edwin's "Poetical Genius" in his unfinished poem. Wordsworth's confusion over this matter is revealed in one of his last jottings, made just before he laid aside the poem in late 1799, which became a key passage in the "glad preamble" to the 1805 Prelude (1-54): inspiration a mild creative breeze a gentle inspiration a vital breeze that passes gently on the [?] O e r things which it has made and soon becomes A tempest a redundant energy That sweeps the waters and [? mountains] [? p o w e r ] Creating not but as it may Disturbing things created. (Parrish, 117)

One suspects that The Minstrel as a poem of unfulfilled promise lies behind Wordsworth's metaphor of the breeze of creative inspiration which becomes "a redundant energy". Wordsworth himself seems to support this interpretation in the revised version of the passage for the 1805 "glad preamble," in which the "mild creative breeze" of inspiration is shown "Vexing its own creation" (47), just as Beattie's hermit attempts to "curb Imagination's lawless rage" in Edwin (II.xiv.3). It seems clear, as Parrish claims, that, at the time of the above jotting, Wordsworth had

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written as much as he was able of the poem about himself: "His hopes of carrying out some high poetic ambition had become stalled, and his bewildered mind had fallen into 'listlessness' and 'vain perplexity'. But at the end of 1799 Wordsworth was apparently content to leave his poem as it stood, a record of the growth of his poetic sensibility under the ministering powers of nature" (Parrish, 36). The Prelude had become stalled at the same point of development as Beattie's poem; and perhaps one reason that Wordsworth left it as it stood at this time was his inability to find even hints towards a means of proceeding with it either in The Minstrel or in his own poetic life.

T H E M A N U S C R I P T S O F THE

PRELUDE

MSS. W, X and Y show that Wordsworth returned to The Prelude in January 1804 and made rapid progress, writing Book III, starting Book IV and planning to complete the poem in Book V. MS. W, a notebook of February-March 1804, is a fair copy of the planned five-book poem containing many passages that were later transferred to the 1805 Prelude, as well as a beginning to the proposed final Book headed "5th Book." This scheme was abandoned early in March 1804 when Wordsworth revised his plan so that he might deal at much greater length with the history of his mind, as Dorothy's fair copy of the thirteen-book Prelude indicates (MS. A, November 1805-February 1806). But MS. Wreveals another cause of this second abortive beginning to The Prelude which was to some extent to affect the future composition of the poem. For MS. Wis in effect Wordsworth's attempt to adapt parts of The Minstrel to fit with his own memories of childhood and early manhood; and, as such, the manuscript is often so dependent on Beattie's poem that Wordsworth must have been uneasy over its derivative nature. As the record of a crucial stage in Wordsworth's development, however, the manuscript attests to the important persistence of Beattie's seminal vision of the poet's life. The first passage in MS. W tries to deal with the problem of the poet's disillusionment with the world as Beattie's hermit describes it to Edwin. The young minstrel's response is the unrealistic yearning somehow to return in peace "To the gay dreams of Fond Romantic youth" (II.xxx.2):

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When Fancy roam'd through Nature's works at will, Uncheck'd by cold distrust, and uninform'd of ill. (II.xxix.8-9)

Even as he writes, Beattie knows not only that the desire of his poetic hero to return to a former state of innocence can never be fulfilled, but also that the recollection of an earlier stage of his own problematic poetic life in the adventures of Edwin may enhance his own poetic growth. Similarly, Wordsworth's manuscript begins with the poet recalling his confusion when he first became aware of "an inner falling off" (1805, IV, 270) from his unthinking pleasure in nature: Something there was about me that perplexed Th' authentic sight of reason, pressed too closely On that religious dignity of mind That is the very faculty of truth. (1805, IV, 295-98)

Like Beattie's hero, Wordsworth was for a time bewildered by this hitherto unknown state of mind. Realizing, however, that the growth of the poem about his own mind depended on his gaining insights into this problem of the poet's perception of the world, Wordsworth later found a place for this passage in Book IV of The Prelude; but, later still, he dropped it from the 1850 Prelude, probably because he had by then solved the problem by learning to live with it, and almost certainly because such reiterations of Beattie's dilemma reminded him of his painful struggle to grow beyond Edwin's limited minstrelsy. MS. W demonstrates how agonizing and prolonged had been that effort to force his verse to leap beyond imitation. As a consequence, MS. Wis an attempt to regain "that religious dignity of mind" (1805, IV, 297) which Wordsworth recalls from his "primitive hours" (1805, IV, 355). One incident stands out vividly in his memory as representative of his youthful experiences that have since lost their splendour; hence, he recreates the grand spectacle of a sunrise that had greeted him once after an allnight romp: the sky was bright with day . . . Magnificent The morning was, a memorable pomp, More glorious than I ever had beheld. T h e sea was laughing at a distance; all The solid mountains were as bright as clouds, Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light; And in the meadows and the lower grounds Was all the sweetness of a common dawn —

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Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds, And labourers going forth into the fields. (1805, IV, 328-29)

Behind this recollection of an actual event in the poet's youth, with its deliberate Miltonic allusions, lies a scene from The Minstrel in which Spenserian imitation and echoes of Milton do not completely disguise Beattie's recollection of one of his own youthful experiences. In his stanza, Edwin roams over the headlands of the Scottish coast: When o'er the sky advanc'd the kindling dawn, T h e crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain gray, And lake, dim gleaming on the smoky lawn: Far to the west the long long vale withdrawn, Where twilight loves to linger for a while; And now he faintly kens the bounding fawn, And villager abroad at early toil. But, lo! the Sun appears! and heaven, earth, ocean smile. (I.xx)

The experience and the setting of this stanza are very similar to Wordsworth's passage; and Wordsworth's revision of "the sky was bright with day" of the 1805 Prelude (IV, 328) to "now the eastern sky / Was kindling" in the 1850 poem (IV, 320) shows that he was still recalling Beattie's "kindling dawn." By writing such passages as recollections of his own experiences that are reinforced by allusion to Beattie's similar stanzas, Wordsworth learned to respond with his original immediacy to the burden of being a poet and, as a consequence, to walk in "thankful blessedness" as a "dedicated Spirit" (1850, IV, 337-38). With the help of The Minstrel, Wordsworth's recreation of such mystical experiences of his youth enables him a little later in MS. W to formulate an assessment of the progress of his poetic genius which is so ambiguous as almost to suggest that the "malady" he describes had never affected him personally. Perhaps there is a hint of Beattie's poem in "rural Nature's milder minstrelsies" that Wordsworth claims "did never take in me / Deep root, or larger action" (1805, XI, 242-56n). It is as if he could see the weakness in a poet like Beattie but would not permit himself to contemplate the thought that he, too, might be subject to such a limited vision. At any rate, this passage from MS. W w a s later revised and took its place as the major statement about the impairment and restoration of Wordsworth's imagination and taste that introduces the "spots of time" sequence in Book X I of the 1805 Prelude:

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I had felt T o o f o r c i b l y , t o o e a r l y in m y l i f e , Visitings of imaginative p o w e r F o r this t o last: I s h o o k t h e h a b i t o f f Entirely and f o r ever, and again In N a t u r e ' s p r e s e n c e s t o o d , as I s t a n d n o w , A s e n s i t i v e , a n d a creative

soul. ( 1 8 0 5 , X I , 2 5 0 - 5 6 )

At the time of MS. W, Wordsworth knew that he was capable of writing fine short poems because he had already done so; but the difficult task of writing in verse a sustained, conclusive account of his mind and imagination was still frustratingly similar to Beattie's incomplete pattern of the poet's life. While Wordsworth's attempts to develop such a sense of poetic identity as Beattie's throughout the rest of the manuscript call forth frequent echoes of The Minstrel, they also become more insightful and poetically apt than Beattie's had been. This growth of Wordsworth's self-knowledge leads directly to a remarkable passage shortly after the heading "5th Book" which contains the poet's first recording of the famous epiphany on Mount Snowdon. Wordsworth had climbed Mount Snowdon when he was twentyone during a walking-tour of North Wales with Robert Jones in June-August 1791, the year after their tour through France and Switzerland; and the ascent assumed thereafter apocalyptic importance for the poet. In MS. W it is used as the introductory passage to the proposed concluding Book; and it takes the same climactic position in the 1805 Prelude (XIII, 1-65) as well as in the 1850 Prelude (XIV, 1-62). The episode provides perhaps the best example of the enduring influence of The Minstrel on Wordsworth's life and writing; for it is based in a remarkable way on one of Edwin's experiences (I.xxi).9 Beattie's young minstrel loved to climb mountains, particularly when "all in mist the world below was lost" (I.xxi.2). Such an effort was a sublime experience for Edwin as he viewed the great sea of mist below him with only mountaintops visible above it and as he listened to the happy sounds of flocks and herds that seemed to be unified by "the voice of . . . waterfalls" (I.xxi.8-9). A similar scene is listed as part of the outline of "Descriptive

9

See Jonathan Wordsworth, "The Climbing of Snowdon", Bicentenary

Wordsworth

Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 4 4 9 - 7 4 , w h o claims that Beattie's stanza is Wordsworth's "literary source" (p. 451) for the composition of the S n o w d o n climb.

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Sketches" (1791-92) in Christopher Wordsworth's notebook which itself predates Wordsworth's climb up Snowdon; and Wordsworth's poem was being written during the walking-tour of 1791. Beattie's stanza provided a ready literary model of a mountain-climb at the very time of Wordsworth's ascent of Snowdon and when he was recording in "Descriptive Sketches" (1793) a similar experience from his European tour of the previous year. As a result, the poet in Wordsworth's poem views from a high hill a "mighty waste of mist" filling a valley like "a solemn sea" (408-9) while the sounds of animals and waterfalls rise up to him (495-511). In addition to these similarities, Wordsworth's use of "stranded ships" (412) in "Descriptive Sketches" to emphasize the sublime solitariness of the scene from the mountain crag seems to be a direct recollection of Beattie's simile of the "shipwrecked mariner" (I.xxi.4) which underscores Edwin's "dreadful pleasure" (I.xxi.3) as he contemplates the mist-shrouded view from "the craggy cliff" (I.xxi.l). In MS. W and in the later versions of The Prelude Wordsworth recreated this scene in describing his ascent of Snowdon, and in so doing he relied even more heavily on The Minstrel than he had in "Descriptive Sketches." Beattie and Wordsworth both describe the exhilarating prospect from a mountain-top of a vast ocean of mist that enshrouds everything except protruding hills and imbues the whole scene with a strong sense of artificiality. Beattie's minstrel hears "the voice of . . . waterfalls" (I.xxi. 8-9) resounding, just as Wordsworth listens to the "voice of waters" as the "torrents" roar "with one voice" (1850, XIV, 60-61). For both poets the experience is an imaginative revelation: Beattie exclaims, "What dreadful pleasure!" as Edwin is awed by the solitary grandeur of the view below him; Wordsworth, in a similar manner, perceives in this mountain glory nature's "soul, the Imagination of the whole" (1805, XIII, 66). While Beattie's account of the stimulation of Edwin's imagination by nature is remarkable for its time, Wordsworth's adaptation of it to help him to express the ultimate confrontation of the poet with his imagination is astonishing, especially as he finds in the experience the "perfect image of a mighty Mind" (1805, XIII, 70). Beattie's stanza and Wordsworth's passage are both attempts to recapture in verse an actual happening in the poet's life, as well as to make a poetic statement about it that reveals its significance to the developing imagination. Like the biblical climb to the mountain-top that they both emulate, each passage captures in its own way a sense of the solitary grandeur

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and terrifying remoteness of poetic revelation that Wordsworth perceived in the statue of Newton at Cambridge: "The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone" (1850, III, 62-63). The fact that these two lines were not added to The Prelude until 1838-39 indicates Wordsworth's longstanding compulsion to create personifications of himself, as well as related images and scenes, that had its roots to some extent in the character of Beattie's minstrel. In the stanza immediately following Edwin's epiphany on the mountain, Beattie draws a picture of him that shows the effects of such experiences of nature on the young poet's mind and imagination and that Dorothy Wordsworth later saw as an apt image of William. In the 1805 Prelude Wordsworth follows a similar pattern after the mystical experience on Mount Snowdon as he begins to take account of such events in his poetic life: Oh, w h o is he that hath his whole life long Preserved, enlarged, this freedom in himself? — For this alone is genuine liberty. Witness, ye solitudes, where I received My earliest visitations (careless then Of what was given me), and where now I roam, A meditative, oft a suffering man, And yet I trust with undiminished powers . . . (1805, XIII, 120-27)

Since this passage was written in early March 1804, shortly after the completion of the "Intimations" Ode, its expression of the frustrations and uncertainty of the poetic life is necessarily linked with the similar concerns of the ode, as it is with those of The Minstrel. When he revised it for the 1850 Prelude, Wordsworth justifiably omitted the line about "undiminished powers" (127), because by then the fear of losing his poetic creativity had been overcome; but, while writing MS. W in 1804, he was very aware that he had not provided a proper context to reveal the full power and significance of his ascent of Mount Snowdon. As a pseudo-medieval and mock-Spenserian poem, The Minstrel was perhaps an unlikely context for Beattie's descriptions of his own experiences; and, as such, it indicated to Wordsworth some of the problems associated with diminished powers of imagination. But the poem does contain several statements about liberty and freedom; and these seem to have helped Wordsworth to continue with his poem in MS. W. Under nature's influence, "freedom fires the soul" (I.vi.9), Beattie writes; while

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early in Canto II Edwin listens to the hermit's opinion of what happens to "truth and liberty" (II.xiii.7) when nature's precepts are ignored. Later Edwin focusses on the difficult problem of his disillusionment with the world by asking the hermit whether selfishness can control "the liberal heart" (II.xxviii.4); and the hermit's response was later to become an important doctrine in The Prelude: "For virtue is the child of liberty, / And happiness of virtue" (II.xxxi.7-8). In addition, Beattie's belief that love as the source of "beauty, virtue, truth . . . and melody" (I.xl.9) transcends even the dust of the grave is reiterated in Wordsworth's concept that even pain and fear are subordinated to love as necessary to the growth of the imaginative mind: From love, for here D o we begin and end, all grandeur comes, All truth and beauty — from pervading love — That gone, we are as d u s t . . . (1805, XIII, 149-52)

In a similar way throughout MS. W, Wordsworth recasts Beattie's statements about the relationship of nature to the development of poetic sensibility. N o t only does Beattie stress man's moral obligation to cultivate nature's joys (I.ix.x) but he also warns that the man who chooses money and ambition over nature's solitude will "never know the source whence real grandeur springs" (II.x.9). But Beattie knows that it is the poet who is best suited to derive "pure passions" (II.liii.8) from his pleasure in nature and, as a result, to demonstrate in his writing " H o w sweet the words of Truth breath'd from the lips of Love" (II.liii.9). MS. W shows no sign of the reorganization of materials that characterizes MS. M, Mary Wordsworth's fair copy of Books I - V of the 1805 Prelude, which was made in March 1804 shortly after Wordsworth had decided to abandon the plan of a five-book poem. The poet must have known at this time not only that MS. W contained many passages that are better poetry than may be found in The Minstrel but also that his document followed Beattie's convoluted pattern of the poet's life and many of his thoughts and scenes associated with it so closely as to create impediments to the uninhibited recording of the progress of his own genius. As a consequence, MS. W e n d s with a passage in which Wordsworth attempts to discover the significance to his growth as a poet of all that he had written in the document so far. But the episodes and statements of intent in this passage are as tentatively constructed as the rest of the manuscript, so that they do not provide the crystallization of his

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doctrine of the poet's art as affected by nature that Wordsworth hoped to achieve. It was probably this failure that prompted him to reject much of this passage from both later versions of The Prelude, so that they remained in manuscript until de Selincourt's edition of 1926. Wordsworth must have realized, however, that his attempt in this rejected passage to rescue his foundering poem from collapse was also an effort to complete the unfulfilled promise of artistic maturity that Beattie prophesies in The Minstrel. Perhaps this is why Wordsworth's concluding lines are more reliant on Beattie's poem than any other part of MS. W. Wordsworth begins this conclusion by writing that he has often examined the analogy between the "mind of man and nature" (2) that had been revealed to him on Mount Snowdon and that had been repeated in other experiences from which he now proposes to select some "living pictures to embody / This pleasing argument" (6-7). The first episode is a description of a storm over Coniston (7-30) which to some extent is modelled on Edwin's experiences. William and Edwin are solitary wanderers over similar landscapes; hence, their adventures have much in common: a traveller, mist, darkness, rain, sunlight, giant waves, clouds, mountains, crags, and a valley. But it is the storm which exhilarates each poet: Edwin delights in the mournful howling of the wind as "the dead foliage flies in many shapeless flake" (I.xxiii.9); and William is enthralled by the autumn "fierce with storm," the roaring wind, mist and "bewilder'd showers," and by the "Green leaves . . . rent in handfuls from the trees" (13-16). After the storm, William enjoys "a large unmutilated rainbow . . . standing . . . I With a colossal stride bridging the vale" whose substance is "thin as dreams, lovlier than day" (24—27), just as Beattie's "visionary boy" (I.xxx.7) gazes at the rainbow that "in the dark east, expanded high / . . . brightens to the setting Sun!" (l.xxx. 5-6). Like Beattie before him, Wordsworth finds in this experience matter for poetry that he hopes will illuminate his own poetic life. Did he reject the description of the storm over Coniston from The Prelude because he felt that it did not succeed as a "living picture" of his high poetic argument? O r did he think that it was too close to Edwin's adventure to satisfy his present needs for his own poem? Perhaps the rejection of this passage is associated in some way with Wordsworth's failure to formulate a satisfactory summation of his poetic creed in MS. W, or to answer Edwin's questions about the problems of being a poet in an imperfect world. The last piece of rejected verse in the manuscript is a short pas-

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sage of seventeen lines which is a cry of woe modelled on the hermit's lament over the "chaos drear . . . in the mental world" (II.xx.6) and on Beattie's complaint about the "penury, disease, and storm" which plague the poet (II.liv.3). Following these leads, Wordsworth writes about the "unremitting war from the first / Waged with this faculty" (1-2) and the ever-increasing burden of "petty duties and degrading cares — / Labour and penury, disease and grief" (5—6). This uninspired reiteration of Beattie's unanswered questions marks the nadir of Wordsworth's borrowings from The Minstrel as with it MS. Wsputters to a halt. Meanwhile, what Wordsworth means by "faculty" (2) in the passage is unclear. But the abandonment of MS. W and the writing of the 1805 Prelude shortly after show that his faculty of imagination had already delivered him to a considerable extent from the deadening influence of wordly cares and follies, thereby permitting him to begin to solve the dilemma of the poetic life that Beattie had left undecided. It was the composition of MS. W, nevertheless, which had helped Wordsworth to gain such knowledge of the life of the imagination, especially in drawing together recollections from Tfre Minstrel as models for the great symbolic episodes of the poet's dedication to nature at dawn, the epiphany on Mount Snowdon and the rejected storm over Coniston. In this way, Beattie's poem had an important influence on Wordsworth's attempt in the manuscript to characterize the role of nature in his spiritual rebirth. MS. W also indicates the remarkable way in which the persistent image of Edwin was like a "living picture" in Wordsworth's mind that acted as a kind of alter ego which both informed and impeded the progress of the poet's art. For this reason, Beattie's vision of the poet who is confounded by the circumstances of his life recurs in the later manuscripts of The Prelude. MS. Y, a notebook of October 1804 which contains an early draft of Book VIII ("Retrospect: Love of Nature Leading to Love of Man"), provides an excellent example of the continuing influence of The Minstrel on Wordsworth's composition. Beattie's doctrine of nature's power to stimulate the poet's imagination as illustrated by pastoral scenes from his own experience is the glory of Canto I of The Minstrel, but in Canto II there is a pronounced falling away from this original revelation about poetic growth into Edwin's perplexity over man's inhumanity and insensitivity that amounts to the negation of Beattie's claim for nature's ability to shape moral character and human personality. This paradox of the poetic life, which forced Beattie to abandon The Minstrel in confu-

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sion, became for Wordsworth a central problem as he wrote about his own life as a poet. As a result, The Prelude is both the joyous affirmation of Beattie's view of nature as revealed in Canto I and the triumphant resolution of Edwin's dilemma concerning the role of the poet in the world as presented in Canto II. All the while that he was reworking Beattie's hymn to nature, Wordsworth must have known that the incompleteness of Edwin's poetic life was a challenge to his own ability and integrity as a poet. In MS. W, for example, the poet is aided by his early impressions of nature and by his own power of will to throw aside the "malady" of such dependence and thereby to stand "again / In Nature's presence . . . as / A meditative and creative soul" (1805, XI, 242-56n). In March 1804 this statement was to some extent wishful thinking; but the revised passage found its final place in Book XI of the 1805 Prelude, where Wordsworth's hindsight seems to justify his earlier belief in his poetic ability to overcome literary dependence (250-56). At this point in the poem, of course, Wordsworth has already shown how his early love of nature had led him paradoxically to love of man, so that he is now in the process of demonstrating how his imagination and taste had been impaired and restored as the "Visitings of imaginative power" had enabled him to stand in "Nature's presence" as a "sensitive, and a creative soul" (1805, XI, 255-56). The transition of Wordsworth's dependence on Edwin for a poetic picture of himself to a full-fledged self-portrait is marked by his substitution of "sensitive . . . soul" in the 1805 and 1850 Preludes for "meditative . . . soul" of MS. W, as if to celebrate the creation of his own personification of himself as a replacement for Beattie's hero and as a much more important subject for meditation. Because MS. Y lies between the early manuscripts of The Prelude and the fair copies of 1805, it provides valuable evidence not only of the process by which the poet made such rapid progress with the history of his imaginative mind but also of the impact of The Minstrel on that achievement. Wordsworth transferred to the 1805 Prelude those parts of MS. Y which seemed to him to confirm as well as to illustrate his newfound conviction that the ecstatic joy of his early experiences of nature had not denied him a close understanding of humanity, as he had long feared, but had actually been prompting him (continually, he now knows) towards a deep comprehension of man's spiritual nature. As such, these passages in their new context of Book VIII ("Retrospect: Love of Nature Leading to Love of Man") of The Prelude, and of the poem as a whole, belie by their great poetic superiority any similarity they may

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continue to bear to The Minstrel. Of great importance to one's understanding of the effects of Beattie's poem on Wordsworth's revisions is a long passage of 240 lines in MS. Y which, de Selincourt claims, "was never corrected or incorporated into The Prelude" and which is a "deeply interesting . . . variation, with unique autobiographical detail, upon the main theme of The Prelude, the growth of the poet's soul under the interacting influences of Nature and Man" (569). The abundance of similarities to The Minstrel in this passage may account to some extent for the fact that Wordsworth did not place it in The Prelude. Beattie begins his poem with a question that emphasizes the difficulty of the poetic life: "Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb / The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar!" (I.i.i). In wrestling with the problems of his own life as a poet, Wordsworth writes in the rejected part of MS. Y: "Yet who can tell while he this [ ? ] path / H a t h been ascending . . . " (214-45). De Selincourt erred when he stated that Wordsworth had not corrected this passage; for in these lines the poet did eliminate the blank space that seems to call for Beattie's "steep" as an adjective to describe "path," thereby leaving the line shorter than its mates. A similar example of revision may be found in the following passage from Wordsworth's first draft: 'tis not here Record of what hath been, is now no more, N o r secondary work of mimic skill, Transcripts that do but mock their archetypes; But primary and independent life, N o glimmering residue of splendour past, Things in decline or faded. (183-89)

As Wordsworth tries in this passage to account for the fact that the young poet perceives "Sublimity, grave beauty [and] excellence" (180) in nature when he realizes that "the universe . . . is equal to his mind, [and] that each / Is worthy of the other" (171-73), he seems to be recalling two scenes from The Minstrel to help the formulation of his argument. First, one is reminded of the hermit's claim that those who have been "taught to think and feel" by nature pay attention to "History['s] . . . transcripts" (II.xxxv.7-9) only if such records reveal "man's secret heart" (II.xxxv.7); and, second, one thinks of Edwin as an apprentice-poet learning to create in verse "forms of bright perfection" that he derives from "Nature's beauties" (II.lviii.5-7) and that Beattie defines in a foot-

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note as "the immediate archetypes of sublime imitation." Wordsworth's revision of the original draft is even closer to The Minstrel, as he substitutes the following lines: transcripts And imitations are not here that mock Their archetypes, no single residue Of a departed glory, but a world Living and to live no [? ? ?] (182-86)

It seems clear that this rejected part of MS. Fis an outline of the growth of Wordsworth's mind through infancy and boyhood that combines the poet's memories with recollections of Edwin's experiences. As his first retrospective view of his relationship to nature and man, which was soon to grow into Book VIII of the 1805 Prelude, the passage seems to have been so dependent on Beattie's poem for the account of his early development that Wordsworth felt he must set it aside, especially as he had already transcended such literary dependence by writing much of the thirteen-book poem, as the other manuscripts of late 1804 indicate. In his introductory remarks to his second major review of the growth of his mind as recorded in Book X I of the 1805 Prelude, Wordsworth gives a clear expression of his belief that the continuing account of his great struggle to create a poetic vision worthy of his vocation has given him the victory over the disturbing truth about human life that had bewildered and defeated both Edwin and Beattie as poets: Long time hath man's unhappiness and guilt Detained us: with what dismal sights beset For the outward view, and inwardly oppressed With sorrow, disappointment, vexing thoughts, Confusion of the judgement, zeal decayed — And lastly, utter loss of hope itself And things to hope for . . . (1-7)

As if he were remembering Edwin's blighted song of hope, as well as his own fear when writing the Two-Part Prelude in 1798 that he could very "well / Forget what might demand a loftier song" (MS. FS, Parrish, 126), Wordsworth concludes this introductory passage by stressing his determination to persevere in following his high calling: " N o t with these began / O u r Song, and not with these our Song must end" (1805, XI, 7-8). If one is to understand more fully Wordsworth's achievement as a poet, one must consider as important the various effects of The Minstrel

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to be found in the manuscript and published versions of his poetry from the juvenile poems of 1787 to the 1850 Prelude. The influence of Beattie's poem as the fundamental model of the poetic life is epitomized by the metaphor of the mountain-climb as the climactic moment of imaginative perception. In Wordsworth's work, as in The Minstrel, the ascent to the mountaintop is recorded as the poet's ultimate reward for the pursuit of his pilgrimage through the world. But it is the persistent recurrence in Wordsworth's mind and writing of the picture of an Edwin-like bard standing sublimely on a mountain peak that is most striking as evidence of the highest hope of the poetic life. As a result, one may discern in Wordsworth's reliance on The Minstrel at least eight stages in the growth of the poetic mind. In the beginning was the biblical ascent of Mount Sinai, the traditional place of authoritative vision and divine power; next came Beattie's climbs of Scottish mountains in his youth and his recreation of them in Edwin's adventures in The Minstrel (1771), followed by Wordsworth's ascent of Mount Snowdon in 1791 and his recollection of Edwin in his description of a similar event in "Descriptive Sketches" (1791); and, finally, there were Wordsworth's imitations of Beattie's vision of mountain glory in MS. 804) and in the 1805 and 1850 Preludes. The versions of the ascent of Snowdon in the three Preludes all retain the main aspects of Edwin's experience that Wordsworth had used in 1787: the enraptured poet standing on the mountain above the mistcovered world, the voice of waterfalls harmoniously uniting all other sounds, and the poet's sense of awe and wonder at the inexplicable strangeness of it all. Helped by these hints of poetic vision, Wordsworth learned to make "verse / Deal boldly with substantial things" (1805, XII, 233-34) and thereby to discover by writing about his ascent of Snowdon that he had become the "transitory Being" who "beheld . . . the vision" of his own mind in the experience (Prospectus to The Recluse, 97-98). Similarly, by composing the whole poem, Wordsworth in a sense created himself and thereby associated himself in a new way with the Edwin-like "some other being" of his lost childhood in the Two-Part Prelude (MS. RV, Parrish, 169) as he learned in the process to sing a "loftier song" (Parrish, 126) than Beattie's. But that song lost some of its power through Wordsworth's revisions of the Snowdon episode for the 1850 Prelude, which belatedly reveal further interesting affinities with The Minstrel. One effect of Wordsworth's attempts to make The Prelude a more

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formal poem was the restoration to it of some of the characteristic features of its original sources that the poet had deliberately eliminated from it in 1805. His Miltonic allusion to a mind "that broods / Over the dark abyss" (1850, XIV, 71-72), for example, may recall Beattie's sun rising "from th' abyss" with its rays penetrating "the bottomless profound of night" (II.xxi.3-4). Such revisions tend to make the 1850 Prelude into an orthodox, Christian work that is more like The Minstrel than the 1805 Prelude, and that, in the process, is sometimes robbed of some of its power by sounding like Beattie's poem. At such places in the 1850 Prelude, it seems as if Wordsworth is recalling Edwin more nearly than himself as the hero of the poem. Because of such evidence, one should not be surprised to discover not only that Beattie's poem was also influential in the composition of The Excursion but also that much of importance about Wordsworth's poetic career is missed by those who ignore it as well as The Minstrel.

THE EXCUR SION

(1814)

The significance of The Minstrel to Wordsworth's poetic growth can be fully realized only in terms of the intimate relationship between The Excursion and The Prelude. T h e exploration in The Prelude of the retarding and restorative effects of experience on Wordsworth's own mind and imagination are integrally related to the correction of despair as recorded in The Excursion, in which the doctrine is readily identifiable as the central theme of the poet's own life. For, as J. S. Lyon remarks, "the most single purpose of The Excursion resulted from Wordsworth's own pressing need to reconcile himself to the terrible realities of life.'" 0 Wordsworth's awareness that this was also Beattie's great theme is well illustrated by the use of similar scenes, thoughts and characters in both his long poems; and the proof of a direct debt to The Minstrel that is found in the manuscripts of The Prelude may be applied also to The Excursion, as Wordsworth's poems have some manuscripts in common. MS. Y, for example, which contains the first draft of Book VIII of The Prelude and the rejected outline of the poet's growth through infancy and boyhood, was also an important source of The Excursion.

10

J. S. Lyon, The Excursion: A Study (1950; rpt. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, ShoeString Press, 1970), p. 63.

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Such facts show not only that Wordsworth often regarded parts of his poems to be interchangeable but also that his reliance on Beattie's poem was of value to both long poems. In the central books of The Prelude ("Imagination and Taste, H o w Impaired and Restored") and of The Excursion ("Despondency" and "Despondency Corrected"), "Wordsworth is treating the same problem; in The Prelude through direct autobiographical method, and in The Excursion through the indirect method of metaphysical and narrative illustration" (Lyon, 41). Similarly, Beattie's intention of making The Minstrel "rather a philosophical or didactic than a narrative poem" 1 ' precluded the possibility of Edwin ever progressing much beyond adolescence to become a man of action in the world; but as he wrote Beattie was forced to create a kind of narrative to fit his hero's needs. As a result, he thinly disguised his own knowledge and experiences of nature and illustrated them with the adventures of the invented personae of the bard and the hermit, so that he provided the embryonic patterns that are used by Wordsworth in both his poems. Beattie identified so powerfully in these figures the polarity of the dilemma of the poetic life that Wordsworth seems to have been compelled to adopt them, thereby becoming himself a kind of Edwin, grown-up and maturing into the wise philosophical poet who is imaged in the recurrent persona of the recluse.

THE MINSTREL

AS A M O D E L FOR THE

EXCURSION

Since much of The Excursion was written when Wordsworth was struggling to shape his own distinctive poetic mode, it is not surprising that, like The Minstrel, it contains, in addition to many verbal echoes, several scenes, themes and characters that are reminiscent of Beattie's poem. In particular, the Wordsworthian conception and presentation of nature throughout The Excursion bear the unmistakable imprint of Beattie's use of the natural world as a means of exploring the poet's inner world. Edwin's journey is seen as a spiritual pilgrimage over his own (and Beattie's) mental landscape, by which the traditional peregrination through the countryside is transformed into an apt vehicle for the imaginative quest which Wordsworth discovered to be eminently suitable to his pur-

11

Margaret Forbes, Beattie and His Friends (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1904), p. 59.

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poses in both his long poems. As a consequence, the experiences and character of the'Wanderer in Book I of The Excursion are remarkably similar to the adventures and personality of Edwin. Wordworth's poem begins with the poet discovering the aged Wanderer in an out-of-theway, mountainous retreat at sunset (just as Edwin first meets the hermit). Both recluses talk about the vainglorious aspirations of humanity and warn the young poet against the "chaos drear in the mental world" (The Minstrel, II.xx.6). As a result, both poems contain many lugubrious pronouncements about the iniquities of human life, as well as indications of the difficulties of the poetic life. In contrast to such catastrophes of life, both Wordsworth and Beattie emphasize the power of nature to shape poetic ability so that the maturing poet is enabled to feel a deepening communion with the natural world. In addition, the Wanderer, like Edwin, is a Scotsman born and bred, whose early education by nature was greatly enhanced by Scottish folk-lore and fairy-tales. Perhaps the best example of the affinities between the two poems is the great emphasis in each on the importance of mountains to the developing imagination. Beattie was the first poet after Thomson to write impressively about mountains as natural objects of grandeur that help the poet to spiritualize his mental world. Both Edwin and the young Wanderer often climb crags for the joy of the effort and to exult in the prospect to be seen from the summit of the mountain. One is so struck by the similarity of the Wanderer's ecstasy in mountain glory to Edwin's pleasure that one may argue for a direct debt, especially since in The Prelude, as I have shown, Wordsworth uses his very similar ascent of Mount Snowdon as the final symbolic expression in the poem of the power of the imagination. The passage in The Excursion is clearly modelled on another of Edwin's climbs. Wordsworth's youth observed "from the naked top / Of some bold headland . . . the sun / Rise up, and bathe the world in light" (I, 198-200), just as Edwin climbed toward the "crimson clouds" to "the uplands, to survey . . . the kindling dawn" (I.xx.1-2) and was overjoyed as "the [rising] Sun [made] . . . heaven, earth and ocean smile" (I.xx.9). Similarly, the Wanderer viewed from a crag the "ocean . . . the solid frame of earth . . . [and] the clouds. . . touched" by the morning sun (I, 201-03). Because of many such solitary experiences, Beattie calls Edwin the "lone enthusiast" (I.liv.2); and Wordsworth adopts the epithet to describe the young Wanderer's characteristic response to nature's solitude: "In the woods, / A lone Enthusiast, and among the fields . . . he had

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passed / The better portion of his time" (I, 347-50). By appropriating Beattie's very term for the Wanderer, Wordsworth in effect announced that he was creating an Edwin-like as well as a Wordsworthian figure. As a result, the first book of The Excursion is filled with echoes of Beattie's poetic youth. Just as the Wanderer, for example, learned in "the woods . . . [to be tuned] by nature . . . T o sympathy with man" (347-64), so Edwin "hasten'd from the haunt of man / Along the trembling wilderness to stray" (I.liv.6-7) where the hermit taught him about humanity. Wordsworth concludes Book I with a litany of peaceful evening sounds (961-64) that is reminiscent of Beattie's "melodies of morn" (I.xxxviii.l); hence, "the linnet's lay of love" (I.xxxviii.8) in The Minstrel echoes in the warbling of Wordsworth's linnet, while the thrush's song is singled out by Wordsworth from among the "other melodies, / At distance heard" (963-64) to correspond to Beattie's "full choir that wakes the universal grove" (I.xxxviii.9). Beattie's hermit appears to play as important a role in Book II ("The Solitary") as Edwin does in Book I. In the remainder of Wordsworth's poem the characters often remind one of both Edwin and the hermit. Most of Wordsworth's aged figures, for example, seem to have had youthful adventures like Edwin's. Just as the young Wanderer grew into a character resembling closely Beattie's hermit, so the Solitary, who bears even closer affinities to Beattie's recluse, was greatly affected as a Scottish youth by nature's solitude. 12 In addition, the narrator of The Excursion ("The Author," who is presumably Wordsworth) speaks of himself as having had the same Scottish birth and training as Edwin and the Solitary. Years later, Wordsworth spoke about "the influence Scotland had on him in early life" and declared that "he had sought in The Excursion to bring out the spiritual life of Scotland.'" 3 It seems clear that The Minstrel played a part in that influence long before Wordsworth actually visited Scotland in 1804. Wordsworth's interest in the traditional minstrels "of the north countrie" (The Minstrel, I.xi) and his dependence on Beattie's views of 12

13

M. H . Abrams claims that "Wordsworth modeled his description of the early career of the Solitary, the type of the revolutionary fellow-traveler, on one of the most popular of these enthusiasts, Joseph Fawcett. . ." (Natural Supernaturalism [New York: N o r ton, 1973] p. 331). I do not dispute this claim; but, as in the case of the Snowdon climb, I believe that Wordsworth used Beattie's hermit as a literary model for the young Solitary. Thomas Hughes, Memoir of Daniel MacMillan (London: Macmillan, 1882), p. 26.

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ancient as well as modern minstrels are clearly indicated in the opening section of Book II of The Excursion, in which he models his version of the old minstrel on the similar figure in Beattie's poem by copying almost exactly Beattie's words: "How forth the Minstrel far'd in days of yore" (I.iii.3). Hence, Wordsworth begins: "In days of yore how fortunately fared / The Minstrel" (1-2); and he seems content merely to imitate Beattie in other lines as well. Wordsworth's minstrel's harp, his "dear companion whereso'er he w e n t . . . [is] suspended at [his] side" (15-16), while the minstrel's harp in Beattie's poem, which hangs "decent from his bending shoulder" (I.iii.6), is described as "the sole companion of his way" (I.iii.7). In both poems the life of the ancient minstrel is described briefly and then dismissed as if it were too remote in time to be of much use in "these our unimaginative days" (The Excursion, II, 24). Like Wordsworth after him, Beattie rejects the "romantic" medieval minstrel as the proper image of a modern bard and looks instead to "a poor villager" for inspiration (I.iv.2). In both The Minstrel and The Excursion, nevertheless, the ancient minstrel is invoked as a kind of patriarchal muse who will lend reverential awe and authority to the poet's quest. In this way, Wordsworth calls upon Beattie's minstrel for guidance; and in portraying the Solitary as a proper descendant of the minstrel "of yore," Wordsworth makes him a hermit much like Beattie's and gives him similar experiences, especially those that show the profound effect of nature on the mind. While Wordsworth learned much from Beattie's pervasive melancholic view of frail humanity in contrast to nature's apparently permanent forms, he rejected it early, scorning it in both The Prelude and his journal; and he decided instead to cultivate Beattie's hints concerning the much healthier contemplation of nature's solitude. As a result, Wordsworth heeded the hermit's warning that "the man who . . . foregoes nature's solitude / Shall never know the source whence real grandeur springs" (II.x.7-9) by inculcating such wisdom into the Solitary's knowledge of that "frail creature Man" (II, 634) : thus, he writes of "a solitude / That seems by Nature hollowed out to be / The seat and bosom of pure innocence" (II, 622-24). As a result, Wordsworth's presentation of the Solitary's pessimism may be identified with Beattie's "mystic t r a n s p o r t s . . . I Of solitude and melancholy born" (I.lvi.3-4), which are scorned by the muse. In a similar manner, Beattie's views about poetic solitude seem to have become such a preoccupation with Wordsworth that he drew freely on the hermit's thoughts and surroundings in working out the Solitary's

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speeches. As a consequence, the Solitary visits a "spot that lies / Among yon mountains. . . concealed" behind some "craggy summits" (II, 154-56), which is much like the "deep retir'd abode" in a valley hidden behind "a lonely eminence" (II.vi.7-9) where Edwin discovers the hermit. It is soon disclosed that the hermit had "abandon'd [himself] to Ambition's s w a y . . . [to seek] for glory in the paths of guile" (II.xiv.1-2), just as the Solitary had passed by the "unshackled layman's natural liberty; / Speech, manners, morals, all without disguise" (II, 296-97) because, like the hermit, he could see no hope in human endeavour when "envy, scorn, remorse, or pride the bosom wring" (II.xvi.9). Each recluse had retired from the world of men to the "rugged hills" (The Excursion, II, 309) where the Solitary "dwells. . . / Steeped in a self-indulging spleen" (II, 309-11); while, on the contrary, Beattie's hermit will not permit himself to indulge in his "impious spleen" (II.xix.4). Their retreats, each called a "nook," share similar settings, with a valley and mountain crags nearby, and with only one entrance, a natural opening to the south; and each is so remote that visitors hardly ever find it. Near these retreats, at an important point in each poem, the solemn sound of an apparently disembodied voice is heard throughout the valley. In this manner in The Minstrel Edwin hears the hermit for the first time: and in The Excursion the sound is later discovered to have been "a funeral dirge" (II, 376) rising from a procession that is similar to the formal poetic lament over the death of a friend with which Beattie concludes The Minstrel. The "mournful, deep and slow / . . . cadence" of the dirge which is intoned "from out of the heart / Of that profound abyss [by] a solemn voice" in The Excursion (II, 372-76) seems to be modelled on "the solemn voice" (Il.xiii.l) of Beattie's unseen hermit as he describes the sun rising "from th' abyss" and its rays that pierce "the bottomless profound of night" (II.xxi.3-4). There are several passages throughout the remainder of Book II which remind one in general of The Minstrel\ such as those in praise of the chosen life of the Solitary and those that celebrate the harmonizing power of nature; and there are a few lines that describe, sometimes accompanied by verbal echoes, identical scenes from Beattie which reproduce the poet's exhilaration over the wild tempest and his ecstasy over the mountain viewed against clouds or mist. And at least once Wordsworth seems to refer specifically to The Minstrel when the Wanderer attacks one of Voltaire's novels as the "dull product of a scoffer's pen" (II, 484), just as Beattie condemns sceptical philosophers "who snare and stupify the mind" (I.xli). Consequently, the

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Wanderer ends the Book by telling the Solitary that he had "regaled [them] as a hermit ought" (II, 902). The first two Books of The Excursion, then, appear to use The Minstrel to a considerable extent as a model, with the Wanderer and Book I in general bearing a marked resemblance to Edwin and Canto I, and with the Solitary and Book II being reminiscent of the hermit and Canto II. In addition, some of the later Books bear similarities to Beattie's poem; Books III and IV, for example, as their titles indicate ("Despondency" and "Despondency Corrected"), may be read as Wordsworth's attempt to solve the problems associated with the disillusionment that had confronted and confounded Edwin (and Beattie). In each poem, imagination is presented as an enigmatic power of the mind which excites and ultimately disappoints the poetic soul; but, in each case also, imagination is posited as the only means of expressing visionary power. Edwin's early experiences of nature verify the Wanderer's claim that the "imaginative faculty was lord / Of observations natural" (IV, 707-08), so that one is constantly reminded of Edwin in reading about the Wanderer's correction for despair. When the sceptical Solitary asks, for instance, "is it well to trust / Imaginations's light when reason fails?" (IV, 771-72), the Wanderer's rebuttal focusses on the "shepherdladf's] . . . Imagination [which] —not permitted . . . T o waste her powers . . . is left free . . to range the solemn walks / Of time and nature" (IV, 800-24). Consequently, just as the hermit led Edwin through many subjects, past and present, the Wanderer answers the despondent Solitary's question, "Ah! What avails imagination / O r question deep?" (Ill, 209-10), by speaking at great length about the accumulated proof through the ages of the truth of the imagination. In this way, the Wanderer answers the charge of Beattie's hermit that "Fancy enervates, while it soothes, the heart, / And, while it dazzles, wounds the mental sight" (II.xli.1-2); and he thereby demonstrates that the hermit was mistaken in trying to limit Edwin's imaginative life by guiding him into philosophical and intellectual studies (II.xlv). By solving Beattie's problem of the poetic life, then, Wordsworth was enabled to bring The Excursion to its ponderous conclusion. Just as Beattie's influence is underscored by many similarities between The Minstrel and Books I to IV, especially in the first two, so the rest of the poem, having moved outside the limits of Beattie's poem, contains only scanty echoes of The Minstrel. But the one exception to Wordsworth's progression beyond Beattie's schema for the dilemma of the poetic life is

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the nostalgically stylized portrait of the minstrel with which Book VII begins (1-30). In presenting the "impressions of these Narratives upon the Author's mind" (Argument to Book VII), Wordsworth recalls vividly the splendid beauty of nature in his boyhood and the delight with which he listened as a "wandering Youth . . . / To pastoral melody or warlike air / Drawn from the chords of the ancient British harp" (VII, 9-11). While such lines are quite reminiscent of Edwin, as well as of Beattie's picture of the ancient minstrel, the whole passage marks a distinct advance on Beattie's incomplete expression of the growth of professional minstrelsy, for it presents the kind of minstrel that Edwin was likely to become in the conceptions of a poetic mind greater than Beattie's. The uneven poetic quality of the passage shows clearly the way in which Beattie's "Progress of Genius" may be improved beyond the "first dawnings of fancy and reason" (1771 Preface). For Wordsworth's first twenty-six lines are rather weak, as if they rely too heavily on the poet's notion of the sentimentalized minstrel as Beattie might have visualized him; but the concluding four lines, growing out of and gathering strength from their inferior predecessors, carry the inmistakable imprint of Wordsworth's finest touch: A consciousness remained that it had left, Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory, images and precious thoughts, T h a t shall not die, and cannot be destroyed. (VII, 27-30)

T H E IMPORTANCE OF W O R D S W O R T H ' S DEBT T O THE MINSTREL In addition to the often fresh and sometimes original aspects of some of Beattie's thoughtful expressions concerning nature and life, it was, I believe, the authenticity of the poetic character as revealed in Edwin which captured and held Wordsworth's interest in The Minstrel. While verbal echoes and the repetition of ideas and phrases from Beattie's poem throughout Wordsworth's poetry may be negligible in themselves, they can be viewed, nevertheless, as to some extent natural accretions to the much more significant Wordsworthian response to Beattie's concept of poetic identity; and, as such, they reveal something of Wordsworth's methods of composition as the expression of the growth of his mind and imagination. Wordsworth indicated in 1795 at a very important time in

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his career not only that he closely identified Edwin with his own youthful self but also that he sometimes found apt expression of his own experiences in The Minstrel. T h e poet's recovery from disillusionment over the French Revolution and the nationalistic mood of Britain was achieved at this time largely through the writing of poetry which amounted to a rededication of himself to the high vocation of poet. This renewal of his calling was marked by the rereading of Beattie's poem which seems to have come spontaneously to his mind in response to the sudden recurrence of the mystical experience of nature that had been denied to him since his youth. As Wordsworth recounts in a letter on 23 October 1795 a "charming walk over the hills of Lyme" during which he "could hear the murmuring of the sea for three miles", a recollection of a similar event in The Minstrel comes to his mind. As a result, in his letter he quotes from Beattie's poem to illuminate his response as he stood "listening with pleasing dread to the deep roar / Of the wide-weltering waves" (I.liv.3-4). 14 At this time Wordsworth was on the verge of making himself into a great poet; for, as Stephen Gill claims, the poems of this period "reveal the progress of a great mind from indebtedness of various kinds to the more original excercise of its power.'" 5 In 1795 as at other times, The Minstrel indicated to Wordsworth the possibility of new concepts and new directions in poetry. The results in The Prelude, The Excursion and in other poems, as in The Minstrel, are poetic journeys into the solitude of nature; and these create in turn an imaginative landscape of the mind to be explored and defined. Moreover, all these accounts emphasize the need for the young poet to be disciplined by the wisdom of the sage. As the young Wordsworth grows into the mature poet, he demonstrates his debt to The Minstrel in his poetry, but especially in his two long poems, by fulfilling Beattie's "Progress of Genius" in the growth of his own imaginative mind. It is clear that for a long time Wordsworth thought, and could not avoid thinking, a great deal about The Minstrel, and that he was to some extent urged on by the persistence of Beattie's vision to confront and to resolve the problems of his poetic life.

14

15

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Later Years, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), p. 1334. The Salisbury Plain Poems of William Wordsworth, ed. Stephen Gill (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 16.

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Since Wordsworth seems to have used The Minstrel as a Romantic commonplace book to a greater extent than has been acknowledged by himself or later critics, one may claim that when one perceives the presence of Beattie's poem as a kind of catalytic agent in Wordsworth's poetry one is led to a fuller understanding of the achievement of both poets. The Minstrel is then seen as a better poem than received criticism allows it to be; while Wordsworth's contemplation and use of it show that he was often uncertain of the poetic path that he was to tread, as well as of his ability to follow it. This view of Wordsworth's poetic development is somewhat different from the impression that one gets from reading his finished poems, such as the 1850 Prelude, and from the view of those modern critics who sometimes seem to discuss the autobiographical poems as if their greatness were somehow instantaneously fullblown and not the result of constant imitation, emulation and experimentation, as I have attempted to show. Wordsworth's extensive use of The Minstrel as a model of poetic autobiography illuminates considerably the lengthy, difficult, sometimes tentative, often exhilarating process of self-discovery and expression which is fundamental to his greatest achievement as a poet.

CLAUS UHLIG

Literature — Philosophy — Religion: On Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

T h e Victorian age is a time characterized by as many doubts as hopes. Literature, philosophy, and religion coexist in close neighbourhood and in their various ways cooperate in seeking the truth. Yet in spite o f , or rather on account of, their manifold interrelations, the affinities between them can only be called uneasy, if not downright precarious. From the point of view of both intellectual and social history the age is indeed a most difficult and complex one, 1 and Victorian writers themselves are well aware of the fact. Thus, T h o m a s Carlyle writes in Past and Present (1843): . . . the times are really strange; of a complexity intricate with all the new width of the ever-widening world; times here of half-frantic velocity of impetus, there of the deadest-looking stillness and paralysis; times definable as showing two qualities, Dilettantism and Mammonism; — most intricate obstructed times!2 Here a keynote is struck which is to have its echo twenty years later in Matthew Arnold's essay on Heinrich H e i n e : Modern times find themselves with an immense system of institutions, established facts, accredited dogmas, customs, rules, which have come to them from times not modern. In this system their life has to be carried forward; yet they have a sense that this system is not of their own creation, that it by no means corresponds exactly with the wants of their actual life, that, for them, it is customary, not rational. 3

1

2

3

C. Geoffrey Tillotson, A View of Victorian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), pp. 4-5. Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, I, iii, in Thomas Carlyle's Works, The Standard Edition, 18 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1904-5), III, 15-16. Hereafter referred to as Works. Matthew Arnold, "Heinrich Heine" (1863), in The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super, 11 vols. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Michigan Univ. Press, 1960-76), III, 107-32, esp. 109. Hereafter cited as CPW.

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While differing in intellectual outlook and social commitment, Carlyle and Arnold both agree in essence about the dominant tendencies of their age: i.e., its tensions and dualities, so conspicuous in all spheres of life. It would be simplistic, however, to reduce these to a contrast between, say, optimism on the one hand and pessimism on the other, 4 or, more dangerous still, to pit the luxury of the Regency against the squalor and misery of the new industrialism. 5 Victorian tensions and dualities reach far deeper than that; they affect the life of the mind itself. This is not an allusion to yet another familiar opposition — namely, that between agnosticism and belief; 6 for not only were time-honoured creeds threatening to dissolve but a new spirit of questioning the validity of traditions was beginning to inform Victorian habits of thought at large and even the very style of the period's expository and critical prose. As the above quotations from Carlyle and Arnold may already have shown, an antithetical style — Carlyle's contrast between "velocity" and "stillness," for instance, or Arnold's between "customary" and "rational" — would in fact appear to be the only adequate means of expression in an age of dualisms. N o t knowing with certainty where to turn or which option to choose might, in other words, well produce the see-saw rhythm we so often encounter in Victorian writing. It is, at any rate, an aspect of the literature of the period which does deserve closer investigation. Speaking, in the text already referred to, of the lack of correspondence between the old and the new, "between the forms of modern Europe and its spirit," Arnold at the same time points out how this "want of correspondence" could be remedied: "Dissolvents of the old European system of dominant ideas and facts we must all be", he writes, "all of us who have any power of working . . ."7 It comes as no small surprise to discover in Arnold a forerunner of today's "deconstructive criticism;" 8 so

4

5 6

7 8

Cf. Emile Legouis and Louis Cazamian, A History of English Literature, trans. H . D. Irvine and W. D. Maclnnes, rev. ed. (London: Dent, 1957), pp. 1094-95. Cf. Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas (London: Dent, 1974), p. 10. Cf. G. M. Young, Victorian England: A Portrait of an Age (London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1936; repr. 1937), p. 109; Legouis and Cazamian, A History of English Literature, p. 1111; and Karl-Dieter Ulke, Agnostisches Denken im Viktorianischen England(Freiburg and Munich: Alber, 1980). Arnold, "Heinrich Heine"; CPW, III, 109-10. For the critical method in question see J. Hillis Miller, "The Critic as Host," in Harold Bloom et al., Deconstruction and Criticism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979),

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let us apply the method advocated to his own and, by extension, to some of his contemporaries' writings in order to "deconstruct" the intellectual structures of those who, together with Arnold, search for principles of order in view of rapid social change, epistemological instability and the absence of a knowable God.

I

It has been adumbrated that Victorian expository and critical prose is fond of practising an antithetical style and working with oppositions. This is nothing new, though; for in themselves oppositions are as old as living memory. They are, so to speak, embedded in language itself, and seem to be as pervasive as the words signifying negation or exclusion ("not", "either . . . or"). W h a t is more, opposition manifests itself in all those basic notions which occur in antithetical pairs; for example, good and evil, life and death, war and peace, pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, universal and particular, necessity and contingency, same and other, one and many. These are indeed basic or primal opposites, quite obviously belonging to the vocabulary of common speech and used at almost every level of discourse. Along with them one may mention terms which, although not paired in the same automatic way, stand opposed to one another: art to nature, body to soul, chance to fate, liberty to slavery, time to eternity, knowledge to opinion, matter to form or spirit. Oppositions like these and similar ones, most often encountered in theological and philosophical texts, seem to be so intimately bound up with the habits of thought that they are hardly ever pondered as a theme in their own right. Yet we would be ill-advised to take oppositions as such for granted, seeing that Aristotle already deemed it necessary to classify their various modes. Accordingly, he used to distinguish between four types of opposite terms: correlative opposites, contrary ones, the opposition of possession and privation and, lastly, the opposites of affirmation and negation. 9 Of these four kinds of opposition only the first two —

9

pp. 217-53, esp. 251; Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London and New York: Methuen, 1982), pp. 18-41, 90-125; and T e r r y Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction ( O x f o r d : Blackwell, 1983), pp. 132-33, 145-48. See Aristotle, Categories, x, 1 lb—13b; and Metaphysics, IV, ii, 1004a-1005a; V, x, 1018a; X , iv, 1055a-b.

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namely, correlation and contrariety — have a direct bearing on our topic, because conceptual architecture in texts, while dependent on both correlative and contrary opposites, can scarcely be effected through privation and negation, which do not admit of intermediate or mediating terms. For the moment there is no need to enter further into the theme of opposition, with all its philosophical ramifications; suffice it instead to single out for inspection a striking instance of polarity in the form of "brotherly dissimilitudes" from a seventeenth-century text. In Areopagitica (1644) Milton, having described the building of the Temple of the Lord (1 Kings, 5-6) with a view to defending the need for schisms among Christians, "ere the house of God can be built," continues by saying: A n d w h e n every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot b e united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither can every peece of the building be of o n e form; nay rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportionall arises the g o o d l y and the gracefull symmetry that c o m m e n d s the w h o l e pile and structure. 10

In what follows immediately upon this, Milton urges more wisdom in "spirituall architecture, when great reformation is expected," thereby possibly not only revealing the organizing principle of his own thinking" but also, in the word "architecture," providing us with the very term pertinent to a "deconstructive" analysis of Victorian habits of thought and methods of writing, even though his adjective "spiritual" should for obvious reasons be replaced by the attribute "conceptual." In suggesting such a transumptive use of terms, however, care must be taken not to overlook the time gap between the seventeenth century and the nineteenth. For if it is true that the principle of style includes a view of the world, one cannot fail to notice how close Milton's way of phrasing still is to Renaissance analogizing, bent as it was on marking "similitudes," whereas later ages (to avail ourselves of Michel Foucault's insight into the nature of epochal changes) tended to order their world

10

11

Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Ernest Sirluck (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1959), II, 480-570, esp. 555. See Edward W. Tayler, Milton's Poetry: Its Development in Time (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne, 1979), p. 203.

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according to "identities" and "differences," not to mention the impact of history, which had made itself fully felt by the nineteenth century. 12 Notwithstanding the epistemological changes indicated, albeit briefly, an eminent Victorian logician such as Alexander Bain is still in a position to maintain, not unlike Milton, the duality of every experience characterized through "brotherly dissimilitudes": T h e e s s e n t i a l r e l a t i v i t y o f all k n o w l e d g e , t h o u g h t , o r c o n s c i o u s n e s s , c a n n o t b u t s h o w itself in l a n g u a g e . If e v e r y t h i n g t h a t w e c a n k n o w is v i e w e d as a transition f r o m s o m e t h i n g else, every experience must have t w o sides; and either every n a m e must have a double meaning, or else for every m e a n i n g there must be t w o names.13

Linking up with the above observations on oppositions as an integral part of all language, this passage at the same time points directly to the antithetical quality of much Victorian prose, and one begins to understand that its ubiquitous yearning for oneness, wholeness, or totality must stem from a painful sense of the relativity of everything. Under these circumstances, then, the leading writers of the Victorian period, the "architects of the age," as they were appositely labelled in 1851,14 turn to history, the most promising field of endeavour at the time, in order either to escape from, to put it in Walter Pater's words, their "late age of philosophic disillusion,'" 5 or to look into the past for the benefit of the present. In point of fact, the "new sciences" of the nineteenth century, above all evolutionary biology, are all sciences "in time," governed as history itself is by temporal methodologies. 16 And no matter whether the philosophy of history of Victorian writers is in-

12

Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie

des sciences humaines

(Paris:

Gallimard, 1966), pp. 65, 7 1 - 7 2 ; Foucault, The Order of Things, ( N e w York: Random, 1973), pp. 63 ff. 13

Alexander Bain, Logic: Deductive

and Inductive,

rev. ed. ( N e w York: Appleton, 1889),

p. 54; as quoted in Tayler, Milton's Poetry, p. 202. 14

See E. P. H o o d , The Age and its Architects

(London: Partridge and Oakley, 1851); as

mentioned in Y o u n g , Victorian England, p. 87. 15

Walter Pater, Plato and Platonism:

A Series of Lectures, N e w Library Edition (London:

Macmillan, 1910), p. 265. 16

See Jerome Hamilton Buckley, The Triumph of Time: Study of the Victorian Concepts of Time, History,

Progress, and Decadence

(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard

Univ. Press, 1966), p. 6; as well as J. W. Burrow, Evolution

and Society; A Study in Vic-

torian Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966; repr. 1968).

168

Claus Uhlig

formed by the cyclical theory of the ancient Greeks or the linear conception of the Christian era, its basic intention is always to speculate on the possibility of finding patterns of recurrence, or at least meaningful analogies with their own time.17 Thus, it would seem to be out of the question ever really to escape from the present. But, insofar as theories of history are mirrors of the mind and sensibility of their respective ages, it stands to reason that the Victorians, by eclectically embracing both the cyclical and the progressive view, succumb to yet another logical, or rather, for them, psychological polarity, thereby becoming unable to mediate between the idea of progress and the idea of decadence, the twin aspects of that all-encompassing history they nevertheless passionately believe in.18 Tensions, dualities and antithetical feelings, therefore, appear to be the fate of the Victorian period. And whenever its social and cultural critics look to history in their quest for balance and equilibrium, they more often than not find themselves forced to construct the wholeness they seek in the first place. Conversely, what may also happen in the process is a foisting of the dualisms of the present on the shape of the past, whereby the latter becomes most picturesquely enriched. Both methods of conceptual architecture have their adherents in Victorian England, as will be seen presently; and in order to study in some detail how the age strives to transcend its social, psychological, moral and cultural dualisms with the help of history, whose cyclicity and linearity provide enduring alternatives for the human mind after all, we shall now focus our attention on Carlyle, Arnold and Pater.

II T o start chronologically (that is, with Thomas Carlyle), there cannot be any doubt that for him history is the leading discipline of his day. H e tells us as much in his theoretical essay "On History" (1830) as well as in its sequel, "On History Again" (1833); 19 and although he regards history's aspiration to philosophical status with due nineteenth-century

17 18

19

See Buckley, The Triumph of Time, p. 3. See Frank E. Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1965), p. 5; and Buckley, The Triumph of Time, p. 13. See Carlyle, Works, V, 495-505; VI, 405-12.

169

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

scepticism, he allows it to reign supreme in his mature social criticism. For, having been deeply involved, in pamphlets like Signs of the Times (1829) and Chartism (1839), in the "condition-of-England question," as he used to call it,20 he later changed his tone and sought to treat the social problems of the period from a higher vantage point. Past and Present (1843) was the result, and familiarity with history helped Carlyle to effect the transition in style mentioned. T o be sure, Past and Present owes its existence to outraged sympathy with England's proletarian work force, harassed by a capitalist minority, 21 but in exposing the blatant deficiencies of nineteenth-century Industrialism by contrast with selected aspects of the bygone feudal civilization of the Middle Ages, a contemporary political movement such as Chartism, Carlyle's former serious concern, can now suddenly be presented in an ironic light,22 because, as George P. Landow has remarked, "the secular prophet who finds spiritual significance in actual historical events often adopts the tone and methods of the satirist." 23 The topical is thus, to use Hegel's term, "sublated" in a higher order and amenable to generalizing discussion. Likewise, Carlyle's emphatic prediction of a "Chivalry of Labour" 24 sounds less extraordinary in a generalized (that is to say, historicized) context than would otherwise be the case, since it now appears as the natural consequence of the aristocracy's having abdicated their former social responsibilities. Hopefully convinced that such a chivalry of work would convert idle aristocrats into a real governing class, and hard-working but selfish mill-owners into noble "Captains of Industry," 25 Carlyle, as has been said, looks back to the Middle Ages to find a point of orientation for his social criticism and a foil for the present. In this artistic device he had of course been anticipated by contemporaries such as Robert Southey or

20

See Carlyle, Works, VII, 2 5 3 - 3 2 7 , esp. 2 5 5 - 5 9 .

21

See Tillotson, A View of Victorian Community,

Literature,

and Police in Nineteenth-Century

p. 69; and David Jones, Crime,

Protest,

Britain (London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1982), p. 11. 22

For instances of this see Past and Present, I, iv, v, vi; II, iii, xvi; Works, III, 21, 25, 30, 45, 104 (". . . and to temper Dilettantism, and astonish it, and burn it up with infernal fire, arises Chartism, Bare-back-ism,

23

George P. Landow, Victorian

Sansculottism so-called!"). Carlyle's emphasis.

Times, Victorian

Shadows: Biblical

Typology in

Victorian

Literature, Art, and Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 116. 24

Past and Present, IV, v, viii; Works, III, 233, 249.

25

Past and Present, IV, iv; Works, III, 2 2 7 - 3 2 .

170

Claus Uhlig

Augustus Welby Pugin, who, together with others, were longing for a fixed order: that is, for a society more stable and an intellectual temper more unified than the Victorian age was capable of; 26 yet admittedly Past and Present is one of the most eloquent statements of the theme of epochal opposition. It deserves further notice that not only Carlyle's immersion in the past but also the Victorian cult of medievalism at large is far more than mere nostalgia for a supposed golden age, since it stems from the first serious scholarly exploration in Britain of the world of the Middle Ages. Suffice it here to recall the activities of the Chaucer Society, the Early English Text Society or the Camden Society, all founded in the mid-nineteenth century and intent on producing authoritative medieval texts — from one of which, The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, Carlyle took the story of Abbot Samson and the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds for adaptation in Past and PresentF Recreating thus the twelfth-century Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds ruled by the strong but kind Abbot Samson, and deliberately setting it against Victorian Utilitarianism, with its laissez-faire mentality, and especially against the deterioration of human relations to the elementary rules of the cash nexus,28 Carlyle works, from the point of view of historical method, on the assumption that the past is both continuous and discontinuous with the present. As for continuity, he sees it exemplified in the life-tree of the old Norse Edda and writes: T h e Past is a dim indubitable fact: the Future t o o is o n e , o n l y dimmer; nay properly it is the same fact in n e w dress and development. For the Present holds it in both the w h o l e Past and the w h o l e Future; — as the L I F E - T R E E I G D R A S I L , w i d e - w a v i n g , many-toned, has its roots d o w n deep in the D e a t h - k i n g d o m s , a m o n g the oldest dead dust of men, and with its boughs reaches always b e y o n d the stars; and in all times and places is o n e and the same Life-tree! 2 9

26 27

28

29

See Altick, Victorian People and Ideas, pp. 105-6. Past and Present, II, i; Works, III, 34. For Victorian medievalism see Ian Bradley, William Morris and His World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 11; and Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 129-44, esp. 130-32. Past and Present, II, vi; Works, III, 56. Cf. also George P. Landow, Images of Crisis: Literary Iconology 1750 to the Present (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 110. Past and Present, I, vi; Works, III, 32. Carlyle's emphasis.

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

171

This is an almost classical statement of the linear and progressive view of history, expressed through a highly poetical master-trope to boot; 30 still, belief in it does not, with Carlyle, preclude reference to the cyclical conception — i.e., "the circle of revolving ages"31 — let alone a distinct awareness of the time gap between the past and the present which stands in the way of adequate understanding: T o predict the Future, to m a n a g e the Present, w o u l d not be so impossible, h a d n o t t h e P a s t b e e n s o s a c r i l e g i o u s l y m i s h a n d l e d ; e f f a c e d , a n d w h a t is w o r s e , d e f a c e d ! T h e P a s t c a n n o t b e s e e n ; t h e P a s t , l o o k e d at t h r o u g h t h e m e d i u m o f ' P h i l o s o p h i c a l H i s t o r y ' in t h e s e t i m e s , c a n n o t e v e n b e not

seen:

it is m i s s e e n ; a f f i r m e d t o h a v e e x i s t e d , — a n d t o h a v e b e e n a g o d l e s s I m p o s sibility. 3 2

Based on Carlyle's historiographic distinction between "Epochs of Belief" and "Epochs of Unbelief," 33 the passage quoted gives evidence — and that contrary to what is alleged by Gadamer, for instance, about the whole nineteenth century 34 — of the fact that the "historicity of understanding" is far from being an alien thought to the author of Past and Present. W h a t Carlyle does not notice, however, is the threat to his entire argument coming from the unmediated opposition — and it is on no account a "brotherly dissimilitude" — between temporal continuity and temporal discontinuity. There is no point, therefore, in telling us that "the Centuries. . . are all lineal children of one another," 35 when, on the other hand, "impenetrable Time-Curtains" are said to "rush down," 36 debarring us for ever from a really authentic picture of the past which could stand us in stead in illuminating the present.

30

For further instances of this view see Past and Present, II, i, ii, xvii; IV, i, iii; Works, III, 33, 42, 110, 210, 225; and "On History Again"; Works, VI, 405.

31 32

Past and Present, II, xv; Works, III, 99. Past and Present, IV, i; Works, III, 201. Carlyle's emphasis. Cf. also Past and Present, II, xvi, xvii; IV, i; Works, III, 106, 107, 202.

33

See Jürgen Kedenburg, Teleologisches

Geschichtsbild

und theokratische

Staatsauffassung

im Werke Thomas Carlyles (Heidelberg: Winter, 1960), pp. 2 7 - 6 8 . 34

Cf. H a n s - G e o r g Gadamer, Wahrheit Hermeneutik,

und Methode:

Grundzüge

einer

philosophischen

3rd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972), pp. 2 5 0 - 9 0 ; and, for a critique of Ga-

damer's position, E. D . Hirsch, Jr., Validity

in Interpretation

don: Yale Univ. Press, 1967; repr. 1973), pp. 2 4 5 - 6 4 . 35

Past and Present, II, i; Works, III, 33.

36

Past and Present, II, xvi; Works, III, 106.

( N e w H a v e n and Lon-

172

Claus Uhlig

These observations are not tantamount to questioning Carlyle's empathy with the Middle Ages; they try, rather, to suggest that his juxtaposition of past and present is ill-grounded in historical theory, in that it attempts to insinuate correlation where there is contradictory opposition. What appears to be missing in Carlyle's argument is a concept such as Collingwood's "incapsulation" of the past in the present, whereby the latter becomes transparent to the former and allows their two colours to combine into one.37 Failing that, the author of Past and Present would seem to have built on sand, not precisely inspiring confidence in his powers as conceptual architect. Most debilitating to the structure of his whole book is perhaps his wish to reach, by extrapolation from the medieval past, into the future of his country, 38 for by thus practising "historical inversion" in the sense of Bakhtin, 39 he tends to enrich the past at the expense of the future he professes to be first and foremost interested in. Seen in this perspective, his frankly idealized version of the past appears like a form of inauthentic compensation for all that is wanting in the present and hoped for in the future. And no master-trope, no "grand 'outline'," 40 can disguise the truth: namely, that owing to the method of "historical inversion" both the future and the present must be the poorer for his apotheosis of the past. T o give just one instance of this: that in the very year of the publication of Past and Present Gladstone had entered Peel's Conservative cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, where he was able to lay the foundations of his nation's further growth in wealth, Carlyle, the Puritan and prophet, did not care to know. 41 Through a certain degree of partiality, then, Past and Present falls short of the ideal of balanced social criticism, opening itself up instead, stylistically speaking, to the unchecked play of opposition and antithesis one meets on virtually every page of the text. The central image of this

37

Cf. R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography

(Oxford: O x f o r d Univ. Press, 1939; repr.

1970), p. 98; cf. also pp. 100, 114. 38 39

Cf. Past and Present, IV: "Horoscope"; Works, III, 2 0 1 - 5 1 . Cf. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic

Imagination:

Four Essays, ed. M. Holquist, trans.

C . E m e r s o n and M. Holquist (Austin and London: Univ. of Texas Press,

1981),

pp. 146-51. 40

Past and Present, IV, i; Works, III, 210.

41

This point is made by D o u g l a s Jerrold in his introduction to Thomas Carlyle, Past and

42

Past and Present, II, xv; Works, III, 93. Cf. also I, ii, v; Works, III, 6 , 1 1 , 24.

Present (London: Dent, 1912, repr. 1976), p. ix.

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

173

tension and dualism in Carlyle is t h e Sphinx, uniting without reconciling in herself oppositions such as inner and outer, fact and semblance, or temporary and eternal, to name only the most basic ones that structure the book "by rule of antagonisms." 42 Employing as one of its favourite devices negation through the prefix "un-" — witness, for example, "unbelief," "unjust," or the idiosyncratic "unworker," as well as "unlaws" 43 — Carlyle's language, a compound of Hebrew prophecy and German transcendentalism, 4 4 is as simple as it is emphatic. Yet constant reiteration of the obvious does not help the Victorians to get, in the words of Carlyle himself, "across the chasm of Seven Centuries" 45 and to reinhabit a world of "serene or complete Religion." 46 N o r is anti-democratic heroworship, as quite a few of Carlyle's contemporary and modern critics have pointed out, 47 a solution to the problems of an age beset with religious doubt and social unrest.

Ill Whether it was now given to Matthew Arnold to p r o f f e r a more satisfactory answer will be seen when his critical writings are likewise subjected to a "deconstructive" analysis. A m o n g these, pride of place must surely be accorded to Culture and Anarchy (1869), his most sustained exposition of paired opposites in the sphere of both life and thought. T h e very title of this most influential essay already points to an opposition between the poles of which reconciliation is inconceivable. As defined by Arnold in a process of gradual reinforcement, culture, which is indeed the cornerstone of his conceptual architecture, is to be understood as the panacea f o r all the evils of his time. T h e r e f o r e , he explains, his purpose in Culture and Anarchy is to 43 44

45 46 47

Past and Present, I, i, vi; II, iii, xvi; III, i; ITorfa, III, 5, 31, 46, 101, 115-22. See Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold (London: Chatto and Windus, 1955), p. 113. Past and Present, II, ii; Works, III, 41. Past and Present, II, iv; Works, III, 51. Representative are: Michael Goldberg, "A Universal 'howl of execration': Carlyle's Latter-Day Pamphlets and their Critical Reception," in John Clubbe, ed., Carlyle and His Contemporaries: Essays in Honor of Charles Richard Sanders (Durham, N . C.: Duke, 1976), pp. 129-47; and Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780-19)0 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1967), pp. 82-83. — For Carlyle's advocacy of "heroworship" in Past and Present too, see I, vi; III, xiii; Works, III, 28-32, 176-86.

174

Claus Uhlig r e c o m m e n d culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to k n o w , o n all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the w o r l d ; and through this k n o w l e d g e , turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits . . . ,48

It should be emphasized, however, that Arnold, in whom so much of Carlyle lives on and bears fruit, 49 does not conceive of culture as an individualistic and selfish pursuit but, at least in intention, as a human as well as a social ideal, to be envisaged "as a harmonious perfection, developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, developing all parts of our society." 50 Hence its political implications, and, we may add, the feasibility of contrasting it with the notion of anarchy in the first place. Now, seeing that anarchy has to be counteracted by a principle of authority, culture, in the process of Arnold's complex argument, is bound to shift from the social idea to the political one, which evokes the concept of the State on the Continental, especially Prussian, model. Yet its realization in England is obstructed by the country's class system, since neither the aristocracy ("Barbarians"), nor the middle classes ("Philistines"), nor the working classes ("Populace") for that matter, are in Arnold's view suitable candidates for the exercise of power. Besides, the concept of class itself is at odds with that of the State by definition. 51 This is, in essence, the intricate structure of the argument in Culture and Anarchy, based as it is on an all but endless series of irreconcilable opposites. N o t content, though, with what might up to this point appear too topical, Arnold, albeit averse to "generalities" and "systems," 52 then 48

49

50

51

52

Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, "Preface"; CPW, V, 233. Cf. also 245, 246, 249, 252. Cf. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, ii; CPW, V, 124; see also: Kathleen Tillotson, "Matthew Arnold and Carlyle," Proceedings of the British Academy, 42 (1956), 133-53; and Robert H . Super, The Time-Spirit of Matthew Arnold (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Michigan Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 8, 37-39. Culture and Anarchy, "Preface"; CPW, V, 235. Arnold's emphasis. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, i, pp. 112-14. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, i-iii; CPW, V, 90-162; see also: Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold (New York: Norton, 1939; repr. London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), pp. 276-79; Patrick J. McCarthy, Matthew Arnold and the Three Classes (New York and London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 48-138, esp. 76, 105; and Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950, pp. 119-25. Culture and Anarchy, vi, i; CPW, V, 192, 109. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, "Introduction," ch. v; CPW, V, 88, 180.

175

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

opens up the historical perspective, introducing (for "rhetorical purpose," as he puts it) the most famous dichotomy of all — the contrast between "Hebraism" and "Hellenism" — in order to account more fully for the divergent tendencies in nineteenth-century British life. Hellenism and Hebraism are, according to his philosophy of history, two recurrent and competing phases of human development, succeeding each other through the ages. Thus the Hellenism of pagan Antiquity was followed by the Hebraism of early Christianity, only to be revived in the Renaissance and then again discarded for the Hebraism of the Reformation, which in England, of all countries, through Puritanism or other manifestations of Nonconformism, has influenced the mentality of the nation ever since. Neither of them constituting the whole law of human development, they each separately contribute to it, Hebraism being characterized by "strictness of conscience", and Hellenism by "spontaneity of consciousness. ,i3 Despite this apt and well-balanced description, Arnold does not conceal his sympathies; in fact, he deplores England's having "entered the prison of Puritanism," as he terms it in his essay "Heinrich Heine" (1863), 54 and throughout Culture and Anarchy pleads for a return, if not to the Renaissance, then at least to its ideal of Hellenism, which shows itself in seeking "sweetness and light": i.e., full human perfection. 55 Scholarship has unearthed the German roots (Ludwig Borne and Heinrich Heine, among others) of Arnold's historical speculations about Hellenism, said by him to be "of Indo-European growth," and Hebraism, "of Semitic growth," 56 but has so far insufficiently pondered the theoretical implications of his assuming "alternations of Hebraism and Hellenism" in history. 57 Far from being "dialectical" in any sense of the word, the two tendencies in question seem to all intents and purposes

53

Culture and Anarchy, iv, v; CPW, V, 163-91, esp. 165, 176. Arnold's emphasis.

54

Arnold, CPW, III, 121.

55

Culture

and Anarchy,

v, i; CPW,

V, 1 7 6 - 9 1 , 9 0 - 1 1 4 . Cf. also Francine B. Malder,

"Matthew Arnold and the Idea of Progress," The Centennial

Review,

19 (1975),

2 3 2 - 4 8 , esp. 237. 56 57

Culture and Anarchy, iv; CPW, V , 173. Culture and Anarchy, iv; CPW, V , 171. For Arnold's sources see Trilling, Matthew nold, p. 256; and above all David J. DeLaura, Hebrew land: Newman, pp. 181-91.

Arnold,

and Hellene

in Victorian

ArEng-

and Pater (Austin and London: Univ. of Texas Press, 1969),

176

Claus Uhlig

mutually exclusive. 58 For, inasmuch as the one destroys what the other might have effected, their counteraction produces standstill rather than development for the better. Commenting upon the sudden end of the Renaissance in England, Arnold quotes from the Book of Job: " H e enlargeth a nation, and straiteneth it again" (12:23), 5 9 thereby revealing one of the sources f o r his pervasive belief in alternating epochs of "expansion" and "concentration," 6 0 even if one cannot help being reminded of Goethe's rhythmical sequence of diastole and systole. Whatever his inspiration, observing that "aristocracies, those children of the established fact, are f o r epochs of concentration" — in other words, incapable of coping with "the flux of things" in modern "epochs of expansion" 61 — betrays deep insight into the mechanism of society on Arnold's part, detrimental though it is to his whole plea in favour of the progress of culture and perfection. 62 Seeing that progress cannot really be envisaged where there is reliance on cyclical recurrence — and, together with his father, T h o m a s Arnold, and other "Liberal Anglicans" of his day, Arnold holds cyclical rather than linear concepts of historical time 63 — the entire structure of Culture and Anarchy rests on conservative premises. T h e social implications of views of time and history were once remarked upon by W . H . A u d e n :

58

Pace DeLaura, Hebrew

and Hellene in Victorian England, pp. 1 6 5 - 7 0 ; and Peter Krahe,

Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold: rarische Verarbeitung

Die weltanschauliche

Krise und ihre lite-

(Bonn: Bouvier, 1978), pp. 199-203.

59

Arnold, "Heinrich Heine"; CPW, III, 121.

60

For this belief see Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1864); CPW, III, 2 5 8 - 8 5 , esp. 269; also Culture and Anarchy, ii; CPW, V, 124. As to Arnold's British sources (Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, John H e n r y N e w m a n ) , see D e Laura, Hebrew

and Hellene in Victorian England, pp. 7 3 - 7 5 . Of related interest, it may

be noted here, is Arnold's concept of alternating epochs of creative synthesis and critical analysis in history; cf. Charles Mahan, "Matthew Arnold's Concept of History," Studies in the Humanities, «

1 (1970), 19-30.

Culture and Anarchy, ii; CPW, V , 124-25.

62

Cf. Culture and Anarchy, vi; CPW, V , 219.

63

See Charles R. Moyer, "The Idea of History in Thomas and Matthew Arnold," Modern Philology,

67 (1969), 1 6 0 - 6 7 , esp. 161; Francine B. Malder, "Matthew Arnold and the

Circle of Recurrence," Victorian Poetry, 14 (1976), 2 9 3 - 3 0 9 , esp. 295; and Peter Allan Dale, The Victorian

Critic and the Idea of History:

Carlyle, Arnold,

bridge, Mass., and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977), p. 54.

and Pater (Cam-

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

177

. . . t h e s o c i a l c o n c e p t i o n o f t i m e in a l a n d o w n i n g s o c i e t y is c y c l i c a l — t h e f u t u r e is e x p e c t e d t o b e a r e p e t i t i o n o f t h e past. B u t in a m e r c a n t i l e s o c i e t y t i m e is c o n c e i v e d o f as a u n i l i n e a r f o r w a r d m o v e m e n t in w h i c h t h e f u t u r e is always novel and unpredictable."64

O n the evidence of his philosophy of history alone, then, Arnold must be called conservative; and one begins to understand why he, a son of the middle class, lacks perfect sympathy f o r the working class and feels drawn to the values of the aristocracy — in fact, the only class afraid of change, and one comforted by predictable repetition, or by what J. H . Plumb has called "the sanction of the past." 65 T o avoid misunderstanding, it should be added that there is nothing intrinsically w r o n g with a conservative position, provided it is based on a solid conceptual framework. Arnold's, however, is not; otherwise he would not have tried to persuade us to accept an unreal opposition between the unlimited freedom of democracy on the one hand and the wholesome steadiness of aristocratic rule on the other, 6 6 let alone his ultimately spurious assertion that "the men of culture are the true apostles of equality." 67 H e r e , as throughout Culture and Anarchy, too much is claimed f o r the word "culture." A f u r t h e r case in point would be Arnold's tendency to declare "culture" coterminous with "religion." Elaborating the idea of "human perfection," he holds that "religion comes to a conclusion identical with that [of] culture," their common ground being the "internal condition" culture seeks to develop all the time. 68 In a way, this is a restatement of convictions Arnold had already voiced in his essay "Pagan and Mediasval Religious Sentiment" (1864), where "imaginative reason" and "thinking-power" were made to coalesce with "the religious sense" 69 — in short, a position which later (namely, by 1880) was to culminate in his open replacement of religion through poetry. 70 Rightly considered,

64

W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (London: Faber, 1963), p. 220.

65

J. H . Plumb, The Death of the Past (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 1 9 - 6 1 , esp. 3 0 - 3 5 . O n Arnold's conservative stance see Trilling, Matthew liams, Culture and Society 1780-1950,

66

Arnold,

pp. 2 7 7 - 8 0 ; and Wil-

pp. 124-25.

See McCarthy, Matthew Arnold and the Three Classes, pp. 50, 73, 76.

67

Culture and Anarchy, i; CPW, V , 113.

68

Culture and Anarchy, i; CPW, V , 9 3 - 9 4 . Arnold's emphasis. Cf. ch. vi, p. 219.

69

CPW, III, 2 1 2 - 3 1 , esp. 231.

70

See Arnold, "The Study of Poetry" (1880); CPW, IX, 1 6 1 - 8 8 , esp. 161; and also Trilling, Matthew Arnold, pp. 2 6 6 - 6 8 , 374.

178

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this predictable move in Arnold's thought concerns poetry less than his totalizing desire to come to terms, via culture, with the modern — i.e., Victorian — fragmentation of attitudes and beliefs. So, what Arnold really looks for is a social and intellectual centre of gravity, or, as he phrases it, "a principle of authority, to counteract the tendency to anarchy which seems to be threatening us."71 In view of the fact that "culture," through repeated overuse and semantic overdetermination at Arnold's hands, has virtually become discredited in critical discourse, it is now only logical to see "authority" thus reinstated as the actual opposite of "anarchy." But, however eloquently put, Arnold's attempt at transcendence in Culture and Anarchy does not succeed in delivering his time from its ubiquitous sense of tension and dualism. Instead, he rather adds to the bewilderment of the nineteenth century by using language replete with almost authoritarian or even totalitarian connotations which, on the whole, may be judged a poor substitute for truly dialectical synthesis. IV The same longing for stability and fixity also imbues the writings of Walter Pater, our third and last paradigm of Victorian conceptual architecture. Worried just as much as Arnold, his predecessor in cultural criticism, about "the flux of things," 72 the inaugurator of the aesthetic movement in England sees himself engaged in a lifelong quest for "breadth, centrality, . . . blitheness and repose" — for him, the characteristics of the Greek mind, which stand in sharp contrast to "the gaudy, perplexed light of modern life."73 Coming from "Winckelmann" (1867), Pater's

71

Culture and Anarchy, ii; CPW, V, 123. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, ch. ii, p. 134. As to Arnold's constant plea for intellectual authority, see his essays "Heinrich Heine" (1863) and "The Literary Influence of Academies" (1864); CPW, III, 107-32 and 232-57. Direct political action, however, is not envisaged by Arnold. Cf. Culture and Anarchy, vi; CPW, V, 192. Critical opinions regarding his "cultivated inaction" are therefore divided. Cf. Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950, pp. 118-19; and Lesley Johnson, The Cultural Critics: From Matthew Arnold to Raymond Williams (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 29.

72

See Milton Millhauser, "Walter Pater and the Flux," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 11 (1952-53), 214-23, esp. 220, 222; and also above, n. 61. Walter Pater, "Winckelmann," in Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, introd. Kenneth Clark (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1961), pp. 179-219, esp. 215. Cf. "Winckelmann," pp. 216, 218.

73

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

179

early and seminal essay, the concepts quoted form the nucleus of his thought, round which more and more elaborate antithetical constructs will be erected in the course of his career as writer. In accordance with Victorian logic, epitomized for us in the beginning by Alexander Bain, the epistemological basis of these intellectual oppositions lies in Pater's ready acceptance of relativism. "Modern thought," he writes in his equally early study of Coleridge (1866), "is distinguished from ancient by its cultivation of the 'relative' spirit in place of the 'absolute.'" 74 More far-reaching than Arnold in his relativistic orientation and more receptive to the results of contemporary science, above all in the shape of both Hegelian and Darwinian evolutionary theory, 75 Pater, in consequence, joyfully turns to history, not as an academic discipline, but as a field of exercise for the aesthetic and impressionistic play of his many antitheses. Such a mode of conceptual architecture, now, is in itself a result of historical developments. For, after the demise of the great philosophic systems of the eighteenth century, conceptual fragmentation had set in, allowing notions and terms to float freely, so to speak, and to enter into opposition with virtually any word they liked. While this might overstate the case, organizing principles were certainly needed under the circumstances; and in the "historic sense" Pater found such a principle: i.e., the method he wanted in order to come to terms with "philosophic disillusion."76 Although Pater was endowed to an unusual degree with the "historic sense," his literary application of it rests on assumptions which, if "deconstructed," can be shown to be not so much historic as aesthetic in quality. There is, for a start, his constant reliance on Hegel's notion of the "Time-spirit" or "Zeit-geist," operative not only in his art criticism — witness his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) — but also in his historical fiction (that is, Marius the Epicurean [1885] and Imaginary Portraits [1887]) as well as in his philosophical writing: namely, Plato and Platonism (1893).77 In theory, the "Time-spirit" should point up dif-

74

75 76 77

Pater, "Coleridge," in Pater, Appreciations: With an Essay on Style, New Library Edition (London: Macmillan, 1910), pp. 65-104, esp. 66. Cf. also Dale, The Victorian Critic and the Idea of History, pp. 178, 183. See DeLaura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England, p. 174. See above, n. 15. For Pater's belief in the "Time-spirit" or "Zeit-geist" see especially The Renaissance, pp. 31, 56-57, 195; Appreciations, pp. 16, 67, 90, 256, 261; and Plato and Platonism,

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ferences between the various historical epochs one may study — and Pater is quite aware of the fact that we can have no direct knowledge of the "abstract secular process" embodied in the "Zeit-geist"7S — but in practice he is always prone to stress "similitudes" between the ages, as if, paradoxically, belying Foucault's findings by negating his own period's episteme out of deep sympathy with Renaissance analogizing. Especially his essay on Pico della Mirandola shows how fully he shared the fifteenth-century belief "that nothing which had ever interested the human mind could wholly lose its vitality." 79 And in order to underline epochal continuities he constantly avails himself of a stylistic device already used by Carlyle, a device one could label the then-as-now formula and which is indeed admirably suited to conflating historical times. 80 It follows, then, that we cannot help detecting a central ambiguity in Pater's "historic sense." On the other hand, we should duly note that he does not treat his material in the manner of a professional historian but, rather, like an artist who wishes to enjoy as much of the past as he possibly can. For Pater, this desire has found its final crystallization in a master-image at least as impressive as Carlyle's "Life-Tree Igdrasil": namely, the image of "that House Beautiful, which the creative minds of all generations . . . are always building together, for the refreshment of the human spirit." 81 Whether we view the "House Beautiful," with Ernst Robert

pp. 8-11, 72-73, 124-25, 154. Cf. also Mario Praz, Mnemosyne: The Parallel between Literature and the Visual Arts, Bollingen Series 35 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 24-25, 157. 78

79 80

81

Plato and Platonism, p. 72; cf. also The Renaissance, p. 57. For a recent critique of the notion of "Zeitgeist" see Harold Toliver, The Past that Poets Make (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 38-39. Pater, "Pico della Mirandola" (1871), in W. Pater, The Renaissance, pp. 54-68, esp. 58. Cf. Carlyle, Past and Present, II, i; Works, III, 37 ("In wondrous Dualism, then as now, lived nations of breathing men . . ."). But contrast Past and Present, II, xvi; Works, III, 101 (". . . and consider mournfully what our Hero-worship once was, and what it now is!"). — As to Pater's habit of stressing historical continuity wherever he can, see Appreciations, pp. 74-75; Marius the Epicurean, introd. Osbert Burdett (London: Dent, 1934; repr. 1963), pp. 4, 29, 76, 80, 86, 149, 151, 194, 205, 207-8, 210-12; Imaginary Portraits, New Library Edition (London: Macmillan, 1910), p. 107; Plato and Platonism, pp. 49, 73, 282; and Gaston de Latour: An Unfinished Romance, ed. C. L. Shadwell, New Library Edition (London: Macmillan, 1910), p. 27. Pater, "Romanticism" (1876), later entitled "Postscript" (1889), in W. Pater, Appreciations, pp. 241-61, esp. 241. Pater's emphasis. Cf. also Marius the Epicurean, p. 88 ("the beautiful house of art and thought which was the inheritance of the age").

181

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

Curtius, as "a landmark in the history of literary criticism" 82 or, with René Wellek, as yet one more example of aesthetic historicism, 83 one thing should be clear: it admits of the simultaneous copresence of all periods of the past, making them available for cultivated appreciation. What this amounts to is demonstrated by Pater throughout Marius the Epicurean, where "insight, insight through culture, into all that the present moment holds in trust for us," is praised as an ideal of life,84 while Pater's Victorian detractor, W. H . Mallock, deemed fit to ridicule the ideal in his satirical novel, The New Republic (1877), by drily remarking: "It will be, as it were, a resurrection of the past, in response to the longing and the passionate regret of the present." 85 Although a far cry indeed from Milton's Temple of the Lord, Pater's highly secular "House Beautiful" enables its inhabitants to calmly survey the times and to structure the accumulated riches of the past according to the demands of the present. This is precisely the purpose of Plato and Platonism, partly reflecting divergent pulls in Pater's own personality, partly intended, by way of atonement for the frank hedonism of the earlier "Conclusion" to The Renaissance, as self-correction and a lesson for "the speculative young man of our own day." 86 Yet, in spite of Pater's highly personal interpretation of Plato's philosophy, 87 the work rests on a solid conceptual structure: that is, the contrast between "centrifugal" and "centripetal" tendencies in Greek history. The former is said to be "the irresponsible, the Ionian or Asiatic, tendency," exempli-

82

Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische

Literatur

und lateinisches

Francke, 1954), p. 400; Curtius, European Literature

Mittelalter

2nd ed. (Bern:

and the Latin Middle Ages, trans.

Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series 36 ( N e w York: Harper, 1953), p. 396. 83

René Wellek, A History of Modem

Criticism

1750-1950,

vol. IV: The Later

Nineteenth

Century (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965; repr. 1971), p. 399. 84

Marius the Epicurean, p. 81.

85

William Hurrell Mallock, The New Republic: English Country

Or, Culture, Faith and Philosophy

in an

House, introd. John Lucas (1878 ed.; Leicester: Leicester Univ. Press,

1975), p. 279. 86

Plato and Platonism,

p. 154. There is in these lectures even a dig at London's sprawling

suburbia, w h e n Pater praises Sparta for not being "a 'growing' place, always rebuilding, remodelling itself, after the newest fashion, with shapeless suburbs stretching farther and farther on every side of it." Plato and Platonism, pp. 2 0 7 - 8 ) . 87

This tendency is especially conspicuous in his attempt to declare Plato a forerunner of the theory of "art for art's sake." Cf. Plato and Platonism, W o l f g a n g Iser, Walter 1960), pp. 113-24.

Pater: Die Autonomie

pp. 268, 2 8 0 - 8 1 ; as well as

des Ästhetischen

(Tübingen: Niemeyer,

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Claus Uhlig

fied above all in Athens, whereas the latter is supposed to have found its home in Sparta, "the perfect flower of the Dorian genius," characterized by "a severe simplification" and "a strictly composed, self-conscious order." 88 Focussing not so much on Pater's sources or further amplifications of this opposition through, say, the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy, 89 as on his broad thematic intentions, we may realize that, by reading Plato's Republic in the light of the centripetal ideal of order and discipline, he envisions public life as regimented in a military manner. 90 In this connection, one is reminded of an observation made by Sir Kenneth Clark, who, commenting upon Plato's admiration of Sparta and Ruskin's familiarity with The Republic, wrote: "Intellectuals tend to have a girlish passion for soldiers. . .;"91 and for totalitarian systems, too, one is tempted to add. For, if that is the upshot of the "religion of sanity"92 Plato and Platonism is suggesting in lieu of the aesthetic philosophy of The Renaissance and the inconclusiveness of Marius the Epicurean, one might well prefer to stay with an "aesthetic religion" 95 or the incertitudes and doubts Pater's philosophic temper was, as a rule, so perfectly attuned to, living as he did in "a time so rich and various in special appre-

88 89

90 91

92

93

Plato and Platonism, pp. 103-5; cf. Plato and Platonism, pp. 23, 197-234, 238. For comment on Pater's sources see DeLaura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England, p. 253; and above all Patrick Bridgwater, Nietzsche in Anglosaxony: A Study of Nietzsche's Impact on English and American Literature (Leicester: Leicester Univ. Press, 1972), p. 23 (Schopenhauer), p. 36 (Pater and Nietzsche both drawing on Karl Otfried Müller's Die Dorier, vol. 2 of Geschichten hellenischer Stämme und Städte, 2 vols. [Breslau: Max, 1824]); cf. also Pater's reference to Müller in Plato and Platonism, pp. 199-200. — As to the function of all these contrasts in Pater's fiction, see Friedrich Staub, Das imaginäre Porträt Walter Paters, diss., Univ. Zurich (Zürich: Leemann, 1926), esp. pp. 40-50; R. T . Lenaghan, "Pattern in Walter Pater's Fiction," Studies in Philology, 58 (1961), 69-91; U. C. Knoepflmacher, Religious Humanism and the Victorian Novel: George Eliot, Walter Pater, and Samuel Butler Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 155-70; and Gerald Cornelius Monsman, Pater's Portraits: Mythic Pattern in the Fiction of Walter Pater (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1967), esp. pp. 175-77. Cf. Plato and Platonism, pp. 235-66, esp. 238. Sir Kenneth Clark, ed., Ruskin Today, Peregrine Books (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 269. Cf. Plato and Platonism, p. 227; and Knoepflmacher, Religious Humanism and the Victorian Novel, pp. 170-88. Cf. T. S. Eliot, "Arnold and Pater" (1930), in T . S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 3rd ed. (London: Faber, 1951; repr. 1972), pp. 431-43, esp. 440.

Conceptual Architecture in Some Victorian Writers

183

hensions of truth, so tentative and dubious in its sense of their ensemble, and issues."94

V T o conclude: in studying the conceptual architecture of Victorian critical and expository prose exemplified in selected writings of Carlyle, Arnold and Pater, we have constantly come across a yearning for wholeness that had, strangely enough, found its expression in the language of opposites. As such, this result does not come as a surprise, seeing that T. S. Eliot, for instance, could write some time ago now of the "dissolution of thought" in nineteenth-century England and note the period's "various chimerical attempts to effect imperfect syntheses." 95 But he had not tried to account for the reasons. Now, while certainly inferior to the devastating wit of Mallock's New Republic, "deconstructive analysis," as practised in the foregoing, may perhaps have been in a position to lay bare a few of the theoretical assumptions implied in the texts of the Victorian secular prophets examined. Thus, especially the philosophies of history our three authors resorted to were found wanting in theoretical acumen, Carlyle's oversight consisting in a lack of mediation between continuity and discontinuity, Arnold's in too readily accepting cyclicity and recurrence as the basis of his argument and, finally, Pater's in extolling the present to the detriment of the past's own right. But the absence of dialectical power from the writings of all three should not be overstated, either, because they were not so much professional philosophers or theologians as men of letters, primarily bent on literary impact. Therefore it would be more germane to their efforts to view the master tropes, key-concepts and central images structuring their texts as stylistic devices for amplifying, rather than reconciling, opposites. That way, sets of arguments were provided for what might be called an ongoing rhetoric of opposition, whose influence is felt even today. In fact, binary oppositions as organizing principles of thought are still a prominent feature in twentieth-century scholarly discourse — we

94

Plato and Platonism, p. 174.

95

Eliot, Selected Essays, p. 442.

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Claus Uhlig

have here only to call to mind the work of Roman Jakobson 96 or Claude Lévi-Strauss 97 — although concurrent scepticism as to their heuristic value is also in evidence. 98 However, this is not the place to enter into a discussion of contemporary structuralism. For what, more than anything else, links our pluralistic time to the Victorian age is the need for intellectual authority in the face of multiple and shifting hermeneutics. T o a degree Arnold could not possibly have foreseen, not only has our religion become the "theology of the poets," but criticism itself has started to invade the territory of poetry also, thus in effect trying to control two domains. Unable to hear the Word for the words and, amid a plethora of books, deprived of a "sacred book," 99 we are actually ill-qualified to criticize Victorian relativism and doubt. T o close on a consolatory note, though, there are at present signs of a revival of interest in the Bible on the part of students of literature. 100 So we may yet hope for a central text again — a text which all critical endeavour might start from, or point to, for the benefit of discourse in the humanities.

96

Cf. Roman Jakobson, "Two Aspects of Language and T w o Types of Aphasie Disturbances," in R.J. and Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), pp. 55-82; Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in Thomas A. Sebeok, ed., Style in Language (New York and London: MIT Press, 1960), pp. 350-77.— Jakobson's idea of a binary opposition between metaphor and metonymy is put to good use by David Lodge, The Modes of Modem Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modem Literature (London: Arnold, 1977), esp. pp. 73-124.

97

Cf. Claude Lévi-Strauss, La Pensée sauvage (Paris: Pion, 1962); Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966). For a critique of Lévi-Strauss in the sense indicated see Clifford Geertz, "The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lévi-Strauss" (1967), in C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 345-59, esp. 354-55. For a diagnosis of our postmodern condition in these terms see Geoffrey H. Hartman, Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1980), esp. 92, 112, 176, 182. For instances of this see Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979); Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981); and Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).

98

99

100

STANLEY R E N N E R

Sartor Resartus Retailored? Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

If "Youth" is faithful autobiography, it is n o w just over a hundred years since Joseph Conrad's first encounter with the writing of T h o m a s Carlyle. In view of the powerful influence Carlyle's vision exerted on the mind of the culture the youthful Conrad was beginning to adopt as his o w n , the connection between the t w o writers is of considerable potential significance; yet, somewhat surprisingly, it is only within the last decade or so that Conrad's reaction to Carlyle has begun to attract more than incidental interest. 1 Even more surprising, when one thinks of the voluminous commentary offered in explication of the enigmas implicit in Conrad's fiction, is the lack of response to the challenge of his quite explicit riddle about Carlyle. 2 I refer, of course, to Marlow's cryptic comment on Sartor Resartus in "Youth": and meantime I read for the first time Sartor Resartus and Burnaby's Ride to Khiva. I didn't understand much of the first then; but I remember I pre-

1

2

See Allison L. H o p w o o d , "Carlyle and Conrad: Past and Present and ' H e a r t of Darkness,'" Review of English Studies, 23 (May 1972), 162-72; V. J. Emmett, Jr., "Carlyle, Conrad, and the Politics of Charisma: Another Perspective on 'Heart of Darkness,'" Conradiana, 7 (1975), 145-53; and Alan Heywood Kenny, "Conrad and Carlyle," Journal of the Joseph Conrad Society (U.K.), 5, No. 2 (March 1980), 7, 19-20. John E. Van Domelen suggests that the choice of Burnaby over Carlyle is evidence of "Marlow's preference for action to meditation" ("A Note on the Reading of Conrad's Characters," Conradiana, 3, No. 1 [1970-71], 88). Kenny proposes that the passage may have been Conrad's "deliberate attempt to create a resonance around young Marlow by associating him with a popular English 'character' [Burnaby] whose life was a demonstration of Carlylean activity usually undertaken on behalf of British imperial interests" (p. 19). In Conrad in the Nineteenth Century Ian Watt associates the comment on Carlyle with "man's [dangerous] delusions of autonomy and omnipotence." Watt explains: "In Heart of Darkness, against all the unreal psychological and social hyperboles of his waning century, Conrad affirmed the need, as Camus put it, 'in order to be a man, to refuse to be a G o d ' " (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), p. 168.

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ferred the soldier to the philosopher at the time; a preference which life has only confirmed. One was a man, and the other was either more — or less.3

This comment, dropped as a kind of incidental aside into Marlow's reminiscences of his voyage on the ill-fated Judea, seems to lead nowhere; but its potential significance is of quite a different order than that of the other memories in the same passage — that the captain's wife sewed on Marlow's buttons and darned his socks. Indeed, a closer look at the comment reveals several significant implications about Conrad's familiarity with Sartor Resartus and his impression of Carlyle (Conrad called "Youth" "certainly a piece of autobiography" 4 ; there can be little doubt that Marlow's memories and impressions are Conrad's own): 1. Conrad had read Sartor Resartus more than once. 2. Through rereading he had come to understand more of it than at his first reading. 3. He has reservations about the philosophy of the author. 4. His reservations are explained by the remark that Carlyle was "either more — or less" than a man. The explanation, however, turns out to be not an explanation but a riddle, posed and left for the reader to answer: H o w is the "philosopher" of Sartor Resartus "either more — or less" than a man? T o the thoughtful, thoroughgoing reader, this implied but unanswered question presents a problem: where does it lead? Either it is a loose end, going nowhere, or it is a meaningful component in the design of Conrad's fiction. On the basis of the critical axiom that everything in a work must first be assumed to be part of the artist's conscious creation, one must first suppose the latter. Conrad was nothing if not a highly conscious and responsible artist; it is not easy to imagine that in a story claiming to be something of an "illustration of life," "a symbol of existence," he could mention the deeply metaphysical Sartor Resartus and its "philosopher" author without meaning something profound. But if that is so, then the judgment on Carlyle is something of a riddle: it has a meaning that is not immediately clear. One cannot, of course, be sure how consciously Conrad may have posed the riddle, as I have called it, or, as-

3

4

Joseph Conrad, Youth and Two Other Stories (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903), p. 7. Walter F. Wright, ed., Joseph Conrad on Fiction, Regents Critics Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), p. 235.

Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

187

suming it is not a loose end, expected the reader to answer it. But, as I propose to show in this essay, the implied evaluation of Carlyle, whether consciously or not, is dramatically explained and terribly fulfilled in Conrad's fiction. I suspect that one reason why the allusion to Carlyle has been generally ignored is that its explanation is not found in "Youth," where it would most obviously be sought, but in the entire Youth volume 5 — the projected volume of three tales ("Youth," "Heart of Darkness," and Lord Jim) for which "Youth" was intended as an introduction — and most centrally in Lord Jim, in which, in an important sense, Conrad puts a Carlylean philosophy on trial. In this essay I shall present evidence that he consciously designed Lord Jim, in part, as an ironic reflection of Sartor Resartus to dramatize his deep reservations about Carlylean idealism. This approach to Lord Jim throws new light on the structure, conflict, and conclusion of the novel, matters which have been often debated in the critical literature.

I

Conrad evidently knew a good deal about Carlyle. His knowledge of Sartor Resartus is established by the passage in "Youth," which shows that the book came to his attention first between early October and late November 1881 when the Palestine was waiting to be loaded with coal for Bangkok and again in May 1898 when he mentioned it in the story based on his Palestine adventure. The commemorative notices occasioned by Carlyle's death in February 1881 evidently rekindled interest, including Conrad's, in Sartor Resartus.6 That it was more than a passing interest for Conrad, and seems to have involved thoughtful rereading with increasing comprehension, is a strong implication, as I have suggested, of the passage in "Youth." Moreover, there is reason to believe that Conrad's knowledge of Carlyle extended to other works, including

5

Throughout this essay I will use "the Youth volume" to designate the volume of three tales originally conceived to include "Youth," "Heart of Darkness," and Lord Jim, not the volume that was ultimately published in 1902 with "The End of the Tether" in place of Lord Jim.

6

T h e next year, 1882, the sale of Sartor Resartus reached 70,000 copies. See Richard D . Altick, The English Common Reader (University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 243.

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On Heroes and Hero-Worship and Past and Present/ Perhaps it was the centenary in 1895 of Carlyle's birth that led Conrad back to his work. It is at least noteworthy that the appearance between 1897 and 1900 of the strongest echoes of Carlyle in Conrad's fiction coincides with the emergence between 1896 and 1901 of Chapman and Hall's thirty-volume Centenary Edition of Carlyle's works. 8 Conrad might have indulged an interest in Carlyle through his closest friends during the late nineties — Edward Garnett and Ford Madox Ford. Garnett's father, Richard, Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum and man of letters in his own right, had written a noteworthy monograph on Carlyle in 1887 which Conrad, who interested himself in the literary efforts of the family, was likely to have read. Details from the book, as I shall show, have echoes in Lord Jim that seem more than coincidental. Ford's father, Franz Hueffer, had been acquainted with Carlyle, and Ford himself had something of a fixation on the Great Victorians, including Carlyle explicitly.9 However, Ford provides a far more intriguing link between Conrad and Carlyle. While living at Pent Farm, rented from Ford, "it pleased Conrad," Ford recalled, "to write at a Chippendale bureau on which Christina Rossetti had once written or at another which had once belonged to Thomas Carlyle.'" 0 Lord Jim, with its ironic reflection of Sartor Resartus, was written at Pent Farm, and there is every likelihood that it was written, with a keen sense of ironic fitness, on Carlyle's own desk. A further circumstance helps to connect Lord Jim with Sartor Resartus: the composition history of the Youth volume. O n e would expect the allusion to Sartor Resartus to be developed in "Youth," where it is made, not in Lord Jim. But "Youth" is not a completely self-contained work. Through the writing of "Youth," "Heart of Darkness," and two-thirds of Lord Jim Conrad thought he was creating a single volume to contain the three "homogeneous" tales." Then Lord Jim grew too long for the volume. Its separate publication troubled Conrad because it was "not

7 8 9

10 11

See H o p w o o d and Emmett. See H o p w o o d , p. 162 n. See Douglas Goldring, Trained for Genius: The Life and Writings of Ford Madox Ford (New York: Dutton, 1949), pp. 24—26. Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1924), p. 35. Joseph Conrad: Letters to William Blackwood and David S. Meldrum, ed. William Blackburn (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1958), p. 79.

Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

189

meant to stand alone." "Youth" was designed "to give the note" and "Heart of Darkness" was meant as a "foil" for Lord Jim}1 Conrad's implication that "Youth" was meant to play an introductory role for Lord Jim allows for the story to announce themes to be developed later in the novel. The mention of Sartor Resartus may well be such a "note."

II The vision of Conrad writing Lord Jim at Carlyle's desk invites comparison of the novel and Sartor Resartus. Both are spiritual biographies, stories of men struggling toward realization of a compelling personal vision told by narrators themselves deeply enmeshed in the issues raised by the stories they are telling. Colorful, voluble, skeptically ironic, both narrators search the life of their subject for an answer to the questions of existence, and the stories they tell are concerned with their own perplexities as well as with the struggles of their subject. 13 A great deal has been written about the source, function, and raison d'etre of Marlow, but surely one prototype is Carlyle's Editor. Both narrators are in part personas — representative Britishers, more limited than their creators, caught up in the metaphysical issues of the time — and in part alter egos of the authors. Both are vehicles of the author's own somewhat evasive conclusions. Similarities exist also in the way the narratives are constructed. Both Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus are noted for their fragmentation and dislocation of conventional chronological development. In both cases the discontinuities are designed with an epistemological purpose: to dramatize the impressionistic way human beings struggle toward knowledge. Carlyle's Editor has some personal acquaintance with his subject, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, but beyond that he must piece together scraps of information stuffed at random into six paper bags or related to him second-hand in letters from Hofrath Heuschrecke, who knew Teu12

Letters to Blackwood,

13

If Sartor Resartus is approached as a novel, G. B. Tennyson proposes, "The Editor, not

p. 94.

Teufelsdrockh, is the protagonist" ("Sartor" Called "Resartus" [Princeton, N . J.: Princeton University Press, 1965], p. 175). 14

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, ed. Thomas C. Moser, N o r t o n Critical Edition ( N e w York: Norton, 1968), p. 208. All quotations from Lord Jim will be from this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text with the abbreviation "LJ."

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felsdrockh. Marlow, with more direct access to Jim, is similarly dependent on bits and pieces of second-hand information in letters and from interviews with persons who were present at crucial points in Jim's story when Marlow was elsewhere. Indeed, Marlow sounds much like Carlyle's Editor when, referring to his account of Jim's last days, he writes, "My information was fragmentary, but I've fitted the pieces together, and there is enough of them to make an intelligible picture.'" 4 The thick packet Marlow sends the frame narrator, containing "A good many pages closely blackened and pinned together; a loose square sheet of greyish paper with a few words traced in a handwriting he had never seen before, and an explanatory letter from Marlow," together with "another letter, yellowed by time and frayed on the folds" (LJ 205), suggests the jumbled confusion of a Teufelsdrockhian paper bag. A further formal resemblance between the two books is that both conclude with letters that announce the disappearance of their subject. Thus both Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus are designedly impressionistic, not only in dramatizing the epistemological predicament of human beings but also in attempting to involve the reader in the creation of meaning in the work. 15 Carlyle, apparently aware of the innovative nature of what he was attempting, stresses repeatedly in Sartor Resartus the collaboration expected of the reader, as when the Editor acknowledges that from the six paper bags "at most some sketchy, shadowy, fugitive likeness of [Teufelsdrockh] may, by unheard of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them.'" 6 Conrad drops a similar hint to the reader in Marlow's concluding letter: "I affirm nothing. Perhaps you may pronounce — after you've read . . . there will be no message, unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from the language of facts" (LJ 206). The reader is thus drawn into the fiction and involved in the narrator's quest for understanding. Besides the formal and technical affinities between Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus, which might pursued further, there are certain stylistic

15

16

There has been some debate over Conrad's impressionism. I am using the term in its commonly understood senses, as, for example, in Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 126. Odyssey Press Edition, ed. Charles Frederick Harrold (New York; Odyssey Press, 1937), p. 79. All quotations from Sartor Resartus will be from this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text with the abbreviation "SR."

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similarities. As C. F. Harrold observes, "The broken, disconnected utterance of Sartor was, in some respects, the forerunner of much in our twentieth-century style.'" 7 There is surely a touch at least of Carlylean prolixity in the ramblings of Marlow. And, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, certain pronounced mannerisms of Carlylese turn up with just a hint of mockery in Lord Jim. In this novel, for example, Conrad uncharacteristically capitalizes, though far less copiously than Carlyle, certain nouns with ponderous metaphysical implication — "the Intolerable," "the Unknowable," "the Inconceivable," "the Dark Powers." And in transcribing Marlow's dialogues with speakers of a foreign language, the French lieutenant and Stein, Conrad adopts another Carlylean habit — that of accompanying the expressions in the foreign language with translations into English: "that interesting corpse (cet intéressant cadavrej"(LJ 87), "bleibt ganz ruhig — keep still, so" (LJ 127), "jocund in spirit (wolgemuth)" (SR 160), "La carrière ouverte aux talens (The Tools to him that can handle them)" (SR 178). Placed side by side, Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus are alike in significant ways. The authors distance themselves several removes from their story behind similar narrators, who piece together the history of their subjects from similarly fragmentary materials. In both books the true meaning lies behind the mere facts, and the narrators' impressionistic struggles to glimpse the deep human significance that envelops the discrete fragments of information they assemble result in biographies "philosophico-poetically written," as Carlyle describes Sartor Resartus, and "ever humano-anecdotical" (SR 75, 76). T o be sure, there are great differences between the novel and the "Satirical Extravaganza" : the discursive parts of Sartor, the frame narrator of Lord Jim, the style of the two books, which, despite the similarities I have mentioned, are still wide apart. Still, given Conrad's penchant for telling his real story behind the apparent one and his "tendency to disguise his indebtedness to books," 18 one would not expect Lord Jim to be an obvious copy of Sartor Resartus. Delighting in multiplicity, Conrad would write a book that could be read in several ways, one of which, I believe, is an ironically inverted reflection of Sartor Resartus.

17

"Introduction" to Sartor Resartus. p. lxi.

18

Jocelyn Baines, Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 294.

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III Far more meaningful than any formal and technical similarities, however, is the extent to which Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus are about the same thing: the question of human nature. Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, especially after The Origin of Species in 1859, this was "The Subject of Subjects.'" 9 Carlyle was already troubled by it in the twenties, disturbed, as Harrold explains, by "a great movement of t h o u g h t . . . going on in the country" toward Utilitarianism — a deeply mechanistic view of human motivation — threatening "to take possession of the whole province of morals." 20 The question, reduced to its essence, was simply whether man is only matter, like other forms of life, or partly spirit. As Disraeli phrased it, "Is man an ape or an angel?" 21 H e declared for the angels, but the opposing view — that man is a mechanism prompted by natural law — was "gaining hold on a number of powerful minds, and threatening to become the dominant popular philosoCarlyle's vehement resistance to the mechanistic view of human nature forms the central theme of Sartor Resartus. Conrad repeatedly hints that the question of human nature is also the central issue in Lord Jim: as in the Author's Note, where he recalls being stalled on the pilgrim-ship story until he saw that it could be treated as an "event. . . which could conceivably colour the whole 'sentiment of existence' in a simple and sensitive character"; or, again, in the novel itself, when Marlow calls the issue in which Jim is enmeshed "beyond the competency of a court of inquiry: it was a momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life." Explaining his own absorption in Jim's case, Marlow suggests that "the obscure truth involved" was "momentous enough to affect mankind's conception of itself" (LJ 57). The idea of a quarrel or dispute is repeated near the end of the novel when Jim and Gentleman Brown are shown in

19

20 21

22

The title of William Irvine's chapter on Darwin's The Descent of Man in Apes, Angels, and Victorians (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955). "Introduction," Sartor Resartus, p. xx. Disraeli's remark, from a speech in 1864, is used as an epigraph to Apes, Angels, and Victorians. Harrold, "Introduction," Sartor Resartus, p. xx.

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confrontation, "standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life which includes all mankind" (LJ 232)." Both Jim and Teufelsdrockh are also engaged in a quest: they range far and wide in search of an answer to the question of human nature they can accept. In the process, they go through the typical spiritual ordeal of the epoch, a progression described by the Editor as "An outflush of foolish young Enthusiasm . . . all parched away, under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief," which "gave rise to Doubt, and . . . gradually settled into Denial." This was an ordeal that racked most "sufficient men" of his generation (SR 184-85), including, among countless others, himself, Teufelsdrockh, Carlyle, Marlow, and Conrad himself, who, much as Carlyle does with Teufelsdrockh, puts Marlow through his own experience — his "outflush of foolish young Enthusiasm" in "Youth" and his near death by the fever of unbelief in "Heart of Darkness." When we recognize Jim's place in this company, we have gone far toward grasping the full sense in which Marlow claims Jim as "one of us."24 The quest of both Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus, however, is also a flight. Both Jim and Teufelsdrockh are shown in flight from the mechanistic world view, which, as Walter Houghton explains, portrayed the universe as "a vast mechanism of cause and effect, acting by physical laws that governed even man himself." 25 Thinkers like Mill, Darwin, Huxley and Spencer stripped man of every distinction from animals except that of being more highly developed. Huxley argued that human life is a product of the same elements that form the protoplasm of all living beings, "that man, physical, intellectual, and moral, is as much a part

23

John Palmer points out that "it is partly this conscious development of metaphysical background . . . which makes Lord Jim important not only as the best of Conrad's early novels, but as a central document in understanding the development of his later fiction." Joseph Conrad's Fiction (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968), p. 20.

24

Jim, of course, a chief mate in the merchant service, would hardly qualify as an intellectual. Aware of the problem, Conrad takes pains to assure the reader that even though he looked

like "that g o o d , stupid kind" — "unintellectual enough" — that

would resist "the outward and inward terrors" with "an unthinking and blessed stiffness," there was something wrong with Jim, a morbid sensitivity that made him susceptible to "the solicitation of ideas" (LJ 2 7 - 2 8 ) . 25

The Victorian Frame of Mind ( N e w Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), p. 68. T h e entire chapter, titled "Anxiety," is worth consulting as background for the preoccupation with the question of human nature in Lord Jim and Sartor

Resartus.

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of nature, as purely a product of the cosmic process, as the humblest weed." 26 From the scientific perspective, writes Houghton, it appeared that "man has no spirit or soul independent of the body, but only a brain in which molecular changes, determined by external stimuli, give automatic rise to all his thoughts and all his actions. For Huxley, as for many physiologists and biologists today, man is simply a human automaton." 2 7 Jim and Teufelsdrockh were not unique in their flight from such a conclusion. Many Victorians, especially those steeped in the biblical view of man created in the divine image, indignantly repudiated the suggestion that man is no more than a highly developed animal. Others, like T e u felsdrockh and Jim, as we shall see, saw in the implications of the mechanistic view a fearful vision of the utter dissolution of the social order, swept away by a teeming horde of human-animal automatons. No small part of Carlyle's considerable influence during his lifetime was due to his championing of an alternative to mechanistic conclusions. As Raymond Chapman observes, "Carlyle led the revolt against materialism that became stronger before the end of his own life" and "taught the Victorians to look again at the ideal, non-material part of human existence." 28 Sartor Resartus comes early in the debate, but he would continue to resist the reduction of man to animal mechanism. "Carlyle fought against Darwin's theory," Houghton explains, "'though . . . he dreaded it might turn out true,' because if man were no more than a developed animal, conscience and intellect were 'but developments of the functions of animals."' 29 His "deep heritage of Calvinism," according to Harrold, had imbued him with a "consciousness of a transcendent world of values behind the world of flux." Moreover, "Calvinism sets the strongest personal value on the individual, gives him an immeasurable responsibility, endows him with an enormous individualism and self-dependence." Carlyle could not accept a universe that is "mechanical, morally neutral, at last hostile," because in such a universe "the lower self is alone real." 30 If man is no more than "an omnivorous Biped that wears

26

27 28

29 30

"Prolegomena," Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays (New York: Appleton, 1899), p. 11. Houghton, p. 70. The Victorian Debate: English Literature and Society 1832-1901 (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 86. Houghton, p. 70. "Introduction," Sartor Resartus, pp. xxiv-xxxv, xlii-xliii.

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Breeches" in a universe that is only a "huge, dead, immeasurable Steamengine" ( S R 6 5 , 164), what hope could there be for the organic social cohesion based on the higher principles of duty, self-renunciation, and mutual responsibility that was Carlyle's dream? It is Carlyle's defiance of such an intolerable world view around which Conrad fashions Jim, who is like Teufelsdrockh — like Carlyle, whose own experience is reflected in Sartor Resartus — and is also, in a more general sense, representative of all who sought refuge from scientific materialism in an idealistic vision of the human prospect. 31 Conrad incorporates in Jim the essence of Carlylean-Teufeldrockhian idealism and adapts the pilgrim-ship episode and its consequences as a response to the metaphysical argument of Sartor Resartus.

IV Most basically, Conrad gives Jim a Carlylean resistance to the mechanistic world view. For that is what is "the Intolerable" (LJ 4) to Jim, just as it was to Carlyle. T h e novel's opening pages set the metaphysical stage for Jim's ordeal. Conrad briefly sketches in his typical Victorian starting place — the outlook from an English parsonage with its "such certain knowledge of the Unknowable" (LJ 4) — and then opens his eyes to the mechanistic implications of visible reality. In parallel passages, Jim glimpses both a mechanical universe and the materiality of human beings. During violent storms at sea, he perceives the universe as "this complication of accidents" rather than as a manifestation of the moral order established by divine intelligence, and it appears to be c o m i n g at him with a p u r p o s e of malice, with a strength b e y o n d c o n t r o l , with an unbridled cruelty that m e a n s to tear o u t of him his h o p e and his fear, the pain of his f a t i g u e and his l o n g i n g f o r rest: which m e a n s t o s m a s h , to d e s t r o y , t o annihilate all he has seen, k n o w n , loved, e n j o y e d , o r h a t e d ; all that is priceless and n e c e s s a r y — the sunshine, the m e m o r i e s , the f u t u r e ;

31

I am not assuming, by any means, that Carlyle the writer is Teufelsdrockh the created character; but continual differentiation between them would be impracticable. Conrad appears to have taken Teufelsdrockh's philosophy as Carlyle's own. Perhaps he knew of Carlyle's letter to James Fraser in which he acknowledged that "the Creed promulgated on all these things . . . is mine, and firmly believed" (Appendix II, Sartor Resartus, p. 304).

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which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. (LJ 7)

This vision of a mechanistic cosmos and the familiar Victorian metaphysical consternation it evoked is closely comparable to Teufelsdrockh's vision of the universe as "one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb" (SR 164). The metaphysical setting also shows Jim's initiation into awareness of human materiality and thus foreshadows what will become the novel's main preoccupation. As Jim is standing night watch, the captain comes on the bridge in his sleeping suit and Jim sees him in a disturbing new light, in terms that emphasize the material and mechanistic aspects of the captain's corporality. His right eye is "stupid and glassy"; his voice is "harsh and dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw." He looks like "a clumsy effigy of a man cut out of a block of fat." The description of Jim's reaction, with its piling up of phrases and its metaphysical implications, suggests it was intended as a parallel to the description, just quoted, of his awakening to a mechanistic cosmos: the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself in his memory forever as the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our own hearts we trust for our salvation in the men that surround us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs. (LJ 14,15)

Jim's initiatory glimpse of "the Intolerable" — the prospect that everything, both "the might of nature, and the seductive corruption of men" (LJ 27), is governed by mechanism — shakes his faith in "the great certitude of unbounded safety and peace that could be read on the silent aspect of nature" (LJ 11). The symbolic analogue of his experience is the collision of the Patna with a submerged obstacle. What happens next dramatizes Carlyle's nightmare of social dissolution in a mechanistic universe. On a doomed ship with lifeboats enough for only a fraction of the passengers, the crew's survival instincts overwhelm all sense of duty: they are reduced to "grovelling," "snarling" animals, restrained from "venomously . . . flying at each other's throats" only by the sense that they need each other to survive (LJ 59). Jim's reaction to this spectacle precisely mirrors Carlyle's mixed horror at the

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prospect of mechanistic human nature — that it might be the truth and that it reduced men to animals. "All this seemed natural," Jim later explains to Marlow, "— and awful — and awful" (LJ 56). Like Carlyle, he tries to dissociate himself from the nightmare, keeping "as far as he could get from the struggle for the boat" (LJ 60), determined to do his duty and thus contradict the evidence before his eyes of a mechanistic human nature. Later, with Marlow, he is still protesting that "there was nothing in common between him and these men — . . . Nothing whatever" (LJ 64). Yet, when a squall strikes the Patna and Jim feels the ship plunge beneath his feet, he jumps into the lifeboat, safely launched and tempting him from below. And he is impelled over the side by the instinct of self-preservation. 32 Jim's leap is the novel's crowning exhibit of the instinctive mechanism that pervades human action. Although he has set his mind to do the duty established by the high moral principles of the merchant service, the ominous plunge of the ship manages, Jim tells Marlow, "to knock over something in my head" (LJ65). Clearly, the unconscious instinct has overpowered the conscious will. Jim is not even aware that he has jumped until he finds himself in the lifeboat looking back at the ship. Thus we come to the crux of his problem in the novel: the established fact of his own betrayal. Far more than dereliction of duty or a matter of guilt and expiation, it is a betrayal — an inadvertent revelation — of mechanism in his own nature. Despite Jim's determination to contradict by his own self-mastery the implications of the crewmen's instinctive animalism, he finds himself "in the same boat" with them (LJ 77), literally and figuratively." N o wonder he laments "Ah! what a chance missed!" or that Marlow notes his "far-away look of fierce yearning after that missed distinction" (LJ 51). The metaphysical theme in both Lord Jim and Sartor Resartus is deeply imbedded in the figurative texture. John Holloway has called Sartor Resartus, with its ironic indignation at the imputation of animalism in human nature, "a veritable verbal menagerie." 34 Similarly, John 32

"Yielding to the promptings of instinct," writes Paul Wiley, "[Jim] takes to flight"

33

Wiley comments that "In these creatures of the wilderness Jim beholds the animal in-

(Conrad's Measure of Man [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1954], p. 54). stincts that have been his familiars from the moment of his signing on with the pilgrim ship, and his ignorance of the dark side of his o w n nature reveals itself in his comment to Marlow o n the difference between himself and these other outcasts" (pp. 5 4 - 5 5 ) . 34

The Victorian Sage (London: Macmillan, 1953), p. 29.

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Palmer notes that "the most obvious image pattern in Lord Jim is perhaps the animal-imagery." 35 Sartor Resartus is also rife with what I shall call mechanistic imagery, as Carlyle broods over the reduction of man to a mere "Digestive-apparatus." A pronounced pattern of mechanistic imagery in Lord Jim has been generally overlooked. By repeatedly exposing the automatic nature of Jim's reflex actions, Conrad takes ironic delight in mocking his dogged refusal to acknowledge mechanism in human nature. Jim's proneness to blush, for example, betrays an automatism in human physiology, as do his shivering, his shuddering, and the wobbling of his knees (LJ 67, 52). H e reacts like a startled animal to an unexpected movement by Marlow: "He bounced off the table as if a mine had been exploded behind his back, and half turned before he alighted, crouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of eyes and a face white about the nostrils" (LJ 73). The following instance of the pattern is especially noteworthy, as it brings to the surface Marlow's heavily ironic attitude toward Jim's refusal to accept evidence of his own mechanistic impulses. During the scramble for the lifeboats on the Patna, Jim has unconsciously begun to move. "Something had started him off at last," Marlow explains, "but of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his immobility, he knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of. the wind that laid it low. . . . The infernal joke was being crammed devilishly down his throat, but — look you — he was not going to admit of any swallowing motion in his gullet" (LJ67). And it is richly apt, as a variation on the same pattern, that Captain Brierly prepares for his suicidal leap off the Ossa by weighting himself down with four iron belaying-pins to counteract the survival instinct that is clear evidence for a view of human nature he would rather resist to the death. The culmination of this stream of ironic mockery directed at Jim's indignant rejection of animality and mechanism in human nature comes in the yellow-dog episode. His belligerent resentment at being, as he mistakenly assumes, called a "wretched cur" works well enough on the surface, where what is at issue is merely a matter of cowardice. But on the metaphysical level, where the real drama of Lord Jim takes place, Jim has betrayed what is really wrong with him, his "plague spot": his adamant refusal to think of himself or be thought of as animal mechanism. But even as Jim feverishly tries to accomplish "some effective refutation"

35

Palmer, p. 40.

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of the imputation, Conrad mercilessly mocks his belligerent denial. First he shows the dog as a piece of Carlylean "Digestive-mechanism": it "suddenly snapped at a fly like a piece of mechanism." Then, in pointed ironic juxtaposition, he gives Jim an equally mechanical physiological reflex: his most spectacular blush of the entire novel (LJ 46). The basic conflict in Lord Jim, then, as in Sartor Resartus, is between opposing views of human nature, and it can be seen throughout the novel's design. 36 Both Jim and Carlyle have the same philosophical problem, and they respond to it in a similar way. Carlyle simply rejected the mechanistic world view. "The philosophy of Carlyle is simple," Holloway writes, "and it hardly changes all through his life. It is a revolt; or rather a counter revolution. In a word, it is anti-mechanism, "37 Jim, too, rebels against the mechanistic world view (Conrad even has him muttering, in a Carlylean dudgeon, about "infernal" steam engines [LJ20]). But, significantly, Conrad views his revolt in terms of evasion, flight, escape. Near the end of the yellow-dog episode, for example, Marlow "taxed him with running away," adding, "I never meant to say he was running away from me" (LJ 46). The point is that he is fleeing from the implications of new discoveries about human origins, physiology, and psychology. Most representative of this line of suggestion is a passage describing Jim's state of mind at the inquiry: he is "like a creature that,

36

Including, I suspect, the names "Patna" and "Patusan." My own suggestion about the significance of the names, which have provoked endless speculation, is that Conrad's transcription of the ship's name into the vernacular of the French lieutenant — "Patina" — is a hint that we should look to word-play in French for the hidden meaning in the names. "Patt" suggest the French word "patte" — the paw of an animal; "na" suggests, very loosely, both "né," meaning "born," and the negative in French. The double reading is inviting because it incorporates into the same term the basic conflict in Lord Jim between the view that man is born with the attributes of animals and the opposing view that he is "a creature not only of another kind but of another essence" (LJ 140). Similarly, the name "Patusan" suggests both "patte-sang," which may be loosely translated "animal paw — ancestry, blood, parentage" and "patte-sans," suggesting something like "without animal attributes." Again, the term, translated into French soundalikes, suggests the two possibilities of human nature which the novel tests. Thus, the "priestlike" French lieutenant, doggedly convinced that "The honour . . . that is real" (LJ 90), denies (Patt-nd) the imputation of animalism in the Patna affair, while the same term (together with a glimpse of him getting to his feet like "a startled ox") ironically questions his credibility. This is all quite complicated and, perhaps, ingenious enough, yet it is well within the scope of Conrad's ingenuity.

37

Holloway, p. 23.

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finding itself imprisoned within an enclosure of high stakes, dashes round and round, distracted in the night, trying to find a weak spot, a crevice, a place to scale, some opening through which it may squeeze itself and escape" (LJ 19). Even Jim's flight from animalism Conrad ironically describes in animalistic terms. Thus, with remarkable fidelity, Conrad gives Jim Carlyle's set of mind against the advancing materialism of the epoch. Both see clearly but reject evidence of the animalism and mechanism in human nature. The resulting conflict between what they see and what they believe is explained quite clearly in Richard Garnett's book on Carlyle, which, as I have suggested, Conrad may well have read: "But, above all, he has two philosophies: he thinks as an Idealist, and feels as a Realist." The idealism, of course, prevails. It is Carlyle's "humour to look at all matter and material things as spirit."38 "The Philosophers" had gone wrong, Carlyle writes in his journal, quoted by Garnett, in striving "to sink the supernatural to the natural." "The gist of my whole way of thought" is to raise "the natural to the supernatural." 39 Although Jim does not declaim, like Teufelsdrockh, that "Matter . . . is Spirit" or that "Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible bonds to All Afe«"(SR 67, 60), he is also a confirmed idealist.40 The richest evidence that Jim's claim for human nature involves man's possession of a supernatural spirit is indirect: it is implied in Marlow's persistent ironic refusal to deal with anything but the material aspects of Jim's predicament. In this vein Marlow's irony toward Jim is much like Mill's toward Carlyle in his remark, quoted by Garnett, "that it was highly probable he could see many things which were not visible to me even after they were pointed out." 41 "All I could see," Marlow insists, "was merely the human being" (LJ 58). Hence, in pondering how he could help Jim, he explains, "My talk was of the material aspect of his position," and he tells Jim, with rich irony, "I am able to help what I can see of you" (LJ 110-11).

38

Life and Writings 1887), p. 70.

39

Garnett, p. 61. As Tony Tanner puts it, "Jim, however we assess the motive, is attempting to get away from the world of facts altogether, he is straining somehow to leave the earth" (Conrad: Lord Jim, Studies in English Literature [London: Edward Arnold, 1963], p. 40). Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, Signet edition ( N e w York: N e w American Library, 1964), pp. 132-33. Quoted by Garnett, p. 57.

40

41

of Thomas

Carlyle

(London: Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.,

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But if Lord Jim is a novel about a debate between materialism and idealism, what are we to make of Conrad's hint that its subject is "the acute consciousness of lost honour" (LJ 2)? The answer is that the debate over human nature in the epoch spanned by Sartor Resartus and Lord Jim was very much a question of lost honor. W h a t was at stake was the claim of humanity to a unique status in the universe by virtue of the indwelling spirit of divinity. In the advancing tide of scientific materialism, it became apparent that, as A. E. Housman phrased it, man "must put off his towering pride and contract his boundless hopes, and begin the world anew from a lower level."42 Looking back on the epoch, Gertrude Himmelfarb observes that "before-Darwin man could look upon himself as the creature of God fashioned in his image; after-Darwin he discovered that he had been created by laws of nature which were the laws of chance, in the image of whatever species of primate science might discover to be his next of kin." 43 This is the lost honor that Jim, so like Carlyle, refuses to accept: man's lowered status in the scheme of things. Both Jim and Carlyle devote themselves to recovery of the lost honor. Jim determines to "live down" (LJ 81) the truth implicit in his leap. "Some day," he dreams, thinking of the honor he has forfeited, "one's bound to come upon some sort of chance to get it all back again. Must!" (LJ 109). So Marlow describes him later as "waiting f o r . . . something in the nature of an opportunity" (LJ 122). Opportunity comes finally in Patusan, where Jim strives to recover the lost honor by validating mankind's "dream of its greatness" (LJ212).

V The centerpiece of Sartor Resartus, of course, is Book Two, where Teufelsdröckh undergoes his ordeal of skepticism in a three-phase progression that has long since acquired classic status. Likewise, the centerpiece of Conrad's ironic retailoring of Sartor Resartus is his structuring of Jim's ordeal in the same three phases: "The Everlasting N o , " "The Centre of Indifference," and "The Everlasting Yea." 42

43

From Housman's introductory lecture as Professor of Latin at University College, London, October 1892, quoted in David Daiches, Some Late Victorian Attitudes (London: André Deutsch, 1969), p. 13. Victorian Minds (New York: Knopf, 1968), p. 206.

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Jim and Teufelsdróckh embark on their metaphysical adventure from the Christian world view — Jim from an English parsonage and Teufelsdróckh from a home imbued with simple Christian faith. At training schools for their intended professions both are plunged into conflict between competing world views, "vibrating everywhere between the highest and the lowest levels" (SR 153). Particularly disillusioning is the evidence within themselves of the lower nature they find intolerable. Jim's leap from the Patna is irrefutable evidence of the power of his instincts, but Teufelsdróckh is similarly shaken by contemplation of "his own Shadow," from which he sees no escape (SR 154). Jim's leap, a leap from faith to doubt, plunges him into a dark night of the soul much like Teufelsdróckh's Everlasting No, a time of utter metaphysical despair. The universe itself seems empty of meaning: "A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite immensity still as death" (LJ 70). Jim's sense of cosmic isolation is like that of Teufelsdróckh, who feels himself "a feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude" in a "Universe . . . all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility" (SR 163-64). Having perceived himself "in the same boat" with the animalistic crew, Jim has lost confidence in his own ability to transcend his lower nature. Teufelsdróckh speaks for Jim as well as himself: "The fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe?" (SR 163). Thus Jim finds himself under a sky "all black. N o t a star, not a light anywhere," in a "pitchy blackness" that characterizes the same region of metaphysical despair as does "the fixed, starless, Tartarean black" of T h e Everlasting N o (LJ 72, 69; SR 159). Both feel, as Jim puts it, that "Everything was gone" (LJ 70). The famous leap from the Patna, as the extensive commentary on Lord Jim bears witness, is perhaps unparalleled in its multifaceted suggestiveness.44 When the novel is placed side by side with Sartor Resartus, however, significant new dimensions emerge from the episode. N o w it can be seen as a remarkable dramatization of the chief disillusionments of The Everlasting N o : the loss of religious faith and the consequent despair of the human social and political prospect. It was his loss of Christian faith that precipitated Carlyle toward the dark pessimism of The Everlasting No. Jim's leap from the Patna is also 44

T h e leap has been seen as dereliction of a seaman's duty, simple cowardice, guilt that must be expiated, Conrad's o w n leap from his native Poland, a revelation of the darkness within, a night-journey into the unconscious, and so on.

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a leap from a metaphorical ship of faith. With its teeming human cargo, the great preponderance of them simple religious pilgrims "urged by faith and the hope of paradise" on an "errand of faith" to the city of hope (LJ 9, 10), the ship symbolizes what was happening in Western culture. T o some of those on board, she collides with an obstacle waiting in her path and appears doomed to sink. Both Sartor Resartus and Lord Jim represent the faithful and the skeptical in terms of the sleeping and the wakeful. In the skeptical "Night of the World," Teufelsdrockh remarks, "well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow Dream." Here are the "unconscious pilgrims" who sleep through the metaphysical crisis of the Patna. "But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality?" Teufelsdrockh continues. And here are Jim and the crew, who perceive that the ship is sinking and abandon her. The keenest irony is that both Jim and Carlyle leaped from a ship that did not sink. In a marvellously opportune confluence of fact and figure, Conrad capitalizes on the striking irony of the Jeddah incident — the abandonment of a doomed ship that did not sink — to dramatize the stubborn buoyancy of the ship of religious faith despite abandonment by hopeless crewmen and passengers alike, and also to echo an observation about Carlyle by David Masson in 1885; "Had he not underestimated the durability of the Christian metaphysic in the world?" 45 But Carlyle's loss of faith had profound social implications as well. H e believed that "Society becomes possible by Religion" and without it would disintegrate "in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and dispersion" (SR215, 216). Of several nightmarish visions of human animals driven by the instinct of self-preservation in a mechanistic cosmos, the most vivid is Teufelsdrockh's "Night-thoughts" of "upwards of five-hundred-thousand two-legged animals without feathers [lying] round us, in horizontal positions. . . crammed in . . . like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others" (SR 23). It may be noted in passing, as a measure of Conrad's ironic impatience with the pessimism implicit in such a vision of humanity, that he spends nearly three pages parodying it in the alcoholic hallucinations of the chief engineer, who confides to Marlow that the Patna "was full of reptiles" (LJ 23). Parallel to Teufelsdrockh's vision in its metaphysical

45

Carlyle: Personally and in His Writings; Two Edinburgh Lectures (London: Macmillan, 1885), p. 88.

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implications, as well as in numerous details, are Conrad's description of the Patna pilgrims packed to overflowing "down the yawning hatchways" and later sleeping "on every deck, in all the dark corners" (LJ 10, 12), and, later on, Jim's night thoughts of what will happen when the Patna sinks. On the literal level he simply envisions the terrifying struggle for survival of drowning creatures with too few lifeboats. But figuratively his vision is of the utter breakdown of the social order that many feared when the rudimentary masses, freed from moral sanctions by the collapse of religious faith, began to behave like the animal automatons they would be in a mechanistic cosmos. From this perspective the leap from the Patna becomes a surrender to pessimism, an abandonment of faith in the human prospect. H . J. C. Grierson makes precisely this point about Carlyle: "In Milton and Carlyle alike, . . . what failed them was faith, faith in God and in their fellow men, and the two seem to be inextricably interwoven." 46 N o w we may grasp the full import of Jim's much-interpreted "breach of faith with the community of mankind" (LJ95). It is a lack of faith in the capacity of humanity to survive an awakening to reality, a fearful conviction that, if their false ideal dream of human greatness were to be replaced by the mechanistic truth, men, like the animal automatons they are, would turn and devour one another. Thus Conrad passes much the same judgment on Carlyle as that of H . D. Traill in his introduction to Past and Present, the tenth volume of the Centenary Edition, published in 1899, the very year in which Conrad resumed writing Lord Jim: that he was "a political pessimist who mistook a passing phase of trouble in the history of a nation for a crisis, probably a fatal crisis, in its fortunes." 47 Jim's time of crisis, so intense that like Teufelsdrockh he entertains the notion of suicide (LJ 81, SR 165), ends, again like Teufelsdrockh's, in a spectacular fire-baptism that somehow cauterizes his wounded spirit and sets him on the next phase of his ordeal. In Marlow's hotel room after the trial, Jim is suffocating with distress while a storm blusters outside. Then he steps out on the verandah and is so totally immersed in a brilliant glare of lightning that he disappears from view. When he re-enters the room, it is clear that his crisis is past: '"That's over,' [Marlow] heard him say" (LJ 108). Like Teufelsdrockh shaking "base Fear 46

47

"Thomas Carlyle," Proceedings of the British Academy (London: Henriette H e r z Trust, 1940), p. 319. Works of Thomas Carlyle (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899), p. 18.

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a w a y . . . forever," Jim declares: "I feel as if nothing could ever touch me" (SR 167, LJ 109). Both begin to look up hopefully again from the depths of negation: Jim "looked upwards" and Teufelsdrockh's "whole ME stood up, in native Godcreated majesty." N o w follows T h e Centre of Indifference for Jim and Teufelsdrockh, an interlude of wandering in "Indignation and Defiance," as both, feeling rejected by the "Family of Man," are shown in flight from a specter or ghost and in quest of an opportunity to dispel the specter in some form of affirmation of humanity's higher essence (Marlow ironically calls Jim's hope "this waiting above ground for the impossible" [LJ 122]). Jim wanders all over the East "under the shadow" of the Patna episode (LJ 119), which one old stager terms "a disgrace to human natur'," an observation with a particularly sharp metaphysical sting for Jim with its dual implication of lost honor. The impasse both Jim and Teufelsdrockh find themselves in during this interlude, specifically Jim's vain effort to outdistance the shadow of his own betrayal, is summarized in Teufelsdrockh's frustrated realization, "Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest Runner to escape 'from his own Shadow'" (SR 156). At last Jim gets his opportunity through the help of the German philosopher-naturalist-administrator Stein. Not surprisingly, critics have noticed the resemblance between Stein and Goethe on the basis of Conrad's characterization alone, with no prompting from awareness of Conrad's knowledge of Carlyle. 48 When Lord Jim is recognized as an ironic echo of Sartor Resartus, the Goethean role of Stein immediately falls into place. All the details do not fit exactly — Goethe could not, for example, have been, as Stein was, involved in the revolution of 1848, though he was remotely involved in that of 1789 — but there is enough of Goethe in Stein to indicate a conscious parallel. Stein looks like portraits of Goethe in later life: Goethe's "hair was thin, and brushed back from a massive and lofty forehead"; he looks much the same at threescore as he had looked at twenty; he has a "long, hairless face" with "deep, downward folds"; and he is "tall and loose-jointed" in standing portraits, with a "slight stoop" (LJ 122-23). Like Stein, Goethe was a metaphysician, a naturalist, and an administrator of a small backward

48

See, for example, Frederick R. Karl, A Reader's Guide to Joseph Conrad, rev. ed. ( N e w York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), p. 126, and Paul Kirschner, "Conrad, Goethe and Stein: T h e Romantic Fate in Lord Jim, "Ariel, 10, N o . 1 (January 1979), 6 5 - 8 1 .

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principality. Conrad gives Stein the Goethean view of organic harmony achieved through the balance of opposing forces, but reflects also a common view of Goethe as a man with his own unresolved conflict between serene optimism and tortured skepticism. Both are also inveterate collectors of natural specimens. And both pursue their naturalistic studies in an effort to understand man's place in nature.49 But above all, Stein plays the same role in Jim's ordeal as Goethe plays in Carlyle's. Both older men deliver their younger protégés from "conjecturing and denying" 50 and give them an opportunity to achieve the affirmation Carlyle calls The Everlasting Yea. In responding to Carlyle's appeal, observes Richard Garnett, "Goethe is not only approvingly sympathetic, but practically helpful."51 This is precisely the spirit of Stein's response to Jim's plight: with Marlow he seeks "to find something practical — a practical remedy — for the evil — for the great evil — he repeated, with a humorous and indulgent smile" (LJ 131). Much more could be said about Stein's Goethean role in Lord Jim than can be included here. 52 The point of the parallel, however, is that in

49

See, for example, H . G. Haile, Artist in Chrysalis: A Biographical Study of Goethe in Italy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 109, and Letters from Goethe, trans. M. von Herzfeld and C. A. M. Sym (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1957), p. 153.

50

Garnett, p. 29. Garnett, p. 59. In the details of Stein's background, for example, Conrad may be alluding not only to what Goethe did for Carlyle but also to what Carlyle did for Goethe. It was Carlyle, according to G. H. Lewes, "who first taught England to appreciate Goethe" (quoted in Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography [New York: Oxford University Press, 1968], p. 192). It is interesting to note that Stein got his start in the island trade — as Goethe got his foothold in the British Isles? — with the help of "an old S c o t . . . who had died many years ago, of whom little was remembered besides a roaring voice and a rough sort of honesty" (LJ 141). Whether or not this is Carlyle, whose influence had faded greatly since his death, at least the "old Scot" has Carlyle's roar, which might have been suggested to Conrad by Richard Garnett's comment that "Carlyle was an exception to Anthony Trollope's maxim that a man does not roar very long, if he roars very loud" (p. 158). Perhaps here I should acknowledge that Stein is not modeled exclusively on Goethe. As N o r m a n Sherry points out in his fascinating study of Conrad's sources for Lord Jim, "Stein is derived from a composite source" which comprised elements of A. R. Wallace, "a man called Dr. Bernstein, another called Charles Allen, and upon Captain William Lingard" (Conrad's Eastern World [Cambridge University Press, 1966], p. 143). It is interesting to note, too, that in discussing Florence Clemens's efforts to show "that Stein's very appearance was based on Wallace's," Sherry points out that "Stein was beardless while Wallace was not" (p. 142). Goethe, of course, was

51 52

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the Patusan to which Stein directs Jim, Conrad contrives to objectify in the real world the state of mind Carlyle termed T h e Everlasting Yea, which he was able to attain through the help of Goethe. Here, too, I must limit myself to a brief sketch of an extensive and complex matter. Patusan is a place of "selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and dispersion" that suggests Carlyle's vision of the human prospect in a mechanistic universe (SR216). Like Teufelsdrockh making "this last leap . . . into the promised land" of Transcendentalism (SR 255), Jim's second leap in the novel lands him in Patusan, where he hopes to implement a transcendence like the grand vision of Sartor Resartus: "the Perfectibility of Society" achievable through calling forth the higher nature of human beings (SR 212). Conrad creates Patusan, quite fittingly, as a kind of romantic dream world. Much of the episode is bathed in moonlight, venerable symbol of the imagination. Thus the place has both an inner location in Jim's idealizing vision and a geographical location in the Malay archipelago. Conrad's characteristically oblique hints at the internal location of Patusan, as well as its idealistic elevation, have not gone unnoticed. 53 The opening paragraph of chapter 21 is especially rife with intimations of the superterrestrial significance of Patusan, "a heavenly body . . . of no earthly importance to anybody," where Jim "left his earthly failings behind him"; and so on. It is part of the irony of Lord Jim that the arena of T h e Everlasting Yea should turn out to be a backward, primitive, out-of-the-way native settlement. But that, too, is a faithful transcription of Carlyle's awareness that the actual world appears a decidedly unpromising place to realize the grand vision of T h e Everlasting Yea. Nevertheless, as Teufeldrockh sees, "here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Ac-

53

beardless. Although there is no doubt that Conrad drew on other sources for Stein, these mainly contributed topical details relating to the Malaysian setting of the novel. I cannot help but think that for the far more significant thematic context of Lord Jim Conrad's principal source for Stein was Goethe. Even without help from parallels between the Patusan episode and The Everlasting Yea Tanner has noted the double meaning in the words of the brig-master who takes Jim upriver: "He himself, he says, will never 'ascend' to Patusan — thus hinting at its super-terrestrial location. More tellingly he says that Patusan is 'situated internally' — meaning, of course, the jungle interior, but giving us the slight notion that Patusan is perhaps some inner world of the imagination," Conrad: Lord Jim, p. 46.

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tual, . . . here or nowhere is thy Ideal" (SR 196). Thus, since "Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action," Jim begins to "forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though useless, unreasonable" (SR 158): he takes charge of the turmoil in Patusan. H e is seen, in high Carlylean fashion, "preaching the necessity of vigorous action" to the native leaders (LJ 179). "Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," thunders Teufelsdrockh, and Jim, looking about himself, sees his duty: "It seemed to come to me . . . All at once I saw what I had to do" (LJ 159). H e simply puts out of his mind the shadow of man's lower nature that has dogged him ever since the Patna and thus "that 'strangest Dualism,' . . . is at last sublimated into a higher dynamic harmony." 54 As an outward sign of his inner transformation he retailors himself; his white clothes suggest the new robes of divinity of Sartor Resartus, his "celestial Essence thereby rendered visible" (SR 207). And he begins to lead the society of Patusan by means of "the homogeneous soul-stuff of their higher egos" toward that "Mystic Union" that is the image of the divine harmony of the universe.55 The question of Jim's success in Patusan has been a source of endless debate, but the deeply ironic tone of Conrad's reflection of Sartor Resartus enjoins a decidedly negative conclusion. For a time "the mad primeval Discord is hushed" (SR 197), and the settlement enjoys a period of almost Arcadian peace based largely on the natives' worship of Jim, an incarnation of Carlyle's "Hero-Divinity" (SR 252), who, fittingly enough, "appeared like a creature not only of another kind but of another essence" (LJ 140). The social cohesion that grows around Jim is a faithful reflection of Carlyle's notion that Hero-worship is one of the "organic filaments" that can bind society together (SR 250), for Jim is surely, as Tanner perceives, a fictional incarnation of the Carlylean "Great Man." 56 But something goes wrong in Patusan, and one cannot escape the fact that it is Conrad who makes it go wrong as he passes judgment on Carlylean idealism. Moreover, there is an instructive inevitability in what happens, "a sort of profound and terrifying logic in it . . . [ , ] an unavoidable consequence. Something of the sort had to happen" (LJ 208).

54 55 56

Harrold, "Introduction," Sartor Resartus, p. xlvi. Harrold, p. xlvii. Tanner, pp. 7-9.

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Conrad brings Gentleman Brown with his wolfish crew to Patusan and pits him against Jim. They confront each other "standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life which includes all mankind" (LJ 232) — Jim, with his faith in man's spiritual transcendence, and Brown as Conrad's embodiment of the dark mechanistic amorality in nature "flowing from the very hearts of men like a stream from a dark source" (LJ 237). Brown appeals to the commonality between himself and Jim as between one adventurer and another, but Jim, committed to the verification of man's inherent honor, sees a different commonality, based on " a recognition that there does dwell in that presence of our brother something divine." 57 "Where else," cries Teufelfsdrockh, "is the G O D ' s - P R E S E N C E manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?" ( S R 66). Inspired by a similar faith, Jim declares: "I've got to look only at the face of the first man that comes along to regain my confidence" (LJ 186). What he sees there is, of course, the "Spirit" that draws "All M e n " together by "invisible bonds" ( S R 2 1 4 ) . Trapped by his idealism, Jim trusts to the honor in Brown, but Brown acts on his brutal instincts and commits the senseless massacre that proves Jim fatally wrong. Jim manages a small triumph: he does not let the dark powers rob him twice of his peace (LJ 248); that is, he does not yield to instinct and flee Patusan as he had leaped from the Patna. But he is punished for his mistaken idealism by " a lesson, a retribution — a demonstration of some obscure and awful attribute of our nature which, I am afraid, is not so very far under the surface as we like to think" (LJ 246). In its ironically faithful reflection of the classic pattern of disillusionment at the heart of Sartor Resartus, Lord Jim answers the oftargued question of whether or not the novel breaks in two between the Patna and Patusan episodes. Conrad, of course, agreed with Edward Garnett that it does, 58 but he was characteristically over-submissive to Garnett on literary issues. I prefer to believe that his real view is the one he expresses emphatically to his publisher, William Blackwood, that the novel develops "owe situation, only one really from beginning to end." 59

57

58

59

Carlyle in "The Hero as King," On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, The Works of Thomas Carlyle, Vol. V (London: Chapman and Hall, 1901), p. 203. Letters from Joseph Conrad, ed. Edward Garnett (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928), p. 171. Letters to Blackwood, p. 106.

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That is Jim's passage from The Everlasting N o of the Patna ordeal through the tormented wanderings of the Centre of Indifference to Patusan and his disastrous attempt to transform reality into the ideal dream world of The Everlasting Yea.

VI Habituated to a view of Conrad as a writer w h o withholds judgment, w h o depicts a world about which nothing definitive can be said, many readers have found him ambivalent about Jim's idealism and the ending of Lord Jim equivocal in its verdict on Jim. Reading the novel side by side with Sartor Resartus, however, helps to clarify its terms. In actuality, Conrad implies a great deal about his response to idealism, and, incidentally, to Carlyle and Sartor Resartus. Indeed, the imprint of Sartor Resartus on Lord Jim is so pervasive and ironically audacious that it is but a short step to begin to see in Marlow's perplexed, often exasperated ruminations on Jim oblique Conradian commentary on Carlyle and the bewildering style and structure, as well as the ethereally vaporous philosophy, of Sartor Resartus.60 At the very least, there is surely more than a hint of his response to Jim's Carlylean romanticism. For, like Stein, another romantic, Jim is "the heir of a shadowy and mighty tradition!"

60

Are the following comments by Marlow merely about Jim, or are they also Conrad's bemused recollections of his own encounter with Carlyle and the notoriously convoluted style and structure of Sartor Resartus? "I don't pretend I understood him" (an echo, perhaps, of Marlow's comment in "Youth" that he had not understood Sartor Resartus at first?). "The views he let me have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog — bits of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general aspect of a country" (LJ 47). "I cannot say I had ever seen him distinctly — not even to this day, after I had my last view of him" (LJ 135). Here and in the following comment one may glimpse Conrad, anticipating the ending of Lord Jim, giving his final impressions of Carlyle: "I perceived myself unexpectedly to be thoroughly sick of him. Why these vapourings?" (LJ 144). In another remark one senses an implication that Conrad, as I have suggested, has been reading about Carlyle in the critical and biographical literature available in the late nineties: "It is impossible to see him clearly — especially as it is through the eyes of others that we take our last look at him" (LJ 206). And the following comment seems far more apt as an observation on Carlyle's reputation at the end of the century than as an impression of Jim: " H e was great — invincible — and the world did not want him, it had forgotten him, it would not even know him" (LJ 193).

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(LJ 149). Although it appeared, as the century wore on, that scientific materialism was winning the intellectual field, romantic feeling continued to appeal. 61 Thus Jim's idealism is of "the fellowship of these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct, cold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give a flutter deep, deep down somewhere" (LJ 78). Even the sardonically skeptical Marlow, absorbing the heady atmosphere of Patusan, the objectification of the idealistic flights of the Everlasting Yea, feels himself caught up in the dream. The following passage, a concise ironic epitome of the argument of Sartor Resartus, complete to its rhetorical triumph over utilitarianism, reveals perhaps the clearest glimpse of Conrad in the act of obliquely evaluating Carlyle's book. "But do you notice how," Marlow muses, feeling the spell of Patusan, "the haggard utilitarian lies of our civilization wither and die, to be replaced by pure exercises of imagination, that have the futility, often the charm, and sometimes the deep hidden truthfulness, of works of art?" (LJ 172). But even in this striking passage, in which Conrad pays tribute to the artistry of Carlyle and its compelling power, the strenuously erected edifice of Sartor Resartus is dismissed as an exercise of imagination. Unquestionably, Conrad was drawn to Carlyle. Although Jim is the ostensible subject of the following Marlovian comments, I believe they may apply even more aptly to the part of his characterization drawn from Carlyle. "There was a moment of real and profound intimacy, unexpected and short-lived like a glimpse of some everlasting [note Carlyle's term], of some saving truth" (LJ 147). "It's extraordinary how he could cast upon you the spirit of his illusion" (LJ 67). " H e swayed me. I own to it" (LJ 57). The appeal of Carlyle was for Conrad evidently a mixture of admiration for his artistry, respect for his earnest concern about the human prospect, and a wistful attraction to his dream. But that is not to say that he cannot make up his mind about Carlylean idealism. What he refuses to do, in the honesty of his agnosticism, is to pronounce on questions that are "Unknowable." The issue of Lord Jim is, after all, "beyond the competence of a court of inquiry." The question of human nature is "a subtle and momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life" (LJ 57). Thus Marlow feels "doomed . . . to be confronted with unanswerable questions" (LJ 197). In view of the evidence in Jim's case

61

See Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1955), p. 278.

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verifying the mechanistic springs of human impulse Marlow wonders "what business had he to be romantic?" But quite honestly he acknowledges that "the last word is not said — probably never shall be said" (I.J 137). Nevertheless, the criticism of Carlylean idealism in Lord Jim is clear and unequivocal. Its profound danger is dramatized in the catastrophic culmination of Jim's adventure in Patusan, which Conrad stated emphatically had been devised "in accordance with a meditated resolve." "The end of a story," he said, apropos of Lord Jim, "is a very important and difficult p a r t ; . . . It is always thought out before the story is begun" (emphasis Conrad's). 62 The harsh retribution Conrad metes out to Jim's high-minded effort to validate the transcendent honor enjoyed by humankind is reinforced by the rhetorical movement of the novel as a whole, which is exactly opposite to that of Sartor Resartus, where the Editor progresses from initial wariness toward endorsement of Teufelsdrockh's affirmation. Marlow's ironic rejection of the idealism on trial in Lord Jim is plentifully evident in the novel's litany of skepticism, its steady stream of doubting terms — "illusion," "gigantic deception," "the Inconceivable," "the impossible," "naiveness," "mad, dangerous, unsafe" — as well as in numerous suggestions that Jim's is an "impossible world of romantic achievements" (LJ 51). Ultimately, Conrad's judgment on Carlyle is summed up in his impression of "the subtle unsoundness of the man" (LJ 55). Carlyle's dangerous flaw, judging from the novel's key episodes — Jim's instinctive leap from the Patna and Gentleman Brown's brutal perfidy — was his "assumption of unlimited power over natural instincts" (LJ 50). "I at least," Marlow observes wryly, "had no illusions" (LJ 109). And finally there is Stein, whose sponsorship of Jim is a kind of field test of the transcendental hypothesis he has been experimenting with in the shadowy recesses of his laboratory. Even his hope is dashed by Jim's failure, and in the last line of the novel he waves good-by to his butterflies and gives up his dream of the ethereal soul of man. VII In Conrad's ironic critique of Carlyle's idealism in Lord Jim lies the answer to the riddle of "Youth" — how was the "philosopher" of Sartor 62

Letters to Blackwood\ pp. 86-87, 107.

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Resartus "more — or less" than a man? In a large sense the riddle overarches the entire Youth volume: "Youth" poses it, "Heart of Darkness" supplies a significant clue, and Lord Jim develops the explanation. The clue in "Heart of Darkness" is planted in the special meaning the story gives the terms "man" and "woman" in relation to its dramatization of the darkness within. A man in "Heart of Darkness" is anyone courageous enough to acknowledge the "forgotten and brutal instincts" within himself — to "face the darkness," as Marlow puts it. A woman is anyone too faint-hearted to face this reality. Thus, "if you were man enough," Marlow asserts, "you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response" to the promptings of primitive savagery in the dark wilderness of the unconscious mind.63 But Jim, in his flight from the shadow of his own instincts, is more like the women in "Heart of Darkness" — Marlow's aunt, who refuses to face the underlying profit motive behind imperialism, and the Intended, for whom the truth about Kurtz would be "too dark altogether." Jim's unmanly weakness is the point of numerous insinuations in Lord Jim, as in Marlow's caustic sarcasm about the strength of his heart (LJ 66), his ability "to face anything" (LJ 58), and his "attitude of mind," which Marlow is "almost frightened" to discover "in a grown man" (LJ 143). Thus, to be less than a man in the riddle's terms is to shrink from facing the truth of man's nature. As to what it means to be more than a man, Tanner's comment that in his "air of moral superiority" Jim "pretends to be more than a man" is apt.64 Jim's "acute consciousness of lost honour" drives him to build a society in Patusan that will prove man is set apart from nature by something transcendental. This, of course, was Carlyle's cherished belief. As David Masson, writing several years before Lord Jim, explains, Carlyle held that there w a s the divine within man himself, that extract o r inspiration of Deity which is incorporate with the very structure of the human soul and always throbs there in the f o r m of conscience, upward tendency, the sense of right and w r o n g , of the noble and the ignoble. N o human soul, even the meanest,

63

64

Joseph Conrad, Youth and Two Other Stories (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1924), p. 96. "Butterflies and Beetles — Conrad's Two Truths," Chicago Review, 16 (Winter-Spring 1963), 2. Reprinted in Norton Critical Edition of Lord Jim, p. 452.

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but had this structural e q u i p m e n t , and k n e w , by the v e r y f a b r i c o f its constitution, w h a t w a s right o r w r o n g , g o o d or b a d , at a n y particular m o m e n t . 6 5

T o u n d e r s t a n d that this is a l s o J i m ' s view of h u m a n n a t u r e is to u n d e r s t a n d the p r e c i s e n a t u r e of his m i s t a k e with G e n t l e m a n B r o w n , w h o a d m i t s : " I h a v e n ' t g o t a n y w i n g s " ( L J 2 3 3 ) . C o n r a d w a s n o t a l o n e in his c o n c l u s i o n that s u c h a b e i n g as t h a t a s s u m e d b y C a r l y l e a n p h i l o s o p h y w o u l d be m o r e t h a n m a n . A h a l f - c e n t u r y later L i o n e l T r i l l i n g w o u l d o b serve that " C a r l y l e y e a r n e d f o r w h a t w a s b e y o n d h u m a n possibility, f o r a p l a c e in the universe n o m a n c o u l d achieve." 6 6 T h e full t e r m s of the riddle, then, a r e as f o l l o w s : C a r l y l e is either m o r e than a m a n — i m b u e d with a spirit of divinity he is p a r t l y G o d — o r less than a m a n b e c a u s e he c a n n o t b e a r the naturalistic truth a b o u t h u m a n n a t u r e a n d b e c a u s e he c a n n o t a c c e p t all of m a n , i n c l u d i n g m a n ' s instinctive a n i m a l a u t o m a t i s m . B u r n a b y , the s o l d i e r , " w a s a m a n , " bec a u s e he did n o t i d e a l i z e h u m a n nature. H a v i n g l e a r n e d that the R u s sians h a d c l o s e d C e n t r a l A s i a t o f o r e i g n o b s e r v a t i o n , he r e s o l v e d t o g o there, f u l l y e x p e c t i n g t o d i s c o v e r s o m e d a r k m a n i f e s t a t i o n o f primitive b a r b a r i s m . M o r e like S t e i n , w h o r e c o g n i z e s that h u m a n n a t u r e r e q u i r e s " a little m a n a g e m e n t " ( L J 1 2 7 ) , than like J i m , w h o trusts to h u m a n i t y ' s higher essence, B u r n a b y shows

a proper skepticism, which

Conrad

clearly a p p r o v e s , of h u m a n m o t i v a t i o n . A b o u t C a r l y l e , C o n r a d a p p e a r s to be a m b i v a l e n t . T h e r i d d l e leaves the q u e s t i o n o p e n . B u t , as w e have s e e n , the Youth v o l u m e d o e s n o t . In " H e a r t o f D a r k n e s s " K u r t z is und o n e by " f o r g o t t e n a n d brutal instincts," a n d in Lord Jim J i m is u n d o n e by t h i n k i n g t o o h i g h l y b o t h o f himself a n d of his f e l l o w m a n . T h u s , the novel a n s w e r s the r i d d l e : C a r l y l e , b e c a u s e he c a n n o t b e a r t o be j u s t a m a n , as m a n w a s c o m i n g t o b e u n d e r s t o o d in scientific, e v o l u t i o n a r y , a n d p s y c h o l o g i c a l t e r m s , d e c l a r e s himself m o r e t h a n a m a n , a h i g h e r being h o n o r e d with the inspiration of D e i t y ; b u t he is less than a m a n b o t h in his w o m a n l y e v a s i o n o f reality a n d in his r e f u s a l t o a c c e p t all that m a n is. C a r l y l e , j u d g e s C o n r a d , l a c k e d the s t a u n c h n e s s t o live in the real w o r l d , that e m p t y i m m e n s i t y w h i c h l o o m e d a f t e r the Judea,

ancient ship

of faith, h a d e x p l o d e d a n d s u n k . C o n r a d ' s j u d g m e n t is thus m u c h like

65 66

Carlyle: Personally and in His Writings, pp. 88-89. Matthew Arnold, p. 83.

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215

Nietzsche's that "the need for faith, for some kind of unconditional Yes and No, this C a r l y l i s m , . . . is a need born of weakness. "6?

VIII From his letters to Edward Garnett and R. B. Cunninghame Graham it is clear that Conrad was uneasy about what he was doing in Lord Jim. Indeed, it may have been an unquiet consciousness of the extent to which the novel was being supplied to him rather than created that prompted his cryptic comment to Garnett: "The question is will I ever write anything?" 68 But if he expected Garnett to find him out, 69 he need not have worried: his transmutation of Sartor Resartus into Lord Jim is far from obvious or slavish. A close examination of Carlyle's remarkable book, however, shows it to contain many details that would later turn up in Lord Jim, including some of the most memorable features of the novel. Stein's butterflies and beetles, for example, symbolizing the spiritual and material dimensions of human nature, are both prefigured in Sartor Resartus, complete with the figurative context into which Conrad would set them — the butterflies in Teufelsdrockh's emergence as " a winged Psyche" from "the imprisoned Chrysalis" of his doubt and denial into the spiritual affirmation of the Everlasting Yea, 70 the beetles in the "spiders and unclean beetles," which, for Teufelsdróckh, symbolize the material hull, the "ghastly affectation of Life," that is all that remains of man from the mechanistic perspective (SR 204, 216, 235). Also found in Lord Jim are "the higher sunlight slopes" to which Teufelsdróckh climbs out of the depths of T h e Everlasting N o (SR 184). In a scene which Marlow terms "symbolic," Conrad sets Jim, at the zenith of his ephem-

67

The Antichrist,

in The Portable

Nietzsche,

trans., ed. Walter Kaufmann ( N e w York:

Viking, 1954), p. 638. 68

Letters from Joseph Conrad,

p. 169. Reprinted in Lord Jim, N o r t o n Critical Edition,

p. 300. 69

Conrad's letter of January 20, 1900, is full of fear both that his o w n conscience will punish him and that reading Lord Jim will be for Garnett like having a chair pulled out from under him (Letters from Joseph Conrad,

p. 164. Reprinted in Lord Jim, N o r t o n

Critical Edition, p. 299). 70

As Harrold points out in his note to the quoted passage, "Psyche was the Greek personification of the human soul; her emblem is the butterfly" (SR 204 n). Well versed in classicism, Conrad would not have needed the note to make the proper connection.

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eral triumph in Patusan, "high in the sunshine on the top of that historic hill of his," dominating "the old mankind" like a Carlylean hero — "like a figure set up on a pedestal" — while, ironically, the "land devoured the sunshine" in ominous foreshadowing of the catastrophe to come (LJ 162). And I suspect that those intriguing twin peaks of Patusan, silhouetted so tellingly against the moonlight of a romantic dream world (LJ 135), are still another ironic echo of Sartor Resartus, in which Teufelsdrockh's "indomitable Defiance" yet "boundless Reverence" loom forth like "two mountain summits" (SR205). If, as a close familiarity with Sartor Resartus reveals, Conrad drew from it for numerous details in Lord Jim, more than can be noted here, it appears also, as I have indicated here and there, that he built the Carlyle side of Jim with the help of the considerable literature about Carlyle available by the end of the century. 71 Surely it is more than coincidence that when he returns to the fragmentary "Tuan Jim: A Sketch" and sees its potential for the kind of development I have been tracing, Conrad changes Jim's height from "over six feet" to the "inch, perhaps two, under six feet" of the novel's memorable opening sentence — and thus closer to Carlyle's height, as recorded by Richard Garnett: "lacking one inch of six feet." Garnett further describes Carlyle with a "brow abrupt like a low cliff, craggy over eyes deep-set" and "dark, short, thick hair." 72 Jim, with his "fixed-from-under stare" and "thick clustering hair," seems to resemble Carlyle more than mere chance would explain. Conrad's established knowledge of Sartor Resartus, together with the many echoes and parallels of Carlyle's book in Lord Jim, indicate

71

I am not unmindful of Normal Sherry's demonstration that Conrad modeled Jim after Augustine Podmore Williams, Jim Lingard, and Sir James (Rajah) Brooke

(Conrad's

Eastern World, p. 138). But this does not rule out other possible sources for Jim. It is interesting to note that the Times Literary

Supplement

reviewer of Sherry's book found

his identifications insufficient to account for the totality of Jim: they are "only a start; for once w e are in possession of these facts, where d o they lead us? . . . T h e bait is obvious. If Jim was originally Williams, on to w h o m was he later, and unsuccessfully grafted?" ("Lord Jim's Line," TLS, November 3, 1966, p. 994). Clearly Jim, as Sherry recognizes (p. 273), is a composite characterization: Conrad's "characters and incidents grow by amalgamation with other characters and incidents, by the addition of further 'truths.'" Sherry's identifications trace Jim's antecedents on the more or less topical level. For the deeper reaches of the novel's concerns Conrad's source appears to have been Carlyle. 72

Life and Writings of Thomas Carlyle, p. 88.

Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

217

that he deliberately shaped his novel into an ironic reflection of Sartor Resartus. The crowning touch of his ironic inversion of Carlyle's Sartorean rhetoric is his epigraph to Lord Jim, Carlyle's favorite line from Novalis — "It is certain my conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it" — which appears in a somewhat different translation in Sartor Resartus (SR214). Beyond doubt Conrad go the line from Carlyle: the translation is Carlyle's from One Heroes and Hero-WorshipP As to why he chose that translation over the different one in Sartor Resartus or the third version in "Characteristics" 74 one can only conjecture. Perhaps he meant to gesture toward the wider scope of his ironic intentions; the Youth volume reflects all three Carlylean works mentioned and Lord Jim is largely at odds with Carlyle's idea of the Hero. In any case Conrad's use of the line is a pointedly ironic inversion of its implication in Sartor Resartus, where it is part of the work's rhetoric in behalf of "the Divine Idea of the World." Unlike the at first similarly skeptical Editor, Marlow is not converted. Jim "wanted an ally, a helper, an accomplice" (LJ 57) to strengthen his own conviction. But to Marlow his dream remains "Inconceivable" and dangerous. Even Stein, Jim's eventual ally-helper-accomplice, is turned back from the dream. The conviction that is strengthened in Lord Jim is not Jim's but Marlow's. And the epigraph is part of Conrad's ironic strategy to warn the reader away from the dangerously persuasive rhetoric of Sartor Resartus.

IX Of course, Carlyle, dead nearly two decades, ist not the target of the object lesson dramatized in Lord Jim. A more immediate stimulus for the argument of the novel may be discovered in Conrad's extensive correspondence with R. B. Cunninghame Graham during the period 1897-1900, which coincides with the gestation and composition of the Youth volume. Conrad's letters to Graham in these years are of particular interest because they record his side of their debate over the very metaphysical issues — mainly the question of human nature — which

73 74

Centenary Edition, p. 58. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. Ill (Boston: James Munroe, 1839), p. 56.

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Stanley Renner

inform the Youth volume. 75 Graham apparently espoused the romantic vision of universal brotherhood along socialistic lines to which he devoted much of the energy of an active and somewhat bizarre life. Conrad's response is that, while he feels drawn to Graham's Utopian dream, he cannot share it because it does not square with the reality of human nature. 76 Judging from Conrad's letters, the basic issue of the debate begins to take explicit form around the beginning of 1898 and can be traced well into the period of composition of Lord Jim. In mid-June of 1898, for example, just after completing "Youth" and sending the initial fragment of Lord Jim to Blackwoods as a harbinger of things to come, Conrad chides Graham for the unearthly insubstantiality of his Quixotic ideas.77 Then on February 8, 1899, the day after he mailed off the last installment of "Heart of Darkness," he erupts at length, largely in French, on his inability to join Graham in the cause of international fraternity, which he terms an "illusion" that "imposes by its size alone." 78 Clearly the Youth volume and Cunninghame Graham are closely associated in Conrad's mind: only four days later he writes to Blackwoods that he has been thinking for some of dedicating the volume to Graham. 79 Ultimately, it is the Typhoon volume four years later that is inscribed to Graham. But the web of circumstance — the intended dedication, the metaphysical debate in their correspondence, and the argument of Lord Jim — strongly invites the conclusion that the debate of the letters has been carried over into the fiction. Conrad announces his intention of dedicating the volume to Graham just after finishing "Heart of Darkness," in which Kurtz's high-minded effort to create in the jungle a

75

Only two of Graham's letters to Conrad have survived, written in 1923, and they contain nothing relating to their "strenuous epistolary debate" of twenty-five years earlier. See Eloise Knapp Hay and Cedric Watts, "To Conrad from Cunninghame Graham: Reflections on Two Letters," Conradiana, 5, No. 2 (1973), 5-19.

76

See especially the letter Cedric Watts dates Sunday, January 23, 1898, in which Conrad writes "I am more in sympathy with you than words can express yet if I had a grain of belief left in me I would believe you misguided. You are misguided by the desire of the impossible — and I envy you. Alas! What you want to reform are not institutions — it is human nature. Your faith will never move that mountain" (Conrad to Cunninghame Graham, ed. C. T. Watts [Cambridge University Press, 1969], p. 68). Conrad to Cunninghame Graham, p. 89. Conrad to Cunninghame Graham, p. 116. Letters to Blackwood, p. 51.

77 78 79

Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

219

Utopian society based in part on a socialistic community of property comes to ruin through his own fanatical egoism, perceived too late, and just before resuming work on Lord Jim, in which Jim's equally highminded effort to quell the brutality of greed and build a harmonious society in Patusan by calling forth man's higher attributes results in catastrophe because he has overestimated human nature. At the same time, with considerable passion arising from a deep "mistrust," as Palmer notes, "of facile theorizing, especially of a social-idealistic kind," 80 he is telling Graham in their correspondence that the dream of international fraternity based on socialistic redistribution of wealth is irrealizable because it is based on unrealistic assumptions about human nature. Conrad's ironic exasperation with such headlong blindness to reality may have been brought to a head in early March 1899 when he let Graham persuade him to attend a meeting in London on behalf of international socialism. There he heard a great deal of impassioned rhetoric, including Graham's seconding speech for a resolution calling for the revolutionary organization of the workers of all civilized nations as the only hope for peace. 81 Years before, he had characterized socialist leaders as either "unscrupulous rascals" or "sincere, but dangerous lunatics." 82 Now he had seen and heard them in the flesh. This may well have been the precise point at which he put aside once more The Rescue, to which he had returned upon completion of "Heart of Darkness," and took up Lord Jim again. Appalled by what he had heard in London, 83 he sets himself to work at Carlyle's desk and now reconceives Lord Jim, with its ironic portrait of the epoch's arch-idealist, its dramatization of the catastrophic effects of putting unrealistic dreams into practice, and its harsh retribution for overestimating human nature, as an antidote to this new outburst of idealistic lunacy. In Lord Jim Stein shows Marlow his most magnificent specimen of butterfly, signifying the perfection of the spiritual ideal of man that entrances him, and says "Only one specimen like this they have in your London, and then — no more" (LJ 124). Certain characters in the novel are drawn to resemble butterflies or beetles, but I suspect that for the

80 81 82 83

Joseph Conrad's Fiction, Conrad to Cunninghame Conrad to Cunninghame See Frederick R. Karl, Giroux, 1979), p. 475.

p. 20. Graham, p. 120. Graham, p. 3. Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives (New York: Farrar, Straus &

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Stanley Renner

last specimen of butterfly in London Conrad had in mind a real-life-original — Cunninghame Graham. 84 But one does not write a novel for one reader; the lesson of Lord Jim was not meant for Graham alone. Conrad evidently felt deep concern that in their admirable idealism, as well as their less admirable assumption of moral and civilized perfectibility, his adopted countrymen were dangerously reluctant to face the naturalistic truth about human nature. Conrad believed that, whatever else man might be, he is the product of his evolutionary past and thus heir to instincts which, though "forgotten," are nevertheless alive and potentially brutal. The individual who is unaware of that truth or refuses to face it is in danger of destruction or of betraying those to whom he is responsible. The nation that is led to conduct its affairs on the basis of some more noble view of human nature, without taking proper precautions against the ignoble reality, is in danger of being taught a costly lesson about those "awful" attributes of human nature that are "not so very far beneath the surface as we like to think."

Unquestionably, there is more to Conrad's response to Carlyle than could be considered here, just as there is a great deal more to Lord Jim than is comprehended in the foregoing discussion. Indeed, as I am well aware, some readers may doubt that what I have shown in the novel is there at all. Although Conrad was a writer quite capable of leaving puzzles for readers, as when he told Cunninghame Graham that the "idea" of "Heart of Darkness" "is so wrapped up in secondary notions that you — even you! — may miss it,"85 the notion of his somewhat cryptically modeling Lord Jim as an ironic reflection of Sartor Resartus will no doubt seem to violate prevailing estimations of his artistry or the integrity of the novel. And critics, I have found, differ in nothing quite so diametrically as in their willingness to entertain circumstantial compari-

84

A striking piece of oblique support for such an identification is found in a comment by Hay and Watts on the relationship between Conrad and Graham: "If Conrad became 'the pathologist of romance' (to quote Margery Morgan)," they write, "Cunninghame Graham was his most perfectly infected specimen in this respect" ("To Conrad from Cunninghame Graham," p. 10).

85

Conrad to Cunninghame

Graham, p. 116.

Conrad's Lord Jim and the Peril of Idealism

221

sons. What must always remain in question, to be sure, is the degree to which Conrad consciously shaped Lord Jim after Sartor Resartus. I have made the case, based on what I think strong and considerable evidence, that he deliberately parodied Carlyle in ironic exasperation at an idealism about human nature he found both weak-minded and dangerous. It would be entirely too easy, it seems to me, simply to dismiss the argument as unproven. Whatever were Conrad's conscious intentions, Lord Jim is an ironic commentary on an idealism that, if not patently Carlyle's, is nevertheless demonstrably Carlylean. Conrad evidently did know Sartor Resartus and — to some degree — did have Carlyle in mind as he wrote Lord Jim: the epigraph borrowed from Carlyle, which Conrad must have felt somehow "elucidative" of the drift of the novel, 86 links Carlyle in some sense to the structure of ideas that produced Lord Jim. Jim's ordeal, whether consciously shaped to be or not, is significantly like the spiritual progression of Sartor Resartus — from denial, through wandering, to affirmation. There are echoes of Sartor Resartus in Lord Jim. Even the most extravagant point — that Marlow's ironic musings about Jim sound like what Conrad might say about Carlyle — is true in some sense: if it remains unproved that Conrad is commenting on Carlyle, at least he is commenting, through Marlow, on the "vaporings" of an idealist like Carlyle. And, however consciously Conrad may have intended, Lord Jim does explain the unexplained judgment on Carlyle in "Youth": the novel shows that idealistic philosophies like Carlyle's are unmanly and dangerous evasions of reality. Readers may decide for themselves the precise degree of consciousness with which all this was done. Finally, Lord Jim is significantly illuminated by being read side by side with Sartor Resartus. From this perspective one may be inclined to take exception both to the postmodernist conception of Conrad as a writer who frustrates the reader's naive urge to find meaning either in his fiction or in the world it reflects and to a common conception of Lord Jim as a novel whose conclusions remain ambiguous. Conrad's ironic inversion of the argument of Sartor Resartus — or of an argument like that of Sartor Resartus, if you prefer — implies a subtle but ulti-

86

As T. S. Eliot termed the original epigraph to The Waste Land from " H e a r t of Darkness." See T . S. Eliot, The Waste Land: A Facsimile and Transcript, ed. Valerie Eliot (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 125.

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Stanley Renner

mately unequivocal warning against a transcendental idealism that refuses to face the "Descendentalism" (SR 65) inherent in human nature. This approach to Lord Jim helps to clarify the structure and meaning of the novel as well as Conrad's position on the basic metaphysical issues that it debates.

JAMES L O V I C ALLEN

What Rough Beast?: Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A Vision "The Second Coming," one of Yeats's three or four most famous poems, is also one of his most frequently explicated or analyzed. It is, furthermore, one of the most variously interpreted, perhaps the most variously interpreted. There is no generally accepted reading or any significant degree of consensus about meaning or meanings. O n e reason for this situation is that the poem's broadly suggestive imagery and apocalyptic tone suited or matched the age from which it sprang — a period of cultural and political unpheaval between two world wars, to which it might seem to apply descriptively or prophetically. In colloquial terms, the piece "caught a wave," lending it an apparent generality of theme or significance perhaps well beyond its author's immediate concerns or interests at the time of composition. Evidently pleased with the poem's popular appeal and appearance of prophetic validity, Yeats himself made comments which helped to contribute to such wide-ranging interpretations. Circumstances like these along with critical trends in this century have led a number of prominent authorities to argue that the piece need not be associated with anything so arcane or specific as the details of Yeats's private "system" or the theories of history developed in his "cranky" prose volume A Vision.' In the most general poetic or critical sense, perhaps it is proper to let a poem mean whatever it can or will. By no means is the purpose here to 1

The list of commentators who have neglected, belittled, or ignored the relationships between "The Second Coming" and A Vision is too long to be given here. Perhaps three representative examples will suffice. Donald Weeks's treatment of A Vision, in just three paragraphs of an article on the poem that is eleven and a half pages long, would certainly seem to constitute neglect ("Image and Idea in Yeats' 'The Second Coming,'" PMLA, 63 [1948], 286-87). Balachandra Rajan is among those who feel that "The Second Coming" is "capable of standing on its own text," although he makes a few references to the system in his exegesis (W. B. Yeats: A Critical Introduction [London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965], pp. 119-22). Certainly Patrick J. Keane's study is an extreme instance of rejection: in an elaborate and extended commentary which is evidently intended to be definitive, at least in its own terms, A Vision is mentioned only once ("Revolutions French and Russian: Burke, Wordsworth, and the Genesis of Yeats's 'The Second Coming,'" Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 82 [1979], 19).

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limit the richness or potential of Yeats's poem. However, in scholarly terms it is also frequently useful, informative, and rewarding to know what can be learned of a poem's genesis and of the author's intention when the piece was created — theories and principles of the now old "new criticism" to the contrary notwithstanding. This more academic approach to "The Second Coming" has also been much pursued, but not exhaustively or satisfactorily. With "The Second Coming," even more than is usually the case with difficult poems by Yeats, the materials are confusing and parts of the puzzle sometimes ill-fitting. In fact, the present study itself, though extensively and productively exploratory, probably should not claim definitive status. The issues of chief concern here are the extent to which and the ways in which "The Second Coming" is related to Yeats's notoriously elaborate and esoteric prose volume A Vision. The first question to be considered involves dates. "The Second Coming" was written in January, 19192, and was initially published in November, 19203. The first edition of A Vision was published in 1925, with the revised version appearing not until 1937. Initial impressions might be, then, that the poem's composition could not have been influenced by a book whose earliest version was published six years later, although almost none of the exegetes who ignore A Vision have chosen to cite this situation as a reason for its neglect. The facts are, however, that the source materials for A Vision — Mrs. Yeats's automatic writings — began late in 1917, and Yeats states that the so-called instructors "drew their first symbolical map of history, and marked upon it the principal years of crisis, early in July 1918. . . ,"4 Thus, on the one hand, the basic raw materials on history in A Vision were available in ample time to permit significant relationships to exist between them and a poem with historical implications written in the first part of 1919. On the other hand, what must be constantly guarded against is the tendency to assume too uncritically con-

2

3

4

See Richard Ellmann, The Identity of Yeats, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), p. 290; A. N o r m a n Jeffares, A Commentary on T h e Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1968), p. 238. See Jeffares, Commentary; The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, ed. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p. 401. Subsequent references to this edition will appear in the text. A Vision (1937; rpt. London: Macmillan, 1962), p. 11. Subsequent references to this edition (the so-called Vision B) will appear in the text.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A Vision

225

nections between the poem and historical materials in either edition of the book, for numerous enlargements, developments, and refinements of those materials naturally occurred between 1919 and 1937. However, still another complicating — though also potentially clarifying — factor may be involved. It is possible, or even probable, that the success and impact of the poem was such that in certain respects it, once written, may have had some influence upon the development of certain aspects of the book rather than the other way around. This possibility should neither be overemphasized nor ignored. T w o other facts unequivocally relate "The Second Coming" to A Vision. The one of most long-standing visibility is the note to the poem which Yeats included in the 1921 publication of Michael Robartes and the Dancer ax. his sisters' small Cuala Press in Ireland. Although this text may have been relatively inaccessible to most scholars before 1949, it was reproduced in that year by A. N. Jeffares in his book W. B. Yeats, Man and Poet5, a source which also asserts (perhaps mistakenly) that the note was written in 1919.6 This note was made even more prominent a few years later in the first printing of the Variorum Poems (pp. 823-25). It explicitly and unequivocally associates "The Second Coming" with the historical cones and gyres which were to appear in more detail subsequently in both editions of A Vision. More recently revealed connections between poem and book, which most scholars and critics of the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's had no way of knowing about, are those provided in the notes of A Critical Edition of W. B. Yeats's A Vision (1925)1 Various materials there indicate, from pre-1919 scripts and notations, an anticipated apocalyptic reversal of historical eras involving Christ or a counterpart of some kind.

PROBLEMS I N A VISION'S

SYSTEM O F H I S T O R Y

One of the chief difficulties encountered in the attempt to discover significant relationships between "The Second Coming" and A Vision is

3 6 7

2nd ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 197-98. Jeffares, Yeats, p. 197. Ed. George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978). Subsequent references to this edition (the so-called Vision A) will appear in the text alongside the abbreviation CEVA.

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that the sections of the book dealing with history are almost hopelessly flawed and inconsistent, not to mention their inherent complexity even where they momentarily seem systematic or orderly. All scholarly and critical attempts to elucidate adequately the historical system have foundered on this stumbling block. How much Yeats was aware of the incongruities is difficult to determine. Why he did not more forthrightly acknowledge them is equally unclear. All that is certain is that they exist. One confusing aspect of the system that Yeats himself clearly did understand (although he is inconsistent about it, as will become apparent later) has been fully perceived and dealt with in print by only one commentary other than mine, to my knowledge. In addition to the bifurcation of all culture into the opposite tinctures of antithetical and primary, familiar to virtually all Yeatsians, each of the interlocked gyres in an era is distinguished by predominantly religious or secular features as well. Then the two sets of qualities are joined into four possible combinations; these are antithetical religion, primary religion, antithetical secular life or politics, and primary secular life or politics. Thus, when Yeats sets up his opposing interlocked gyres of history, he not only contrasts an antithetical cone to a primary cone, but, further than that, he also counterpoises an antithetical secular (and political) cone to a primary religious one.8 Only the two-thousand-year cones or gyres of so-called "eras" are involved in this present consideration.9 The two-thousand-year cones, gyres, cycles, or eras are called "civilizations" if they are secular and political, or "religious dispensations" if they represent major spiritual or theological movements. The extent of misunderstanding in these matters is indicated by the fact that some commentators have spoken of the system's "Christian civilization." There is no such unit or concept in A Vision, and Yeats virtually never uses the two words Christian and civiliza-

8

George Mills Harper and Walter Kelly Hood deal with these combinations and constructions briefly in one of the notes in CEVA, p. 45. The present essay assumes most readers' familiarity with technical terms and concepts from A Vision like antithetical (or subjective), primary (or objective), gyres, etc.

9

Another potential source of confusion is that within every two-thousand-year pair of interlocked gyres there are two one-thousand-years cycles, while each two-thousandyear era is itself half of a larger four-thousand-year period. However, Yeats is quite explicit about this matter at the beginning of the section entitled "Dove or Swan," and most serious scholars have understood the situation.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

227

Vision

tion in direct combination with each other. 10 The Christian era or "religious dispensation" is the period from the birth of Christ to a point somewhere between AD 2000 and 2100. Counterpoised to it, in its first 1000 years at any rate, is "classical civilization," represented chiefly by the Roman Empire. In the first century A D this antithetical civilization's gyre is at its widest expansion, with the interlocking Christian cone (primary) at its narrowest point because that religious dispensation would naturally be at its merest beginnings immediately after the birth of Christ. Commentary on the situation in the second half of the Christian religious dispensation (AD 1000 to about 2000) must be reserved until later since that is one of the main places at which Yeats's exposition ceases to be self-consistent. Almost without question, the most confusing element of the entire situation is that in both editions of A Vision Yeats has articulated at different places two incompatible and irreconcilable versions of the system just discussed. N o one appears to have recognized this fact. One of the two versions involves a so-called interchange of the tinctures, a sudden and violent switch of the antithetical tincture from the smallest point of the dwindling cone to the widest expansion of the counterpoised one and vice versa for the primary tincture. The passage in the earlier edition is actually the clearer of the two: . . . this figure differs in form from that which preceded it and symbolised the preceding period of t w o thousand years. This difference is caused by a

10

At least three commentaries have mistakenly used the expression "Christian civilization": Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, eds., Understanding

Poetry, 3rd ed.

( N e w York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), p. 407; H e l e n Vendler, Yeats's Vision and the Later Plays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963), p. 101; and Robert O'Driscoll, "'The Second Coming' and Yeats's Vision of History," in A Festschrift for Edgar Ronald

Seary: Essays in English Language and Literature

Presented by

Colleagues

and Former Students (St. John's: Memorial University of N e w f o u n d l a n d , 1975), p. 173. At least three others use the words Christian

or Christianity

and civilization

in close

proximity to each other and appear to have in mind the concept that would be denoted by a direct combination: A. N o r m a n Jeffares, "Gyres in Yeats's Poetry," in his The Circus Animals:

Essays on W. B. Yeats (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 109; Edward A.

Bloom, "Yeats' 'Second Coming': An Experiment in Analysis," University City Review,

of Kansas

21 (1954), 106; and Hazard Adams. In Adams the equation is all but ex-

plicit. H e says that Salome's "dance takes place upon the verge of phase I of the Christian millenium," that her "movements are prophetic of . . . the appearance of a new civilization," and that "she sends the new civilization on its way" (Blake and Yeats: Contrary

Vision [1955; rpt. N e w York: Russell and Russell, 1968]), pp. 2 1 8 - 1 9 .

The

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James Lovic Allen

movement analogous to the exchange of the Tinctures but instead of the words primary and antithetical we substitute Solar and Lunar. . . . Before the birth of Christ, for instance the Lunar gyres came to the narrow end of their cone, and at His birth passed into the broad end of the other cone and so continued to converge. The Solar gyre upon the other hand passed from broad to narrow.. . . This means that as the civil life [secular and political] grew more and more antithetical in nature the religious grew more and more primary.... At [the midway point], however, there is no interchange, but a return, a change of direction, the gyres which diverged now converge and vice v e r s a . . . . {CEVA, pp. 168-69)" T h e corresponding passage in the later version reads as follows: At the birth of Christ took place, and at the coming antithetical influx will take place, a change equivalent to the interchange of the tinctures.... Before the birth of Christ religion and vitality were polytheistic, antithetical, and to this the philosophers opposed their primary, secular thought. At the birth of Christ religious life becomes primary, secular life antithetical.... (Vision B, pp. 262-63) After having explained this feature of the system's cones in earlier nonhistorical contexts, however, Yeats says, "The diagram is sometimes so used by my instructors and gives them a phrase which constantly occurs, 'the interchange of the tinctures,' but it is inconvenient" (Vision B, p. 75). His next sentence indicates that the interchange is "for this reason" "generally" disregarded. That the same kind of lack of consistency applies to the historical gyres is suggested by a careful reading of the following passage: . . . the automatic script generally [shows] that each civilisation and religious dispensation is the opposite of its predecessor. . . . For instance, classical civilisation [is] 1000 B. C. to A. D. 1000 let us say . . . and our own civilisation is now almost midway in [its] movement. . . . At or near the central point o f . . . classical civilisation . . . came the Christian primary dispensation.. . . At or near the central point of our civilisation must come antithetical revelation. . . . (Vision B, p. 204; see also pp. 254-55) Although it is difficult to compare the two versions of Yeats's historical system without diagrams, it is fairly clear that the one just described

11

This passage and some subsequent ones might be made somewhat clearer through the use of diagrams, but the prohibitive expense of reproducing such visual aids precludes their use here.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

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229

has no sudden change of tinctures from the widest expansion of one cone to the narrowest point of the other, nor vice versa. On the other hand, instead of a mere reversal or "change of direction" at the narrowest part of each civilization's gyre, as in the other structure, there is a non-violent change of tinctures where the cones simply touch point to point, antithetical classical civilization having expired and our present primary one having begun at A D 1000. In this version of the system, a religious cone and the counterpoised civilization's cone are opposite to each other in tincture only half the time instead of all the time. If necessary, the reader can, with patience, work out a diagram for himself to see how and why this is so. Such an interpretation is apparently the one that Harper and H o o d have in mind when they say, " . . . a religious dispensation . . . lead[s] into a secular civilization of the same type; the primary religious dispensation beginning with Christ thus gives way to a primary secular civilization beginning at 1000 AD . . ." ( C E V A notes, p. 45). If "The Second Coming" relates to the system of history in A Vision, but the system in A Vision has two differing versions or interpretations, then the obvious question — never before articulated — becomes, "To which version does the poem correspond?". As for the birth to come at about A D 2000, it would seem to be the same in either interpretation: a new antithetical religious dispensation is expected at that point in both cases. However, the outward-sweeping gyre of the poem's famous opening lines — assuming that that gyre represents our present civilization — would be different in the two versions. It would be antithetical in the interpretation, with a drastic interchange of the tinctures every two thousand years. The reason is that the Roman Empire represented the widest expansion of an antithetical secular cone that began to dwindle at the year zero, and at the midway point, in this version, "there is no interchange, but a return, a change of direction." 12 Therefore, our new civilization would remain antithetical until AD 2000, when the cataclysmic interchange would occur. In the other version, though, where any change of tinctures occurs simply when one cone succeeds another, touching point to point, our present civilization would be primary, contrasting in tincture since A D 1000 to its antithetical predecessor, the Ro-

12

Whether or not reference to "the year zero" is technically acceptable (there being no year between 1 BC and A D 1), the expression is used here and later because Yeats implies it (with the numeral 0) on his large "historical cones" diagram with dates that relate to the various phases in the present era (Vision B, p. 266).

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man Empire. This delineation represents, believe it or not, an oversimplification of the problems and difficulties involved, but it provides as much as needs to be considered for present purposes. 13

PROBLEMS I N "THE S E C O N D C O M I N G " "The Second Coming" constitutes the culmination of a considerable heritage of apocalyptic pieces in Yeats's work. These include the early story "The Adoration of the Magi," the uncollected play Where There Is Nothing as well as its successor The Unicorn from the Stars, the poem "The Magi," and to some degree the section of Autobiographies entitled "The Trembling of the Veil." The interrelationships between these and other pieces have been studied by several commentators, w h o show that anticipation of an impending new era was a continuing thematic element in Yeats's thought long before the advent of Mrs. Yeats's automatic writing. 14 There is, however, a fundamental difference between "The

13

Readers interested in clarification of at least one further major difficulty in A Vision's system of history may see my recent note about the large diagram with dates and phases just mentioned in note 12 ("The Red and T h e Black: Understanding ' T h e Historical Cones' in Yeats's A Vision," Yeats Annual, 3 [1984]). One reason why information on the problems treated there is not urgently needed here is that, as Yeats says of the illustration, his instructors "have adopted a system of cones not used elsewhere in this exposition" (Vision B, p. 256). There are even inconsistencies not resolved by my note, however, that I did not fully recognize at the time. T h e main one is that the diagram, once understood, clearly indicates that the gyre which widens at the approach of AD 2000 (part of the "hour-glass" shaped figure) should be that of an antithetical civilization or secular movement, according to Vision B, p. 262. But as the discussion here will show, the text of "Dove or Swan" and at least two earlier sources stress the growth and expansion of a primary secular or political phenomenon at the end of the current era. I give the subject attention here for two reasons. One is that present concerns are with the historical portions of the book as well as with the poem. T h e other is that final concession should be made (though others enough have done likewise on less evidence) : there simply are no resolutions to some of the discrepancies and incongruities in A Vision.

14

A careful study, with more emphasis upon Yeats's prose and certain symbols or figures than on particular poems or plays, is Donald Pearce's "Philosophy and Phantasy: Notes on the Growth of Yeats's 'System,'" University of Kansas City Review, 18 (1952), 169-80; see especially 173-79. Giorgio Melchiori focuses on creative pieces and their imagery (The Whole Mystery of Art: Pattern into Poetry in the Work of W. B. Yeats [New York: Macmillan, 1961], pp. 35-72), but commits a major error in his ex-

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A Vision

231

Second Coming" and most of the predecessors just mentioned, a difference of tremendous importance whose inadequate recognition, by Melchiori as well as virtually all others, has been one of the greatest causes of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the poem. The predecessors tended to have a religious emphasis, looking forward to the birth of a new god or gods w h o would replace the outworn Christianity for which Yeats had so little use. Both the title and the allusion to Bethlehem in "The Second Coming" deceptively suggest that it also has a religious theme. However, it is, in fact, a political poem that achieves much of its power and impact from Yeats's adroitly ironic implementation of religious imagery and tradition. Admittedly, determination of this fact might have been difficult — though not impossible — before Jon Stallworthy's initial publication of the poem's working drafts in 1963.15 These drafts, though, especially in the later transcription, leave no question whatever that the poem's genesis was completely political. Furthermore, certain similarities of theme and image (not to mention dates of composition) between "The Second Coming" and "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" suggest that the one poem is as politically oriented as the other, while a number of authorities have noted similar kinships between "The Second Coming" and political elements in the piece which follows it in Collected Poems, "A Prayer for My Daughter.'" 6 However, "The Second Coming" might also be said to share the most crucial of all its images — the fabulous-beast icon — with one of the earlier apocalyptic pieces. This misleading circumstance probably would have created trouble enough in any event. But it has been exacer-

15

16

plication of certain animal emblems, as becomes apparent here. Ellmann treats the subject concisely but quite instructively, drawing the black pig of Irish legend into Yeats's evolving cluster of apocalyptically symbolic "beasts" (pp. 50-51). Stallworthy's first publication of the drafts was in his book Between the Lines: Yeats's Poetry in the Making (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). He subsequently published a revised and fuller transcription in a journal article, which is almost identical to the chapter in his book except for improvements in the transcriptions. All further references here will be to the later publication ("The Second Coming," Agenda, 9/10 [1971/ 72], 24-33) unless otherwise noted. Politically suggestive images shared by "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" and "The Second Coming" are nightmare, a "monster" with blank eyes, and gyres and spirals in connection with things breaking up and one epoch replacing another. "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen" and "A Prayer for My Daughter" also share the levelling wind, which might well be considered analogous to the levelling tide in "The Second Coming."

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bated almost beyond comprehension, especially as far as exegeses of the already difficult poem are concerned, by Yeats's own identification with each other of the two works involved. In Wheels and Butterflies he says, "Had I begun On Baile's Strand or not when I began to imagine, as always at my left side just out of the range of the sight, a brazen winged beast that I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction?" T o this more or less rhetorical question he appends the following footnote: "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming.'" 17 Then in his next sentence Yeats speaks of Where There Is Nothing, in which just such a brazen beast appears. Despite their creator's implied equation, though, the beasts from play and poem are not really alike at all, either literally or figuratively. Unlike the later one, the earlier monster is sharp-toothed and winged as far as visual appearances are concerned. 18 As for thematic implications, the beast in Where There Is Nothing is specifically identified with "Laughter" (loc. cit.), in marked contrast to the grim and foreboding figure in "The Second Coming." Why Yeats ever made his association between the two is irksomely difficult to understand unless — or until — their common heritage in Biblical and occult traditions of apocalypse is fully recognized and explained, as is done later here. The opening lines of "The Second Coming" constitute another problem. A number of commentators have held that the "widening gyre" is primary or objective. I once thought that they were wrong, for I was convinced that the historical scheme that includes a point-to-circle interchange of the tinctures was the one on which "The Second Coming" was based. Further research has led me to realize that I was mistaken on this point. The most obvious indication of my error is that the 1921 note for the poem — despite internal inconsistencies of its own — is explicit about the tincture of this widening cone: "At the present moment the life gyre is sweeping outward . . . and has almost reached its greatest expansion. . . . All our scientific, democratic, fact-accumulating, heterogeneous civilization [primary qualities] belongs to the outward gyre . .." (Variorum Poems, p. 825). Though more diffuse and less easy to illustrate with quotation of a single sentence, the last portion of the essay "A

17

Explorations,

sel. Mrs. W. B. Yeats ( N e w York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 393. Subsequent

references to this edition will appear in the text. 18

See The Variorum Edition

of the Plays of W. B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach, assisted by

Catherine C. Alspach ( N e w York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 1099, 1102. Subsequent references to this edition will appear in the text.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

Vision

233

People's Theatre" — published in the year in which "The Second Coming" was written — also indicates that the present outward-whirling spiral is "objective" or primary (Explorations, pp. 258-59). Finally, a careful reading of the "Dove or Swan" section of A Vision reveals that Yeats's prepossession in the period from AD 1000 to the present is so much with the growing dominance of primary civilization and politics that he fails to dwell on religion's corresponding decrease, whereas in the first half of the section he had carefully sustained the balance between primary Christianity's growth and the antithetical Roman Empire's decline. This unit of the book is the same in both editions except for excision of a few pages at the end in the 1937 version. This means that all three prose sources emphasizing a widening primary gyre of civilization in the present age are close to "The Second Coming" in dates of composition. The only reasonable conclusion is that the poem must almost certainly portray the same phenomenon and that the alternative version of the history system with an expanding antithetical secular cone ("civilization") approaching a sudden interchange of tinctures at A D 2000 is not relevant to its interpretation. This point will be of considerable importance in another connection presently. In his journal article that reproduces the drafts of "The Second Coming," Stallworthy says, "The falcon has long been a problem. 19 Then he refers to the early draft line that used the word hawk instead of falcon and cites the well-known note for "Meditations in Time of Civil W a r " about hawks — gloomy birds of prey — being emblems of logic and mechanism as opposed to the butterflies of wisdom. H e seems to feel that with this reference he does away with the problem because logic and reason are qualities of the primary tincture and therefore should neatly associate the falcon symbolically with the outward-sweeping objective gyre.20 Unfortunately for such a reading, whereas Yeats had indeed used hawks as images of reason or mental ability, as in the poem "The Hawk," his use of symbolic birds was in a stage of transition at the time of "The Second Coming," and an alternative symbolism could be equally applicable. N o t only is the hawk imagery in "At the Hawk's Well" (1917) probably more subjective than objective, but in the play

" 20

p. 25. Stallworthy's apparent satisfaction on these points is somewhat surprising in view of the fact that Yeats's inconsistencies with the bird symbolism (to be dealt with at greater length here) were pointed out by Donald Weeks as early as 1948 (pp. 288-89).

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James Lovic Allen

Calvary (1920) a whole congeries of bird emblems is developed, with large noble birds like hawks made explicitly antithetical in an extended note to the play: I use birds as symbols of subjective life, and my reason for this . . . cannot be explained fully till I have published some part at any rate of those papers of Michael Robartes, over which I have now spent several years [a semi-private allusion to the automatic scripts of Mrs. Yeats]. . . . Certain birds, especially as I see things, such lonely birds as the heron, hawk, eagle, and swan, are the natural symbols of subjectivity, especially when floating upon the wind alone or alighting upon some pool or river, while the beasts that run upon the ground, especially those that run in packs, are the natural symbols

of objective man. (Variorum Plays, p. 789) As far as interpretational suggestions for "The Second Coming" are concerned, matters are further complicated by the fact that in Calvary the birds' subjectivity is dramatically contrasted throughout to the primary qualities of Jesus Christ. If hawks and falcons were consistently symbols of primary logic and reason, then it would be appropriate enough to conclude that the falcon in the opening lines of "The Second Coming" is an objective emblem, in keeping with the widening objective gyre that its flight delineates. Or, on the other hand, if the historical system involving an interchange of the tinctures were apposite (and thus the widening gyre were antithetical), then again there could be perhaps emblematic accord between a subjective bird and its antithetically spiraling flight. But since the widening gyre approaching the year 2000 might be antithetical or primary depending on the version of the history system in mind and since hawks at the time in question might be either objective or subjective, then the falcon very much remains a problem, especially in light of the further bird imagery later in the poem, to be considered presently. Personally I think that the falcon itself must be taken almost "unsymbolically," if such a thing is possible in Yeats, though its widening gyre is almost certainly primary. T h e bird in its outward-spiraling flight was the poem's earliest germinal element; the first three lines of the first draft read as follows: Ever more wide sweeps the gyre Ever further hawk flies outward from the falconer's hand. 21

21

Stallworthy, p. 24.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

Vision

235

Evidently the image simply struck Yeats's imagination with such vividness and immediacy from the very outset that he was loath to relinquish it and, in fact, did not throughout all the draft's progressions toward the poem's finished form. 22

W H A T R O U G H BEAST? Stallworthy indicates that the beast in "The Second Coming" "has been hunted by numerous critics and commentators, but has always eluded capture."23 With minimum concern for what dismay may be created among interpretatively oriented critics, the present study has intentionally mounted an intensive scholarly expedition, the chief purpose of which has been finally to capture Yeats's monster. The leader of the excursion, though not totally happy about some uneasy moments here or elusive movements there, is generally not dissatisfied with the outcome of the long and arduous venture. 24 Almost certainly the greatest cause of confusion about the beast is the fact that A Vision's historical system — in either of the two versions already reviewed — predicts somewhere near the year A D 2000 the annunciation or birth of a new religious dispensation, an "antithetical in-

22

The word hawk is deleted and replaced by falcon in the next draft. In this same draft the outward-sweeping cone is called "the intellectual gyre" (p. 24). Stallworthy clearly takes intellectual to relate to logic (pp. 25, 28), which would make the gyre primary, though he does not say so explicitly. Such a connection may have some validity; which would mean that Yeats has simply been contradictory with his bird symbolism in the poem since, as will be seen, the indignant desert birds are almost certainly antithetical. However, the equation of intellect with logic is very tenuous. Both in A Vision and elsewhere, Yeats uses the word intellect in so many ways and contexts that settlement upon any consistent denotation or set of connotations is virtually impossible. In one place, for example, he replaced the word intellect with reason when revising a typescript that was ultimately excluded from A Vision (see Walter Kelly H o o d , "Michael Robartes: T w o Occult Manuscripts," in Yeats and the Occult, ed. George Mills H a r p e r [Toronto: Macmillan, 1975], p. 223). In another, by sharp contrast, he associates intellect with imagination, especially in the antithetical phases of the system (Vision B, p. 142).

23

Stallworthy, p. 30. There is neither space nor inclination to review here all the numerous previously proposed prototypes or "sources" — inside and outside Yeats's own works — for the famous beast image. Most of the more potentially relevant ones are probably familiar to readers of this essay anyway.

24

236

James Lovic Allen

flux" that will be contrary to the primary birth of Christ in the year zero and, to one degree or another, will be a counterpart or near equivalent of the antithetical annunciation to Leda at approximately 2000 BC. Everyone who has read A Vision — as well as many who have not — knows that Yeats regarded himself and his sympathetic personae like Cuchulain and Michael Robartes as antithetical men, whereas Christ and Christianity were unfavorably primary in tincture. Why, then, would Yeats portray the birth of the new antithetical dispensation at the end of the outgoing primary era with a symbolic figure as horrible and repugnant as the one in the poem? Some commentators have attempted to answer this question by pointing out that Yeats's antithetical characters were often men-of-war, that the antithetical tincture is characterized as "masculine, harsh, surgical" (Vision B, p. 263), that there comes "After us the Savage God." 25 But such antithetical figures in his other poems and in his plays are at least aristocratic, gallant, or heroic. They are not characteristically associated with anarchy, pitiless blank eyes, the drowning of ceremony and innocence in tides of blood, or frighteningly bestial qualities. Resolution of the apparent enigma here comes with realization that the rough beast in "The Second Coming" is neither antithetical nor emblematic of a new religious dispensation. It is, rather, primary and representative of a secular or political entity. 26 Perhaps the two parts of this thesis should be examined independently, at least at first. W h a t evidence suggests that the rough beast might be primary rather than antithetical} First of all, there is the symbolism of subjective birds versus objective beasts already cited from the note for the play Calvary, which was written almost contemporaneously with

25

See William Butler Yeats, Autobiographies

(London: Macmillan, 1955), p. 349. Subse-

quent references to this edition will appear in the text. 26

T h e only two scholars or critics that I have found w h o agree with this designation of the beast as primary

are D o n a l d Pearce (p. 177) and Thomas Parkinson ( W . B.

Yeats:

The Later Poetry [Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1964], p. 166). However, neither of these identifies the beast as a political phenomenon or movement. T h e list of commentators w h o have mistakenly taken the rough beast to be

antithetical

is long. It includes, among others, Harold Bloom ( Y e a t s [ N e w York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970], p. 318), Elizabeth Cullingford (Yeats, Ireland and Fascism [ N e w York and London: N e w York Univ. Press, 1981], p. 161), Harper and H o o d (p. 45), O'Driscoll (p. 178), Rajan (pp. 1 2 1 - 2 2 ) , Peter Ure (Towards

a Mythology:

Studies in the Poetry of

W. B. Yeats [Liverpool, 1946; rpt. N e w York: Russell and Russell, 1967], p. 66) and Vendler (p. 101).

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

Vision

237

"The Second Coming." 27 Second, in the introductory stories about Michael Robartes in both versions of A Vision, the book of Giraldus contains "a number of curious allegorical pictures; . . . a man whipping his shadow; a man being torn in two by an eagle and some kind of wild beast . . ." ( C E V A , p. xvii; see also Vision B, p. 38). The two-word expression "wild beast" should be kept in mind, for it will become important later. O n e reading, of course, might be that the eagle represents spirit and that the beast represents flesh or the physical world, but in light of what follows in Yeats's book itself, it would probably make much more sense to interpret the eagle as antithetical and the beast as primary. For, in the non-historical sections of A Vision, these are the two qualities of which each human personality is composed in varying proportions or the disparate aspects of human nature between which man is divided or "torn." Next, the beast in "The Second Coming" is doubly related to the sun. It is explicitly so related in the poem itself, with its "gaze blank and pitiless as the sun," and it is indirectly so related by virtue of its "lion body." In tradition, one of the strongest symbolic connections for the lion is with the sun.28 In A Vision itself Yeats seems to have in mind the association between lion and sun when he says, "When I think . . . of Salome . . . delicately tinted or maybe mahogany dark — dancing before Herod . . . I see her anoint her bare limbs according to a medical prescription of that time, with lion's fat, for lack of the sun's ray, that she may gain the favour of a k i n g . . . " (Vision B, p. 273). Although in the body of his work as a whole Yeats's sun and moon symbolism are almost hopelessly inconsistent, within the confines of A Vision the term solar usually means primary and lunar means antithetical. Thus, both the lionlike body and the solar eye of the beast increase its primary implications.29

27

In connection with this play and its note, F. A. C. Wilson expands briefly on objective beast symbolism in Yeats's w o r k (Yeats's Iconography

[ N e w York: Macmillan, 1960],

pp. 166-67). 28

See J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary

of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage, 2nd ed. ( N e w York: Phil-

osophical Library, 1971), pp. 189-90. 29

Like so much in this poem, the line in question is not without some inconsistencies, however. O n e of the primary

qualities of Christ so intensely disliked by Yeats was His

particular kind of pity. If, then, there are to be associations between the beast and Christ, as later suggested, the "pitiless" sun-like gaze tends to be symbolically anomalous, even if imagistically effective.

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James Lovic Allen

The suggestion that the rough beast in "The Second Coming" might represent a political entity has been relatively commonplace, even among critics not thoroughly familiar with A Vision's marked distinction between religious dispensations and civilizations (secular or political movements). Early and late, some critics have identified the figure with fascism. This makes no sense, however, for the same reasons that interpreting the beast as antithetical makes no sense; for, politically speaking, fascism would be an extreme form of the antithetical. Such is indicated in A Vision itself: "Primary means democratic. Antithetical means aristocratic" (Vision B, p. 104). These lines of demarcation are indicated at various other places throughout the book. Yeats was, of course, briefly intrigued by fascism at one point in his career. However, "The Second Coming" was written before the development of that interest and also, for that matter, before the emergence of fascism as a political phenomenon. Unless the poem was indeed presciently prophetic, it can have nothing to do with fascism as an organized political system.30 Other commentators have identified the rough beast as emblematic of communism, and there can be little question that these theorists are on valid ground. For one thing, one of them cites a statement by Mrs. Yeats that socialist movements inspired the poem. 31 More importantly, the drafts indicate that similarities between the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution were the ideological seeds for the poem in Yeats's thought. Torchiana transcribes some of the drafts himself (rather

30

Commentators who have identified the beast as fascism include John Heath-Stubbs (The Darkling Plain: A Study of the Later Fortunes of Romanticism in English Poetry from George Darley to W. B. Yeats [London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1950], pp. 208-09), D. S. Savage ("Two Prophetic Poems," Adelphi, 22 [1945], 26), Conor Cruise O'Brien ("Passion and Cunning: An Essay on the Politics of W. B. Yeats," in In Excited Reverie: A Centenary Tribute to William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, ed. A. N o r man Jeffares and K. G. W . Cross [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965], pp. 275-78), and Cullingford (pp. 161-62). The last of these identifications is apparently the result of an illogical backlash effect from the author's overwrought efforts to disprove O'Brien's theses about Yeats's affinities with fascism. Louis MacNeice states ( T h e Poetry of W. B. Yeats [1941; rpt. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969], p. 119) that Stephen Spender also identifies the rough beast as fascism in his book The Destructive Element. However, I can find no such ascription in Spender's book. But MacNeice himself comes quite close to just such an equation (pp. 119-20).

31

See Donald T. Torchiana, W. B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland (Evanston: Univ. Press, 1966), p. 214.

Northwestern

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A Vision

239

differently from either of Stallworthy's versions), and his remarks and supporting evidence constitute a reasonably strong case for the communistic interpretation, especially as to Yeats's concern that the Ireland of 1919 might be a dangerously inflammatory tinderbox for the spread of Bolshevik politics.52 Communism makes more sense than fascism as a political referent for the beast image for two additional reasons. One of these is the date of composition. Whereas fascism developed after the poem was written, the Bolshevik Revolution occurred just a little more than a year before. T w o essays published in the year in which "The Second Coming" was written — "A People's Theatre" and "If I Were Four-and-Twenty" — are clearly marked by indications of Yeats's concern at the time with "the Red Terror." 3 3 T h e other main reason why communism makes more sense than fascism as a meaning for the icon is that communism, if truly achieved, would be the absolute or ultimate form of democracy — a mass-oriented primary political system which the aristocratic-minded Yeats would naturally abhor with exactly the kind of horror evoked in the poem by the slouching-beast image. In support of this point is the fact that the word mob occurs several times in the drafts; and, of course, the term anarchy appears in the poem itself. Another key word that appears several times in the drafts is murder. Yeats habitually used this word elsewhere in connection with communism, which strengthens ties between that political system and the imagery of "The Second Coming" (Explorations, pp. 429-30). 34 Furthermore, in a section of "The Trembling of the Veil" first published in the year after "The Second Coming," Yeats quotes the opening lines of the poem to express his feelings about "the growing murderousness of the world" (.Autobiographies, pp. 192-93). Perhaps the most telling of all such usages, however, comes from a debate held not only in the same year as the poem's composition, but even in the very month: "Mr. W. B. Y e a t s . . . said that Russia had, in the name of progress and in the name of human freedom, revived tyranny and torture of the worst description

32 33

34

Torchiana, W. B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland, pp. 214-19. These essays appear in Explorations, pp. 244-59 and pp. 263-80. The quoted phrase occurs on the first page of the first essay, which is the more explicit and uniform of the two. See also The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954), p. 656. Subsequent references to this edition will appear in the text.

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— had, in fact, resorted to such a mediaeval crime as burning men for their opinions."35 The drafts of "The Second Coming" have far more explicit and unequivocal language about Bolshevism than murder and mediaeval crime, however: "The Germany of Marx has led to Russian Com."36 This leaves little doubt. Torchiana transcribes the line in exactly the same way, incidentally.37 The development of widely divergent interpretations of "The Second Coming" prior to the publication of these drafts is easily understandable. But it is difficult to comprehend how critics can contend since their publication, as many have done, that such specific language and pointed meanings were "generalized," refined away, or cast aside in the process of the poem's development so that the finished piece has sometimes been taken, even recently, as not about anything so topical as communism or political systems at all.38 There is considerable further evidence to indicate that the late drafts and the final poem are just as much about the advent of communism as 35

This material, printed in the Irish Times, 30 January 1919, is quoted by both Torchiana (p. 216) and Cullingford (p. 116). Cullingford's treatment of Yeats's politics is extraordinary, as already intimated in reference to her equation of the rough beast with fascism. H e r chapter "Visionary Politics" drastically overstates the connections between Yeats's interests in governmental systems, especially Marxist ones, and A Vision: "Composed between 1917 and 1925 and continually modified thereafter, A Vision is Yeats's attempt to understand the calamitous events of that time. . . . [It] is founded on, and inspired by, one fundamental antithesis: 'Primary means democratic. Antithetical means aristocratic.' Conceived and written while the Bolsheviks were consolidating their power in Russia, A Vision offers an alternative to the Marxist interpretation of history" (p. 121). Cullingford's data is massive, but much of it appears to have been shaped to suit the author's preconceptions. If assessed without prejudice, it would strongly support the view that Yeats's beast represents communism. Instead, the conclusions are ambivalent and unconvincing: " . . . the destruction of innocence by socialist revolutions . . . was the motive force behind 'The Second Coming' . . ." (p. 117), but "socialism both repelled and attracted [Yeats]; A Vision was his way of holding these contrary impulses in balance" (p. 140).

36

Stallworthy, p. 25. Torchiana, p. 214. Rajan exemplifies the theoretical tendency described here: " . . . Stallworthy's presentation of the various drafts shows how specific references to Pitt, Burke and the German advance to Russia were discarded and how, in its evolution, the poem moved steadily to its twin objectives of universality and immediacy" (p. 121). O'Driscoll's essay constitutes an extreme example of such theory put into practice (despite his initial attention to A Vision's system of history): "The Second Coming for Yeats is not the coming of Christ or Communism or Fascism or Democracy, but the coming of a free and expressive religion of art and the imagination . . ." (p. 177).

37 38

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

Vision

241

the early drafts. For example, in the last pre-publication draft as reproduced by Stallworthy, after a couple of false starts with the word jealous in connection with the beast's rousing from its "stony sleep," Yeats has the somewhat strange-sounding expression "by jealousy stung awake." That combination of words sounds less strange, however, when one finds a passage written some years later in which Yeats is still pondering what his "instructors" had told him about "the end of any age," the "final phase" of a "civilisation," and Swift's view that such things are brought about "by the jealousy . . . of the many" (Explorations, p. 316). In context, the word jealousy here is obviously meant in the sense of revolutionary resentment against the wealthy few. And the passage from the drafts sounds less strange still when, in another place, speaking against the same kind of things depicted in the earliest drafts of "The Second Coming," Yeats says that eighteenth-century "America . . . had neither the wealth nor the education of contemporary Ireland; no such violence of contraries. . . had stung it into life. [In Ireland] the influence of the French Revolution woke the peasantry from the medieval sleep, gave them ideas of social justice and equality . . . " (Variorum Poems, p. 833; my italics). The "stony sleep," of course, survived even into the final poem. 39 Careful examination of the drafts from another, though related, perspective reveals that instead of changing his subject, as some have

39

Related to this sleep is still another image which has often been glossed in general terms rather than with reference to the language and ideas of Yeats's system. A number of commentators have spoken of the "rocking cradle" that "vexed to nightmare" the "stony sleep" as an emblem of infantile innocence in ironic contrast to the beastly horror of the poem's vision. There can be no doubt that the cradle image bears connotations of birth. H o w e v e r , the Christ-child is traditionally associated with a stable manger (pun intended), not a "rocking cradle." T h e image was much more probably related in Yeats's mind to an expression and concept from his poem "The Phases of the Moon" (1918), which is used as a verse prologue in both versions of A

Vision:

"Twenty-and-eight the phases of the m o o n , / . . . T h e cradles that a man [or era] must needs be rocked in . . ." ( V i s i o n B, p. 60, Variorum

Poems, p. 373). These "cradles" are,

of course, the phases of the wheel or of the gyres in Yeats's system. T h e incessant alternations of the opposed historical eras — antithetical,

primary,

antithetical,

primary

—

might also be thought of as rocking cradles, especially since the noun cradle in the poem is singular instead of plural. In such an interpretation, the cradle of the present era has rocked to the extreme of its tilt in the primary direction, the widest fluctuation of the objective gyre.

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suggested, what Yeats so characteristically did was to make it simultaneously more subtle and more powerful by discovering ways to express it through symbol and allusion rather than direct statement. Dealing with violent revolution in late eighteenth-century France and in twentiethcentury Russia, he was understandably cast into an apocalyptic frame of mind, and at the end of the first prose draft he wrote, "Surely the second Birth comes near." 40 T h e "second Birth" (as opposed to "Second Coming") is clearly an expression welling up from the massive automatic scripts that had spoken repeatedly of a new "Avatar," "the Second Master," a "New Messiah," and so forth (see CEVA notes, pp. 20, 45, 46). But in 1919 the apocalyptic event associated with those terms was only "near" (first draft), not "at hand." This "second Birth" was to be the annunciation of a new religious dispensation "at about 2100" (p. 45). Yeats's poem, by contrast, is about a political development manifesting itself in the final outward-moving spirals of the present era's cone or gyre. Under the influence and excitement of months of epochal terminology and imagery from his "instructors," Yeats appears to have confused or combined these two phenomena in the early stages of his drafts, either unconsciously or semi-consciously. Even so, neither the words second Birth nor the idea occurs again for a number of lines. Then appears, "Surely the great falcon must come," which is immediately replaced by "Surely the hour of the second birth is here." 41 At this point Yeats's thoughts evidently drifted momentarily even further in the direction of the scripts' religious annunciation, though, as Stallworthy notes, the use of the falcon as an emblem of the new birth is out of keeping with the poem's opening. 42 H e then fumbled with the "second birth" for three or four more attempts before coming up all at once with a shift to "the second coming" (not deleted) and the first mention of Bethlehem. It is with this combination that "The Second Coming" achieved that magical

40

Stallworthy, p. 24.

41

Stallworthy, p. 27.

42

See Stallworthy, p. 28. Actually, Stallworthy generally agrees with a g o o d deal of what has just been said and with what follows in this note — or vice versa. Yeats quickly realized and corrected his drift toward the revelation of a n e w religious annunciation. Nevertheless, this brief appearance of the "great falcon," presumably as an

antithetical

deity figure, constitutes an interesting prototype in view of subsequent appearances of other divinely annunciatory birds in "Leda and the Swan," "The Mother of God," and The Heme's

Egg.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

Vision

243

click, like the closing of a box, with which the major pieces of a poem suddenly fall into place according to Yeats.43 For it was rather clearly at this point that Yeats realized the tremendous advantage for his poem of the vast storehouse of Biblical and traditional imagery of apocalypse over the arcane materials in the automatic scripts and card files of his private system, especially since his poem was not really about the antithetical religious annunciation there predicted anyway. In the same momentary flash of creative genius, or just before or after, he must also have recognized the symbolic and imaginative possibilities of the concept of a secular Christ, of associating all the detested levelling religious dogmas of primary Christianity with the detested levelling political doctrines of primary communism. Throughout the final drafts of the poem the constant central objective is development of the grotesquely repugnant beast icon and effective handling of its powerfully ironic relationships to the unequivocally allusive image of Bethlehem.44 Secular Christ the beast, then, a levelling socialism which is the final extreme manifestation of the outward-sweeping primary political gyre, is to precede the new antithetical religious dispensation.45 Specific materials exist in support of this analysis of the situation and interpretation of the poem. Originally, "Dove or Swan" — written, it will be recalled, before

43

44

45

Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley (1940; rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 22. The numerous exegeses which associate Yeats's rough beast with the "Antichrist" of orthodox and heterodox tradition would seem to be somewhat simplistically off the mark. T h e Antichrist concept and second adventism constitute related but different bodies of religious lore in and "around" Christianity. In view of Yeats's title and the Bethlehem allusion, his beast cannot properly be identified with the former, because the Antichrist is supposed to appear at some time before the second coming and, in some versions, is to be defeated and displaced by Christ upon His reappearance on earth. Yeats's poem and its beast emphatically are, however, related to the extensive and pervasive tradition of second adventism. As will be seen even more fully, the ironic allusions to that iconographically rich body of apocalytic lore are clearly among the chief evocative features contributing to the piece's almost supernatural immediacy and impact, as well as to its widespread critical acclaim and even popular renown. For valuable further information on both traditions, see W. Bousset, "Antichrist", and S. J. Case, "Second Adventism," Encyclopeedia of Religion and Ethics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), I, 578-81, and XI, 282-86, respectively. While there are materials in the automatic scripts about Christ being antithetical at certain times or in certain senses (see CEVA notes, p. 79), H e and Christianity are unequivocally primary throughout virtually all of Yeats's published works.

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1925 and therefore relatively close in time to "The Second Coming" — concluded with a segment which Yeats deleted from the 1937 edition of A Vision. It deals with what the system predicts to come in the last part of the present cycle (after Phase 22) and in the first part of the new one. It indicates rather clearly that something like communism or socialism will occur before the dawning of the new age. T h e imagery is even sometimes reminiscent of that in "The Second Coming": Then with the last gyre must come a desire to be ruled or rather, seeing that desire is all but dead, an adoration of force spiritual or physical, and society as mechanical force be complete at last. . . . A decadence will descend, by perpetual moral improvement, upon a community which may seem like some woman of New York or Paris who has renounced her rouge pot to lose her figure and grow coarse of skin and dull of brain, feeding her calves and babies somewhere upon the edge of the wilderness. . . . What awaits us [is] democratic and primary.... When the new era comes . . . it will, as did Christianity, find its philosophy already impressed upon the minority who have, true to phase, turned away at the last gyre from the Physical Primary. (CEVA, p. 213) A similar source is Yeats's 1921 note for the poem itself. In it a fictitious desert tribe, the Judwalis, tell Michael Robartes, "For a time the power will be with us, w h o are as like one another as the grains of sand [ultrademocratic, socialistic, or primary], but when the revelation comes it will not come to the poor but to the great and learned and establish again for two thousand years prince & vizier [antithetical types]" (Variorum Poems, p. 825; my italics). Finally, in a more w e l l - k n o w n passage at the end of the second edition of A Vision, Yeats indicates that even in 1937 he is still concerned about the possibility of Communism spreading dangerously far in the final phases of the present cycle before the advent of the new era: H o w far can I accept socialistic or communistic prophecies? I remember the decadence Balzac foretold to the Duchesse de Castries. I remember debates [on socialism] in the little coach-house at Hammersmith or at Morris' suppertable afterwards. I remember the Apocalyptic dreams of the Japanese saint and labour leader Kagawa, whose books were lent to me by a Galway clergyman. I remember a Communist described by Captain White in his memoirs ploughing on the Cotswold Hills, nothing on his great hairy body but sandals and a pair of drawers, nothing in his head but Hegel's Logic. What discords will drive Europe to that artificial unity. . . which is the decadence of every civilisation? H o w work out upon the phases the gradual

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

Vision

c o m i n g and increase of the c o u n t e r - m o v e m e n t , the i n f l u x . . .[?]

(Vision B ,

antithetical

245 multiform

pp. 3 0 1 - 0 2 )

T h e final portion of this last quotation indicates still another kind of reason why it does not make sense in terms of the system to interpret the cataclysmic birth of the beast in "The Second Coming" as the beginning of the new antithetical cycle. There, as in several other places, Yeats's indications are that the coming antithetical influx will have only its barest beginnings somewhere near A D 2000 to 2100, with its development to maturity or fullest expansion not until considerably later. 46 Like Christianity at the year zero, the new religious dispensation will be just at the tip of its cone at the time of annunciation. According to the apposite version of the system, nothing either antithetical or religious will be so wide-sweeping near A D 2000 as the phenomenon symbolized by the imagery in "The Second Coming," but rather some primary secular power or political movement. T w o related points about other parts of "The Second Coming" should be made in the light of the analysis just presented. O n e involves the lines "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." Donald Weeks and others have suggested that these lines strongly echo a passage from Shelley's Prometheus Unboundwhile some commentators have suggested even other parallels or possible sources outside Yeats's own work. Such parallelisms may be interesting to speculate about, but there are quite a few similar passages from Yeats's own w o r k which provide better elucidation of these lines. T h e just-quoted passage about the minority in the old era having already the philosophy of the new age is one. Yeats felt that he and a few other distinctly antithetical types were born out of phase, so to speak, in the final stages of a strongly primary civilization. Unfortunately members of this minority, surrounded by vocal or even violent masses, were all too often something less than staunch or united in their views (the words uncertain and wavering occur in the drafts). O n e of the most helpful parallel passages from Yeats's own works comes from that aquiline-visaged antithet-

46

One passage draws a parallel between the height of Christianity and Christ's influence at A D 1000 and the greatest influence of his predecessor t w o thousand years before at 1000 BC ( V i s i o n B, p. 285). By logical implication, then, Christ's successor and his dispensation would have their fullest development two thousand years after A. D . 1000, at A D 3000.

47

Weeks, p. 289.

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James Lovic Allen

ical persona Michael Robartes, who, in an introductory story from the second edition of A Vision, speaks to a small group of pupils or disciples as follows: "Dear predatory birds, prepare for war. . . . Love war because of its horror, that belief may be changed, civilisation renewed. We desire belief and lack it. Belief comes from shock . . ." (Vision B, pp. 52-53; my italics).48 This same passage sheds light on the second of the two related points, which has to do, rather obviously, with the "indignant desert birds" whose shadows are reeling all about the poem's rough beast (in the drafts occurs the line "an angry crowd of desert birds"). Very clearly in operation here is Calvary's symbolism of antithetical birds versus primary beasts, even though the falcon imagery in the poem's opening lines may be inconsistent or muddled in this connection. Although members of the antithetical minority may lack conviction, they would naturally be at least "indignant" over the threatening advent of a vast primary majority, as was Yeats himself when he wrote this poem. The appearance in the finished piece of only the shadows of the birds may be meant to suggest their ineffectual minority situation in contrast to an inundating "blood-dimmed tide" of anti-aristocratic masses. During the 1920's and 1930's, both communism and Yeats's attitude toward it changed, although his concerned interest did not entirely disappear. Any number of passages from those intervening years reveal, however, that he realized at a rather early date that the Bolshevik state as it was actually being run was much more an inhumane oligarchy than a truly socialistic system. This no doubt accounts for his tendency in later years to lump most of the chief European governmental structures together for equal disapprobation and may help to explain why and how in 1936 he felt at liberty to say that "The Second Coming" had predicted more than a decade and a half previously what was currently happening on the Continent (Letters, p. 851). If one wants truly to understand the original thematic implications of "The Second Coming" and its rough beast, however, he must remind himself constantly that the poem was written in 1919, slightly before the advent of fascism and very shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution and the earliest instances of inhumane political executions in Communist Russia.

48

Relevant to the points just made and to those which follow is the fact that Yeats in one place explicitly describes Robartes' face as "hawk-like" (CEVA, p. xv).

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A Vision

247

WHY A SPHINX? Some commentators do not even consider or mention the fact that Yeats specifies a sphinx as the monster in his nightmare vision. Before publication of the drafts, some may have felt that the line "A shape with lion body and the head of a man" was too indefinite to make the identification certain. A few, in fact, have even stressed the likelihood of intentional indefiniteness. But the first transcription of the drafts in 1963 provided new evidence — "breast & head" 49 — and the second in the early 1970's added "& with woman's" before the word breast.™ These details leave virtually no question. In fact, they even tell us that Yeats's first impulse was to depict the Greek or female form of the fabulous creature, after which he settled upon the Egyptian or male version. This very change itself will be of significance in efforts to answer the tantalizing question, "Why a sphinx?" A series of futile attempts to arrive at a satisfactory answer to this question almost thwarted efforts to capture Yeats's beast. Only with last-minute assistance from an unexpected source was failure averted. Unlike many of Yeats's other important symbols, the sphinx makes very few appearances elsewhere in his work, contrary to the impression given by some commentators. 51 It appears in none of the plays (except for passing references in the translations of Sophocles, of course), in only one poem other than "The Second Coming," ("The Double Vision of Michael Robartes," also written in 1919 and so presumably of potential relevance), and only here and there in the prose, usually in references either to visual portrayals by Charles Ricketts or to Hegel's use of the image in his Philosophy of History. This last, however, even though its occurrences include A Vision's sections on history, can have no bearing on "The Second Coming," since Yeats did not read Hegel's book until after 1919. Statements of traditional meanings in sources like Cirlot are of little assistance except for associations between the Egyptian sphinx and the sun, as between lion and sun. Usual significances are of such dubious relevance (for example, "enigma," "the great mystery," and so on) or multiple diversity that they remain next to useless. Only the fellow sphinx in "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes" would seem to be of much potential aid. 49 50 51

Stallworthy, Between the Lines, p. 22. Stallworthy, p. 29. See, for example, Melchiori, p. 36.

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However, "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes" is not a readily understandable poem, and explications of it are few and conflicting in their suggestions of meanings. Yeats himself says in A Vision that he used the main symbols in the poem "in ways I am not yet ready to discuss" and that the piece was written "in the first excitement of discovery," with clear indications that more considered thought or later experience might have led to a different handling of the symbology (B, pp. 207-08). The passage also says that of two main contrasted images, the sphinx and Buddha, one is associated with "the outward-looking mind, love and its lure" and the other "with introspective knowledge of the mind's self-begotten unity, an intellectual excitement" (p. 207). Since the poem itself describes the sphinx as gazing upon all things known or unknown "In triumph of intellect," the latter description from A Vision would seem to be the relevant one. Although little or no assistance beyond this can be gained from the appearance again of that virtually indefinable word intellect in Yeats's vocabulary, the description "introspective knowledge of the mind's self-begotten unity" certainly sounds subjective or antithetical rather than objective or primary. However, in terms of consistency between the two poems, the present analysis of "The Second Coming" would be benefitted more if the sphinx in "The Double Vision" could somehow be glossed as primary. Thus, the need for evidence in support of such an interpretation becomes apparent. Further investigation brings to light two sources of possible assistance. In an essay entitled "The Buddha as Symbol in W. B. Yeats: A Study of T w o Poems," T. R. S. Sharma argues urgently, if not always completely convincingly, that in Yeats's poems "The Double Vision of Michael Robartes" and "The Statues" the Buddha figure is subjective or antithetical and the sphinx in the former poem and the grimalkin in the latter (a miniature sort of sphinx, it is suggested) are objective. 52 Sharma pursues his argument by associating the sphinx with the "outward-looking mind, love and its lure" from the passage in A Vision, despite the fact that the other description, "introspective knowledge," and so forth, is the one that includes "intellectual excitement" to tie in with the poem's "triumph of intellect." The basis for some doubt is, therefore, apparent. The other source is F. A. C. Wilson's book already cited. In one note it

52

The Literary Criterion, 7 (1967), 33, 35, 39-40. Sharma concedes that Frank Kermode and Giorgio Melchiori differ with his opinion (p. 32).

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

249

Vision

says, "In this study I have assumed that Yeats originally meant his Buddha to typify subjectivity and his Sphinx to typify objective intellectualism, despite his difficult note in A Vision.. . But then he later says of that sentence, "This is perhaps the statement in the present book about which I feel most doubtful; though not doubtful enough to delete it."54 Not very reassuring materials. If they convince anyone that the sphinx in "The Double Vision" is primary, so much to the good. If not, then the only line of thought would seem to be agreement with Richard Ellmann, who could conceivably be said to be following Yeats's own comments previously quoted. Ellmann states that the images in "The Double Vision" are troublesome because they are used differently there from any other place in the poet's work. 55 As far as "The Second Coming" is concerned, that leads back to the original question, "Why a sphinx?". Conclusions based on much investigation and contemplation are that Yeats used a sphinx figure in "The Second Coming" for three interrelated reasons, or one might say rather that, in characteristic fashion, he syncretized in his imagination meanings and implications from three relatively separate sources. T w o of these sources involve the initially indicated female Grecian sphinx. One of the main associations for this figure in ancient tradition is, of course, the Oedipus myth, and that is — virtually certainly — just exactly one of the sources upon which Yeats drew. In the myth the sphinx was identified with death, pestilence, and famine. Until its riddle was answered, the city of Thebes could not thrive. Death, pestilence, and famine, along with war and bloodshed, tie in directly with the body of apocalyptic Biblical lore that Yeats elected to draw upon the moment that he settled upon "the second coming" and an allusion to Bethlehem instead of "the second Birth" and notions of a new "Avatar" from his automatic scripts.56 The sphinx image first appears in the same verse draft as that dual Biblical allusion, only some six lines or

53 Wilson, p. 311. 54

Wilson, p. 322.

55

See Ellmann, p. 255.

56

Actually, such calamities also tie in with at least some of the scripts' predictions about impending events as well. For example, Harper and H o o d speculate that one passage about the future may have been excluded from A Vision "because the prophetic tone was . . . t o o harsh . . .: 'I find in my documents a statement that population will decline through pestilence and famine and accidents of nature . . ."' (CEVA

notes, p. 63).

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so removed if deletions and trial repetitions are not considered. O n e m o mentary objection might be that Yeats's mind was not very significantly involved with the Oedipus story in 1919, since his translations of S o p h o cles' t w o plays came later; but a bit of sleuthing reveals that he had indeed been quite interested in the tale f o r a n u m b e r of years. In fact, he had been involved in efforts to arrange a p e r f o r m a n c e of Oedipus Rex at the Abbey T h e a t r e f r o m a date as early as 1904 or 1905." T h e r e is n o question, in short, that on the basis of his theatrical experience alone the riddling sphinx of the Oedipus myth would have been an immediately apprehended image of pestilence and famine in the mind of W . B. Yeats in the year 1919. Yeats was also thoroughly familiar with the story of Oedipus and the sphinx f r o m a n o t h e r source as well, however. T h e mythic motif had been appropriated as a favorite subject by a g r o u p of symbolist artists and poets so familiar and akin to Yeats that the scarcity of sphinx images in his own w o r k is, in fact, somewhat anomalous. His closest associate among the pictorial artists involved was Charles Ricketts, one or more of whose pictures depicting a sphinx Yeats referred to in very admiring

57

In 1904 Yeats c o m m e n t e d in Samhain (Explorations,

o n L o n d o n ' s ban against staging Oedipus

Rex

pp. 131-32). A b o u t the same time, he evidently asked Gilbert M u r r a y to

consider translating the play f o r the Irish T h e a t r e ; M u r r a y declined in a letter written o n J a n u a r y 27, 1905 (see R i c h a r d J. F i n n e r a n , G e o r g e Mills H a r p e r , and William M. M u r p h y , eds., Letters

to W. B. Yeats [ N e w Y o r k : C o l u m b i a Univ. Press, 1977], I,

145-46). T h e r e are seven references to the possibility of staging the play in letters a m o n g the D i r e c t o r s of the A b b e y dating f r o m 1906 to 1908 (Ann S a d d l e m y e r , ed., Theatre Business: ler Yeats, Lady

The Correspondence Gregory

of the First Abbey

Theatre Directors:

William

But-

and J. M. Synge [University P a r k and L o n d o n : Pennsylvania

State Univ. Press, 1982], pp. 127, 147, 151-52, 159, 178, 216, 295). By N o v e m b e r , 1909, Yeats w a s c o n t e m p l a t i n g translating t h e play himself and had " g o n e t h r o u g h translations and [ f o u n d ] J e b b ' s m u c h the best" (Letters, pp. 5 3 8 - 3 9 ) . T h e n , w h e n censorship of the play in E n g l a n d was w i t h d r a w n , Yeats's interest in the p r o j e c t lapsed, even t h o u g h he had p u r p o r t e d l y "finished the dialogue in the r o u g h " (p. 537). T h i s had to be in 1910 o r a f t e r w a r d s , since he was still reviewing translations late in 1909. W a d e r e p r o d u c e s in full a n o t e entitled "Plain M a n ' s Oedipus" New

(originally published in the

York Times, 15 J a n u a r y 1933) in which Yeats outlines both his initial (pre-1919)

and subsequent (post-1919) interest in Sophocles' play (loc. cit.). T h a t the piece did n o t f a d e entirely f r o m his t h o u g h t s in t h e interim period is m a d e clear by a sentence f r o m the " P e o p l e ' s T h e a t r e " essay published in the year t h a t " T h e Second C o m i n g " was w r i t t e n : " Y o u [Lady G r e g o r y ] and I and Synge, not u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e clock, set o u t t o bring again the t h e a t r e of S h a k e s p e a r e o r r a t h e r perhaps of S o p h o c l e s " p. 252).

(Explorations,

Yeats's "The Second Coming" and A

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terms in at least two places (Vision B, p. 298, Autobiographies, p. 550). Actually, the impact on Yeats of this circle of artists' interest in the sphinx figure may have been somewhat overstated by commentators. In addition to Melchiori, already mentioned, D. J. Gordon and Ian Fletcher, in their catalogue of an exhibition of art works with supposed relationships to Yeats's writing, list and discuss perhaps a disproportionate number of items. The material is helpful, nevertheless, in its suggestion of possible associations. 58 Some of Ricketts' pictures were illustrations for Oscar Wilde's poem on the subject, a lush Edgar-Allan-Poeish sort of thing with possible influences from Swinburne. Even Yeats's friend T. Sturge Moore wrote a poem — far less impressive than Wilde's — entitled "The Sphinx." In his recent book on Yeats's songs and choruses, David Clark includes a collection of plates which reproduce some of these paintings and drawings that depict from varying perspectives the encounter between the mysterious riddler and Oedipus. 59 What becomes apparent from an examination of these and other renderings 60 is that both the sphinx and the dancing Salome became favorite subjects for quite a few symbolist artists in the late nineteenth century, with the usual theme in both cases being the femme fatale. Salome or some surrogate in that role appears rather frequently in Yeats's own work. Certainly such implications for the female sphinx are in no way foreign to Yeats's concern in "The Second Coming" and may help to explain his initial use of that figure rather than the masculine Egyptian image. For what could be a better way to portray communism than as a heartless seductress luring the unsuspecting masses into harm's way? In his book with the plates already mentioned — which any reader interested in the subject should definitely see if unable to view the originals or other copies elsewhere — one of Clark's chief interests is associations of the sphinx with death, another shade of meaning by no means foreign to Yeats's concerns in "The Second Coming." However, the conception of death postulated by Clark is much "warmer" and more alluring than that suggested by the

58

59

60

W. B. Yeats: Images of a Poet (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961), pp. 96-98, 109-10. Yeats at Songs and Choruses (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1983), pp. 197, 199-201. See Robert L. Delevoy, Symbolists and Symbolism (New York: Rizzoli, 1978), pp. 39-43, 131-35, and passim.

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imagery of Yeats's apocalyptic poem, except to the extent that the femme fatale motif may be involved in both cases. 6 ' For a matter of weeks, reasons like these were the only ones that I could come up with in answer to the question, "Why a sphinx?". While they may well be contributory, they clearly cannot be exclusive, because they all involve the female Grecian sphinx, whereas Yeats almost immediately modulated to the male Egyptian icon in the drafts of his poem. Then the fuller answer came, like one of Yeats's lightning strokes, from a source to which I cannot possibly acknowledge adequately the degree of my indebtedness. 62 The key to understanding as fully as possible

61

See Clark, pp. 192-202. T h e materials in Clark's book may support the theses of the present study even further in several ways. Clark points out, for example, that Yeats, like D. G. Rossetti ahead of him, "calls the Sphinx a Fate" (p. 193; see also Variorum Plays, p. 844). If the possibility can be entertained that Yeats might have conceived of the sphinx in the same way as readily in 1919 as almost a decade later, then the idea of "a Fate" might relate to and reinforce suggestions of doom and apocalypse in "The Second Coming." Further than that, Clark points out that Rossetti's picture portrays a sphinx "whose eyes look past [its interrogators] without answering the question they seem to ask" and that the artist had said his drawing was about "the pitiless eyes of Fate" (pp. 192-93). While the odds that Yeats would have known and recalled such a remark may be slight, the picture and the phrase are both startlingly evocative of the line in Yeats's poem, "A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun."

62

A young Australian Yeats scholar, one of the few in his country, attended the International Yeats Symposium at Winthrop College, South Carolina, in April, 1983, where I presented a paper which was an embryonic version of the present essay. (An expanded model of that presentation is in print for anyone who may be interested in knowing what its major theses were ["William Butler Yeats," in Critical Survey of Poetry, ed. Frank N. Magill (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Salem Press, 1982), VII, 3194-99], Other than an enormous disparity in volume and detail, one of the chief differences between those two essays and this study is that I then believed that the version of the history system involving an interchange of the tinctures was the one appropriate to the poem. T h e earliest prototype of those analyses is a master's thesis on "The Second Coming" and A Vision deposited somewhere in the stacks of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University, in which I identified Yeats's rough beast as primary and communistic nine years before Stallworthy's initial publication of the poem's drafts, when HeathStubbs, Savage, and others were interpreting it as fascism. Unfortunately, the two of these three precursors that dealt with the question "Why a sphinx?" answered it in a way that turned out to be anachronistic for "The Second Coming." Their answer is not at all irrelevant for A Vision, however, as will be seen later in connection with part of the introduction to the 1937 edition.) The Yeats scholar from Australia, Colin M c D o well, who also made a presentation on A Vision at the Winthrop Symposium and who is a specialist on both Yeats's occult interests and occultism in general, continued to

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Yeats's "rough beast" in all its richly manifold symbolic implications is knowledge of the roles of the sphinx in various occult traditions and of the interrelationships between those and the long-standing body of orthodox and quasi-orthodox Christian eschatology, apocalypse, and second adventism in western culture. I do not understand why someone — especially I myself — has not recognized this circumstance and researched this subject before now. Although many of the connections are iconographic, associational, and poetic rather than logical and discursive, there can be little doubt that they were quite real in Yeats's mind when he wrote the poem. The main two lines of association can best be presented initially for discussion by reference to their symbolic identification with two cards from certain versions of the tarot deck, although both also exist in occult tradition independently of that set of "magic" cards, especially in cabalistic lore. The cards in question are the Chariot and the Wheel of Fortune. Both include a sphinx or sphinxes in some versions of the deck, and, in such versions, both have connections with the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel as well as with "the Wheel of Ezekiel" and the throne of God. 63 All of these associations and many others are interrelated with each other in a very intricate and complex esoteric symbology. Ezekiel is one of the two most prophetic and apocalyptically oriented books in the Old Testament (the other is Daniel), and it has both direct and indirect connections with the N e w Testament book of similar kind, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, with its imagery of Christ's second coming and his role as a destructive warrior and death-dealer at the day of judgment and advent of a new dispensation. As will become apparent, Yeats did not have to imagine or invent such associations between the sphinx and a warlike Christ. They existed ready to hand in the two intertwined traditions, orthodox and heterodox. All he had to do was sharpen the focus by means of that allusive juxtaposition whose manner and tone are the central concern of his final two drafts — Bethlehem and beast.

63

discuss my theories with me via correspondence after the conference. When I foundered on the issue of the sphinx in the poem, he generously sent some tentative suggestions and a collection of photocopies from sources on occultism not available in libraries to which I have convenient access, with revelatory and productive consequences the scope and impact of which not even he will know until he reads what follows. Virginia Moore says that the Wheel and Chariot cards with their sphinxes "fascinated" Yeats (The Unicom: William Butler Yeats' Search for Reality [New York: Macmillan, 1954], p. 60), which may well be believed in light of what unfolds in the sequel here.

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Several versions of the tarot deck depict a sphinx atop or above the Wheel of Fortune, with the four "living creatures" of Ezekiel's vision in the four corners of the card, or in some cases just their heads: lion, man, eagle, and ox. 64 On the cards four separate animals or "living creatures" are shown. However, in Ezekiel there are four creatures, each of which has four heads of the kinds just indicated, as well as wings (see 1.6, 10). An occult attempt to represent pictorially such a monster appears in W. Wynn Westcott's translation of Eliphas Levi's The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum, evidently on the page facing the title page. There is a photographic reproduction of the two pages in Kathleen Raine's Yeats, The Tarot, and the Golden Dawn (illustration 15)." As indicated there, such a "living creature" from the prophetic book of the Old Testament

64

I have placed these figures in the present sequence intentionally in order to indicate immediately the obvious basis for associations between the sphinx as depicted in Yeats's poem and the four "living creatures" of Ezekiel, even if there were no extant traditional connections. This list also reveals at least one reason why Yeats had to change from the female Greek sphinx to the male Egyptian one — "head of a man." Another reason for that change may have been greater proximity, geographically and thematically, to Bethlehem, while still another may have been a desire to intensify the desert imagery for poetic effects much like those that function in Eliot's The Waste Land. I suspect also other purposes for desert imagery, such as associations with Michael Robartes' travels in the N e a r East, with the land of the fictional Judwalis, etc., although I am not sure that I understand all the reasons for Yeats's preoccupation with those things themselves (mystery, civilization's origins, "Babylonian starlight"?). However, a virtually certain further reason for desolation imagery in "The Second Coming" itself is practically self-explanatory when one recalls Yeats's figurative use of the expression "the Christian desert" (Vision B, p. 271). Christianity is also associated with desert imagery elsewhere in the book, with emphasis on its making all things and all men equal and indistinguishable, "featureless as dust" (p. 274). This, in turn, is reminiscent again of the primary Judwalis, w h o are "as like one another as the grains of sand" in the 1921 note to "The Second Coming" (Variorum Poems, p. 825). Incidentally, in the tarotdeck portion of occult tradition the sphinx has become a blend of the Greek and the Egyptian in many cases. Most versions — though not all — depict female breasts, but also most — again, not all — portray the characteristic "King T u t " type of headdress. Some show wings but most do not. The Greek sphinx is winged, whereas Egyptian ones vary in this particular. For differing versions in the tarot, see Paul Foster Case, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages (1947; rpt. Richmond, Va.: Macoy Publishing Company, 1975), p. 118; Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1983), pp. 195, 210; Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, trans, and ed. A. E. Waite (London, 1896; rpt. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974), p. 389.

65

(Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1972).

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is sometimes called "The Cherub of Ezekiel," or in other places the creatures are designated simply as cherubs or cherubim (occasionally spelled with a k). But they are also sometimes called sphinxes, and in some esoteric sources the terms cherub and sphinx are used almost interchangeably. 66 T h e extraordinary four-headed "living creatures" or "sphinxes" in the Book of Ezekiel are further identified there with some very strange wheels which follow them about and which contain their spirits (1.19-21). Anyone at all acquainted with the various interrelated bodies of occult lore is familiar with the propensity in esoteric tradition for quaternities and the tendency for quaternities to develop into four-sectioned circles o r wheels. It was probably inevitable that this kind of thing should happen with the f o u r four-headed living creatures of Ezekiel, w h o were already associated with wheels anyway. Thus the so-called "Wheel of Ezekiel" is such a divided circle with one of the four animals represented in each of the four quarters or at each of the dividing lines.67 It takes no special ingenuity to perceive that this wheel and any number of others like it are prototypes, to one degree or another, f o r Yeats's great wheel in A Vision, whose phases correspond to gyres, cones, and cycles throughout the b o o k but especially in the sections on history. Thus beasts or sphinxes could easily be identified with cardinal points in the cycles, particularly one like the conclusion of an era. This kind of association, of course, tends to become too generalized to be a major element of meaning in poem or system. O n the other hand, however, neither Yeats nor a responsible critic could very well associate his "rough beast" with the "living creatures" of Ezekiel without being reminded of the various kinds of wheels of process or progress with which those creatures are sometimes linked in esoteric tradition. T h e other tarot card related to the sphinx is T h e Chariot. Originally this card had horses pulling the vehicle, but in the nineteenth century

66

W a n g (p. 198) and Israel R e g a r d i e (The Golden Rites and Ceremonies

Dawn:

An Account

of the

Teachings,

of the Order of the Golden Dawn [ 1 9 3 7 - 4 0 ; rpt. St. P a u l : Llewel-

lyn Publications, 1971], IV, 310) suggest that the sphinx is a " c o m b i n a t i o n " o r synthesis of the c h e r u b s , but in at least o n e place Levi uses the terms cherub and sphinx

simply

as alternates f o r each o t h e r (p. 273). Such usage accords with, and clearly derives f r o m , C h a p t e r 10 of Ezekiel, in w h i c h the "living creatures" a p p e a r again and are called "cherubim." 67

See W a n g , p. 196, o r Raine, illustration 26.

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some decks replaced the horses with sphinxes. 68 The chariot is much like a wheeled throne in many instances with a king, prince, or some other figure representing triumph in it. The occult symbology is often quite detailed and complicated. 69 The chariot is sometimes even associated with the throne of God in the vision of Ezekiel. Of course, for Yeats's symbolic purposes the figure could readily be related associatively to the triumphant armed Christ at his apocalyptic return to earth in the corresponding N e w Testament book, Revelation. 70 That the sphinxes on the Chariot card are also sometimes associated with the "living creatures" of Ezekiel is made unequivocal by the fact that, in at least one version of the tarot pack, instead of two sphinxes pulling the chariot there are all of Ezekiel's beasts (four separate animals, as in Revelation 4.7) before the vehicle, either pulling it or else protecting it.7' In the versions with two Egyptian sphinxes, usually one is white and the other is dark or partly black, with them apparently pulling

68

69 70

71

See Richard Cavendish, The Tarot (London: Michael Joseph, 1975), p. 90; Wang, p. 210; A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1910; rpt. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1973), pp. 96-97, or Levi, pp. 388-89. See the sources just cited. O n the one hand, it would be easy to overlook or understate the emblematic connections articulated here. O n the other hand, however, it would perhaps be almost impossible to overstate their power and significance for the success and impact of Yeats's poem. An important iconographic detail that reinforces the multiple-levelled interrelationships involved is the bared or flashing sword. Recognition of its various appearances in the congeries draws into clearer identification with each other the triumphant charioteer, the militant and judgmental Christ of doomsday tradition, the sphinxes of occult and Biblical lore, and the rough beast of Yeats's poem (a sphinx). In a number of versions of the Chariot card, the victorious king or warrior holds what appears to be a sceptre, but the object in his hand is sometimes a sword held by the blade, with the handle at the top. This observation is verified by those packs in which the sword is instead held by its handle (as in the middle illustration in Cavendish, p. 90) and by verbal rather than visual portrayals: "An erect and princely figure carrying a drawn sword" (Waite, p. 96). Also, most versions of the Wheel card that have a sphinx at the top show a sword held in the crook of one arm or else in one hand, as in three of Wang's four examples (p. 195). Moreover, the gatekeeper of Eden with a fiery sword is sometimes identified as a sphinx in occult lore, probably from the previously mentioned sphinx-cherub equation (see Levi, p. 273; Cavendish, pp. 90, 102). Finally, the Christ of Revelation and second adventism is prophesied to strike down in vindictive carnage the nations of the earth when "out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword" (19.15; see also 19.11,21). See Wang, p. 210, second illustration.

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in opposite directions.72 This fact brings the whole congeries of sphinx tradition and occult apocalypse into direct connection with an importladen icon which Harper and Hood take to be the very seminal image of the automatic scripts' entire dual-natured system itself — a chariot pulled by opposite-colored horses {CEVA introduction, pp. xii-xvii, xlix). Thus, if a horse (or a sphinx) of one color is associated with the subjective or antithetical tincture and an animal of the other color with objectivity or the primary, what could be more natural than to represent by such a beast the point where a tincture, in its final expansion, inundates all culture — by a horse or, more in keeping with apocalyptic lore, a sphinx? Some readers may feel that this last-mentioned possibility pushes esoteric interpretation a bit far. Perhaps. But once again, how could Yeats possibly have been unaware, or his informed critic be silent? Another area of occult lore in which the sphinx plays an important role is the complicated system of meditation known as Enochiana or Enochian magic, which is discussed and described at considerable length in sources like Regardie73 and Francis King.74 Initiates of the Inner Order of Yeats's Rosicrucian society, The Golden Dawn, were introduced to this method of achieving visions, and Yeats would have been thoroughly familiar with its principles and terminology.75 In this esoteric activity one of the chief attributes of the sphinx emblem is power, which is also in fact one of its attributes in certain aspects of the tarot deck and in ancient tradition as well.76 While power would clearly seem to be an appropriate quality for association with the beast in "The Second Coming," it and certain other meanings tend to be positive or favorable more than negative and foreboding, for which reason their applicability to Yeats's poem might be questionable.77 Almost certainly Yeats's chief rea-

72 73 74 75 76 77

See Levi, p. 389, and Wang, p. 210, third illustration. IV, 310-22. Astral Projection, Magic and Alchemy (London: Neville Spearman, 1971), pp. 81-87. See Moore, pp. 142, 151, 203, 257, 277. See Cavendish, p. 90, and Wang, p. 197. For example, the Egyptian sphinx, especially atop the wheel of fortune, is often taken to represent a resolution of the four elements or signs with which the four creatures are sometimes associated, much like the phoenix in alchemy (Wang, pp. 198, 213; Cavendish, pp. 92, 102). In other contexts the sphinx is a fearful gatekeeper or guardian of entryways to newer or higher realms of knowledge or being (Wang, p. 197). Such roles clearly accord with the sphinx's representation of mystery and enigma and might also conceivably relate in similar ways to the entry of a new historical era. However, those

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son for using the sphinx icon was to evoke through associational links all the graphic imagery of pestilence, bloodshed, warfare, and destruction inherent in Ezekiel, Revelation, and post-Biblical traditions of Christian Armageddon or quasi-Christian apocalypse. Such lines of implication, of course, raise momentarily the question of Yeats's familiarity with the Bible in general and with the Book of Ezekiel in particular. But the question is quickly laid to rest: in fact, with a vengeance. In addition to three references to Ezekiel in the poetry, there is a very telling one in the Yeats-Ellis edition of Blake, which says that the four Zoas "are identical with the wheels of Ezekiel and with the four beasts of the Apocalypse." 78 The words in this passage are almost certainly Yeats's rather than Ellis'; but even if not, both editors insisted that they each approved all passages written by the other. Also, in Yeats's play The King's Threshold, the poet Seanchan says in his death speech: "I need no help. / He needs no help that joy has lifted up / Like some miraculous beast out of Ezekiel" (Variorum Plays, p. 309). While this passage removes any question about Yeats's knowledge of Ezekiel and its beasts, its tone would seem to be out of keeping with what has been said here of the "living creatures" and their awesome import in apocalyptic tradition. However, in the play Seanchan is very clearly a type that would have been labelled subjective or antithetical in the terminology of A Vision. Therefore his defiant final speech would have to be in sharp contrast to the connotations for death in "The Second Coming." Also, the beast appears in the play only as part of a simile. Though the beast is designated "miraculous" and "lifted up," as it might well be in virtually any context, Seanchan is the one who is "joyous," not the beast. In accord with such a reading, the "living creatures" are "lifted up" — wheels and all — in Ezekiel (1.19-21, 10.17-19). What is perhaps more telling about the appearance of Ezekiel's beast in The King's Threshold\ in relationship to "The Second Coming," is the date rather than possibilities of meaning. The passage did not exist in the original play (1904). Instead, it appeared for the first time in "A

78

roles involve synthesis and stasis more than seems appropriate to the imagery and themes of flux and catastrophic dynamism in "The Second Coming." Probably, therefore, such suggestions of meaning should be given relatively little emphasis here. The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic and Critical, ed. William Butler Yeats and Edwin J. Ellis (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1893), I, 251.

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New End for The King's Threshold" written in 1921.79 This means that the beast or beasts from Ezekiel were unequivocally in Yeats's mind at a time not far removed from the composition of "The Second Coming." In fact, it is quite likely that associations in the poet's mind from the recently published poem help to account for the reference in the play.80 That a difference in meaning from the image in "The Second Coming" should not be considered beyond the realm of possibility is suggested by the fact that a few lines later in his new conclusion for the play Yeats also employs the moon symbolically in a way contrary to its antithetical usage in the historical system: O , l o o k upon the m o o n that's standing there In the blue daylight — take note of the complexion, Because it is the white of leprosy And the contagion that afflicts mankind Falls f r o m the m o o n . ( V a r i o r u m Plays, p. 309)

In short, Yeats clearly felt that symbolism in the new conclusion for the play had to be kept consistent with the tone and meaning of imagery and usages in the original work rather than shifted or altered in light of the iconography that had developed in his system between the piece's original composition and its revised conclusion. In fact, Bushrui, who identifies the beast image as an echo from "The Second Coming," comments briefly on ways in which the "New End for The King's Threshold" could in 1921 incorporate certain elements of meaning from the emerging system of A Vision without violating in spirit or intent the play originally written almost two decades earlier. 81

79

80

81

See S. R. Bushrui, Yeats's Verse-Plays: The Revisions 1900-1910 {Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 109. The "living creatures" are not called "beasts" in Ezekiel itself. Thus, Yeats's expression "beast out of Ezekiel" in "A New End for The King's Threshold"suggests that he probably picked up the term beast for use in "The Second Coming" from tradition or Revelation (4.7) or both. More importantly, the expression in the play demonstrates that in the poet's imaginative thought Ezekiel's "creatures" were equatable with "beasts." This point validates the thesis that adequate understanding of the nature and iconographic function of Yeats's famous image in "The Second Coming" depends upon recognition of its demonstrable associations with the prophetic book's "living creatures" and all of the apocalyptic symbology and import deriving from those associations. Bushrui, pp. 114-15.

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A SECULAR C H R I S T "The Second Coming" is not about the annunciation of some new avatar or religious dispensation. Neither is it about the influx of some new antithetical civilization or hierarchical social structure of "kindreds" or "covens," though Yeats thought about and wrote about such things in other places during and after the advent of his system. It is about precisely what its title indicates that it is about, the second coming of Christ. This second Christ, however, will be secular and political rather than spiritual and religious. Yeats in various places identified certain attributes of Christ or Christianity with those of such political systems as democracy or socialism. Chief among such qualities in common were two: the supposed equality of all humans — not surprisingly — and the dominance of reason or logic, perhaps somewhat less expectedly. O n e illustrative passage is the following: " . . . Christ came at the Graeco-Roman meridian . . . was the first beginning of the One — all equal in the eyes of One. . . . Equal rights and duties before the One — God with the first Christians, Reason with Rousseau" (Explorations, p. 311). In another place Yeats's identification of Christ with reason is startlingly explicit, even if the element of egalitarianism is present only through reverse implication, by virtue of the speaker's being that most antithetical and autocratic of personae, Michael Robartes: " . . . I said to myself, ' J e s u s Christ does not understand my despair, H e belongs to order and reason'" (Vision B, p. 41).82 For present purposes, probably the most striking of such passages on reason is one which was published in the same year as "The Second Coming" was written. Not only does it associate Christianity with logic and egalitarianism, but it also labels logic a "wild 82

This declamation is strongly reminiscent of the play Calvary

(published in the same

year as "The Second Coming") and its dramatic opposition of subjective desert birds to Christ's objectivity. Yeats's note to the play states: "I have surrounded H i m [Christ] with the images of those H e cannot save, not only with the birds, . . . but with Lazarus and Judas. . . . 'Christ,' writes Robartes, 'only pitied those w h o s e suffering is rooted . . . in some shape of the c o m m o n lot. . . .' I have therefore represented in Lazarus and Judas types of that intellectual despair that lay beyond His sympathy . . . " (Variorum Plays, p. 790). In a different way, Robartes' outcry echoes and accords with a passage on the Church's decline as the cycles of history approach the rationalistic eighteenth century: "The gyre ebbs out in order and reason, the Jacobean poets succeed the Elizabethan, C o w l e y and Dryden the Jacobean as belief dies out. Elsewhere Christendom keeps a kind of spectral unity for a while . . ." (CEVA, ics).

p. 205, Vision B, p. 295; my ital-

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Vision

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beast": "Logic is loose again, as once in Calvin and Knox, or in the hysterical rhetoric of Savonarola, or in Christianity itself in its first raw centuries, and because it must always draw its deductions from what every dolt can understand, the wild beast cannot but destroy mysterious life" (Explorations, p. 277; cf. the "wild beast" of Giraldus' book). Very significantly, in light of this contemporaneous passage, one of the late drafts of "The Second Coming" momentarily labelled the monster slouching toward Bethlehem as a "wild thing", before Yeats settled upon his now famous turn of phrase "what rough beast." 83 However, the most explicit and emphatic revelation of a secularized Christ in Yeats's imaginative thought, a political phenomenon characterized by all the aspects of Christianity which he most disliked, comes in "A Packet for Ezra Pound" (1929), which eventually became a part of the introductory materials for the 1937 version of A Vision. There Yeats not only articulates the idea of a secular Christ, but also chooses as his antithetical type or symbolic persona opposite to Christ the mythic hero Oedipus: "What if Christ and Oedipus . . . are the two scales of a balance, the two butt-ends of a seesaw? What if every two thousand and odd years something happens in the world to make one sacred, the other secular; . . . one divine, the other devilish?" (Vision B, pp. 28-29). After twenty centuries of dominance by the sacred Christ, the time has arrived in "The Second Coming" for that "something" to happen, for the appearance of that other Christ, the secular one. Here, I think, we have a case in which the poem helped to shape the subsequent book rather than the other way around. For if in 1919 the sphinx was the emblem used to image the birth of that secular Christ, in the form of egalitarian revolutions (French and Bolshevik), what could be more fitting than to choose an autocratic ruler, Oedipus, the sphinx's traditional antagonist and opposite, as representative of the antithetical being who becomes sacred when the primary one becomes secular? Furthermore, since the primary political gyre will reverse its movement and dwindle during the next thousand years while the antithetical religious one spirals outward, Oedipus, the aristocratic avatar in Yeats's historical scheme just as in the myth, will eventually vanquish the sphinx, the secular Christ of communism. 84 83

See Stallworthy, p. 30.

84

Yeats's discussion of Oedipus as the "new divinity" begins on page 27 of Vision B, and on page 28 the sphinx is mentioned as an antinomical figure in the myth, though not

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Finally, not only could — and did — Yeats conceive of a secular Christ, but he was also capable of discussing in surprisingly explicit prose ideas much akin to those intimated by elliptically allusive poetry in "The Second Coming." T h e height of the primary era of civilization is imaged as Christ's impending return in the role of apocalyptic avenger and ruthless arbiter at a horrible day of doom, with reason and egalitarianism once again emphasized as dominant characteristics: W h a t has set m e w r i t i n g is C o l e r i d g e ' s p r o o f , w h i c h seems t o m e c o n c l u sive, t h a t a civilisation is driven to its final p h a s e . . . by " p u r e t h o u g h t , " " r e a s o n , " . . . by t h a t w h i c h m a k e s all places a n d p e r s o n s alike. . . . " P u r e t h o u g h t " . . . f i n d s all alike, leaves all plastic, a n d its decisions, did it dwell e q u a l l y in all m e n , w o u l d be a s i m u l t a n e o u s decision, a w o r l d - w i d e g e n e r a l election, a last j u d g m e n t , and f o r j u d g e a terrible C h r i s t like t h a t in t h e apse at C e f a l u . ( E x p l o r a t i o n s , pp. 3 1 6 - 1 7 )

Possibly Yeats is here confusing Cefalu with Monreale, which he mentions simultaneously with Cefalu in Vision B (p. 285), or perhaps both with Daphni, where "Christ is revealed in the aspect of Jehovah, a heavy Semitic judge with thick nose and full, cruel mouth, the thickbrowed eyes gazing pitilessly to one side, . . . one sinewy hand . . . raised in blessing but conveying also menace and condemnation." 85

85

exactly in the role suggested here. On the same page Oedipus is also contrasted to abstraction, to Plato's One, and (by clear implication) to reason. He is instead designated as "an image from Homer's age;" this obviously aligns him with the system's previous antithetical annunciation, which theoretically occurred 4000 years ago. That annunciation, of course, is graphically portrayed in Yeats's poem "Leda and the Swan," which was written in the interim between "The Second Coming" and "A Packet for Ezra Pound." Incidentally, associations between Oedipus and the sphinx are strong in occult tradition as well as in ancient mythology (Levi, pp. 15-16, Wang, p. 198). John Beckwith, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 120. One should see also pp. 123 and 131 as well as plates 215, 223, and 231 for evidence in support of the proposition that in his prose passage Yeats might perhaps have confused Cefalu with Monreale, or maybe even both with Daphni. The passage from A Vision suggests that after Christianity's powerful domination of culture in the middle ages, Christ's image will "grow more like ourselves, putting off that stern majesty [of] . . . Cefalu and Monreale. . . ." But the text and plates in Beckwith's book make unmistakable the fact that the mosaics at Cefalu and Monreale depict Christ much more sympathetically than the awesome portrayal at Daphni. Cefalu's depiction, the least "stern" of the three, hardly seems to bear the iconographic burden put upon it by the passage from Explorations. If Yeats never visited Daphni nor saw a reproduction of its Pantocrator, then the mosaic at Monreale (in the apse, as is Cefalu's) may well be the memory image inspiring his "terrible Christ."

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While Christ may be alternately sacred or secular in Yeats's imaginative thought, H e is virtually always "objective" or primary\ as is clearly indicated again and again by passages inside and outside A Vision. W h a t Yeats anticipates with foreboding and horror in " T h e Second Coming" is the "physicalprimary" of our civilization's "last gyre," with its "adoration of f o r c e " and "society as mechanical force," not the subsequent antithetical "new era" with its " S e c o n d Fountain [which] will arise after a long preparation" ( C E V A , p p . 2 1 1 , 2 1 3 - 1 4 ) . His famous prophetic poem is, then, in fact about the second coming of Christ, though Christ in a frighteningly unfamiliar worldly guise. In opposition to the massoriented and anti-individualistic spiritual teachings of the sacred Christ Jesus, this new secular Messiah will espouse a mass-oriented and anti-individualistic political materialism. After twenty centuries of religious equality urged by Christ the Lamb, a cataclysmic and levelling social anarchy is to be loosed upon the world by Christ the Lion.

PATRICIA R. S C H R O E D E R

Arthur Miller: Illuminating Process

The cause-and-effect stage world inhabited by Arthur Miller's characters would be strange terrain indeed for the characters of many of his contemporaries. In the works of such dramatists as Pinter, Beckett, and Ionesco, language is often divorced from conventional meaning, the familiar is removed from its usual context, and actions produce few predictable results. Miller's plays, in contrast, portray the ways in which the effects of past actions continue to be felt in the present, and document his view that "consequences of actions are as real as the actions themselves.'" From this insistence on a causal relationship between actions and consequences emerge two essential components of Miller's stage world: the recurring theme of man's responsibility for the present consequences of his past actions, and the complex dramatic structures needed to explore the interaction between past and present. Miller describes his own playwriting career as a series of attempts to portray this interaction. H e says: I've always done the same thing in one way or another — and that is to show the process. It's the way my mind works — to ask how something came to be what it is, rather than to play upon the apparent surfaces of things to give a sense of what they are. 2

The past necessarily plays a large part in determining "how something came to be what it is," and so forms a crucial part of Miller's stage reality throughout his career. But when Miller uses the term "process" for relating past and present, he is moving toward a very different notion of their relationship than that exemplified in the formal stage realism, with 1

2

Arthur Miller, "Introduction" to Collected Plays (New York: Viking Press, 1957) I, 18. All further references to "Introduction" are given in the text parenthetically. Miller, quoted in Ronald Hayman, Arthur Miller, World Dramatists Series (New York: Ungar, 1972), p. 15. Hayman's thesis, like my own, is that Miller's interest in process forms the matrix for his career. W h a t Hayman does not explore, however, is Miller's changing definition of what process entails, or the different kinds of processes each play presents.

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its given past and predictable consequences, of his early plays. What changes from play to play in Miller's canon is his notion of this relationship between past and present, and thus of the "process" by which the causal past is partly discovered and partly constituted in being persistently explored. Early in his career Miller turned to Ibsen and his retrospective method to document the lingering effects of the past on the present. H e followed the Norwegian's lead in beginning his own formally realistic plays close to the crisis of the story, then gradually revealing the forces that precipitated the crisis. "I connected with Ibsen," Miller has said, ". . . because he was illuminating process": [Ibsen's v i e w ] is p r o f o u n d l y dynamic, for that enormous past w a s always heavily d o c u m e n t e d to the end that the present be comprehended with wholeness, as a m o m e n t in a f l o w of time, and not — as with so many m o d ern plays — as a situation without roots. ("Introduction," p. 21)

The past which informs Ibsenian realistic plays, however, is usually an indisputable, externally verifiable chain of events, a linear, causal sequence which the characters recognize as such. The "process" illuminated in such plays is thus limited to an uncovering of past secrets — the missing links in the chain — as the temporal sequence of the plot determines the extent of a character's responsibility for his actions. What is less often the focus of attention in such plays is the process not just of characters' discovering the chain, but of helping constitute it. As Miller matured as a dramatist, however, he began to transfer his own dramatic problem of determining causality onto his characters. The causal relationships which in an Ibsenian thesis play are known to the characters and must be revealed to the audience become, in Miller's later plays, something which the characters themselves must investigate and determine individually. The "process" which Miller illuminates thus develops from an uncovering of external plot sequence to an internal voyage of discovery. When such psychological process assumes dramatic priority, causes and effects are no longer clearly separable, and when the distinctions between causes and effects begin to dissolve, individual responsibility becomes difficult to assign. As a result of this shift in emphasis, the past is no longer so fixed, the future no longer so predictable, and the mechanical expositions of formal realism no longer sufficient to explore the dynamic interplay of past and present. The sequential, linear, causal chain which connects past and present in Miller's early plays

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is subsumed, in his later works, by an interacting, multi-linear, exploratory process: uncovering the process by which past is related to present becomes the process that the plays explore. In order to accommodate this evolving notion of process, Miller has continually adapted the conventions of Ibsenian realism which first attracted him to playwriting. H e has not, however, abandoned his insistence on exploring causality and personal responsibility, and is constantly seeking to reconcile these interests with his interest in the complexity of relationships between past and present. As a result, the emphasis provided by Miller's dramatic structures has shifted throughout his career: at times he depends extensively on techniques of formal realism to illustrate the effects of given causes, but at other times he moves beyond these techniques so his characters can explore possible past causes for given present effects. His stage reality is indeed one where "consequences of actions are as real as the actions themselves," but the "reality" of both action and consequence turns out to be complex, shifting, and uncertain.

FORMAL REALISM: T H E Q U E S T I O N OF ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES All My Sons ( 1 9 4 7 ) , Miller's first theatrical success, clearly demonstrates the centrality of the past to the Ibsenian stage world of Miller's early career. T h e play is constructed upon a rising sequence of revelations about J o e Keller and his relationship to his family. As the long-hidden secrets disclosed bit by bit throughout the play begin to fit together in a discernible causal chain, we learn that Keller had knowingly shipped out defective engine parts during the war, and so is responsible for the deaths of twenty-one pilots; that he had allowed his business partner, still in prison as the play begins, to take the blame for the mishap; and that his oldest son, himself a pilot, had committed suicide after hearing of his father's possible involvement in the crime. T h e first two of these secrets have been kept hidden by Keller and his wife, the third by Ann, the dead son's fiancée. W h e n all three secrets are exposed and the connections between them made apparent, Keller, unable to face the hideous consequences of his actions, follows his son in committing suicide. T h e play illustrates explicitly Miller's perennial theme of man's responsibility for even the unforeseeable effects of his actions.

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The structure of the play — which Miller has called "linear or eventual in that every fact or incident creates the necessity for the next" ("Introduction," p. 23) — further manifests Miller's theme of the continual re-eruption of the causal past and its consequences. In a more recent comment on the relationship between the theme of responsibility and the structure of his plays, Miller revises the notion of linear necessity, and the shift in emphasis in his comments indicates the shift of emphasis his drama itself would take. H e says: I suppose by structure I always mean the same thing . . . — that's the existence of fate, or high probability, which means that when a man starts out to d o w h a t he intends to do, he creates forces which he never bargained for. . . . I think this is true of almost every play. And then he's got to relate himself to what the results of his actions were. 3

The "necessity" with which causal realism condemns Joe Keller is here reduced to the less imposing "high probability," a reservation in judgment that Joe Keller was not permitted. For, given the linear necessity which accurately describes the movement of All My Sons, Joe Keller has no opportunity to "relate himself" to the results of his actions. The cause-and-effect chain has been forged long before the action of the play commences, and revelation of this chain, not character interpretation or understanding of it, becomes the central process of the play. All My Sons is in many ways a standard Ibsenian thesis play. The earliest critics and reviewers of the play were quick to point out its similarities to The Wild Duck, in which one of two business partners is unjustly singled out and imprisoned for fraud, and in which the son of the ostensibly "innocent" partner, like Chris Keller, feels compelled to destroy the lie on which his father's life is based. 4 Furthermore, All My Sons employs a typically Ibsenian retrospective method, in which an ordinary domestic scene in act 1 is gradually disrupted by innuendo, and a domestic crisis erupts to reveal a fatal secret. 5 Even the successive minor

3 4

5

Hayman, p. 17. C. W. E. Bigsby, Confrontation and Commitment: A Study of Contemporary American Drama 1959-1966 (Columbia, Mo.: Missouri Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 28-29. Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 268-69.

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revelations which precipitate the eventual crisis are, like the damaging letter Ann withholds until the last act, stock devices of Ibsenian realism. 6 For Miller, however, the technical similarity to Ibsen was a minor corollary to their similarity of concern. According to Miller, his own interest consisted primarily in documenting the causal past and demonstrating its inexorable hold on the present. He says: All My Sons takes its time with the past, not in deference to Ibsen's method as I saw it then, but because its theme is the question of actions and consequences, and a way had to be f o u n d to t h r o w a long line into the past in order to make that kind of connection viable. ("Introduction," p. 20)

This comment suggests a double naivete on the young Miller's part: he refused to see the connection between his self-proclaimed "linear" method and an Ibsenian thesis play, and he failed at this point in his career to see that more than a single line of causality must be established if "actions and consequences" are multiple, as his own use of the plural would suggest. By designing a structure to "bring a man into the direct path of the consequences he has wrought" ("Introduction," p. 18), Miller constructed a stage past limited to a single chain of events set in motion by a single moment of poor judgment. This simplified notion of the past in turn reduced the play to an illustration of the moral that the consequences of a man's actions catch up with him. This is not to imply, of course, that All My Sons is not compelling theatre, nor to diminish its importance in helping the young playwright develop the notions of causation and the past that would evolve throughout his career and greatly enlarge his dramatic capabilities. But by constructing a dramatic method that is "linear," that casts "a long line into the past," Miller cut off the possibility of depicting the tangled interplay of forces, both external and internal, which combine to create the intricately woven and never completely explicable pasts his later characters grapple with. Compounding the problem of this simplistic notion of what the past actually comprises is the fact that it is kept secret, concealed from the audience and unsuspected by many of the characters. Act I is two-thirds over before we are shown any indication that the Kellers' lives are only superficially smooth, and even then we catch only hints: Kate Keller's overreaction to her husband's playing "jailer" with the neighborhood 6

Tom Scanlan, Family, Drama, and American Dreams, Contributions in American Studies, No. 35 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 131.

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boys, for example, or Keller's insistent question, " W h a t have I got to hide?" 7 Act 1 ends with Keller's fearful speculation that the case will be reopened, and so Kate's curtain line — an admonition to Keller to " B e smart" — fuels our suspicions even further. T h e effect of keeping Keller's crime hidden from the audience until the final moment of act 2, and of Ann's producing Larry's letter, for which we are totally unprepared, late in act 3, is to keep the audience in suspense. T h e "process" thus described by the play is not one of a character's "relating himself" to the consequences of his actions, but one of unearthing and exposing Keller's secret past — a process set in motion by Chris and Ann, and externally imposed on Keller. Chris eventually forces his father to acknowledge his participation in the crime, but Keller, who assigns his family business a higher priority than his wider social responsibility, never really sees what he has done wrong. H e cries out to Chris, " W h o worked for nothin' in that war? W h e n they work for nothin', I'll work for nothin'. . . . H a l f the Goddam country is gotta go [to jail] if I g o ! " (I, 125). J o e finally commits suicide not because he has come to accept his responsibility for the pilots' deaths, but because he cannot bear having disappointed Chris. A few minutes before his death he tells K a t e : "I'm his father and he's my son, and if there's anything bigger than that I'll put a bullet in my head!" (I, 120). Keller's awareness that his past actions have partially created the present is thus forced on him through external agents, and the audience is denied both prior knowledge of the truth and participation in Joe's coming to terms with it. N o t until somewhat later in his career would Miller learn to substitute a character's gradual, internal exploration and eventual self-revelation for the rather mechanical process of external exposition which motivates the action of

All My Sons. Just as Keller's final vision of his guilt is pressed upon him by Chris, so do the social consequences of Keller's actions seem superimposed on the private, back-yard world of the play. Critics have recurringly complained of this split between the personal and the public, the psychological and the social, the emotional and the intellectual in Miller's plays. 8

7

Arthur Miller, Collected Plays, 2 vols. (New York: Viking Press, 1957), I, 74. All further references will be to this edition of the plays discussed.

8

For representative samples of such criticism see Eric Bentley, What is Theatre?Incorporating the Dramatic Event and Other Reviews 1944-1967 (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 26; John Mander, The Writer and Commitment (London: Seeker and War-

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While Welland, speaking specifically about Death of A Salesman, is undoubtedly correct in feeling that "what is irritating about such criticism is its assured conviction that the mixture of social drama and personal tragedy is unintentional," 9 the lack of unity which has bothered critics throughout Miller's career does intrude into the world of All My Sons. Of course, this issue is simply a variant of Miller's concern for actions and consequences: private actions can and often do have public consequences, and several of Miller's later plays explore in detail the relationship between character and community. But the linear, Ibsenian method of All My Sons, which practically forces Keller's confession out of his mouth, depends upon Keller's relationships with his wife, his sons, his business partner, and Ann; Miller's attempts to place Keller's crime in a larger social context are thus disruptive and tedious. This problem is illustrated plainly in the long first act that introduces a horde of functionless neighbors, in Chris Keller's self-aggrandizing monologues about the role he played in the war, and in Chris's insistence that his father confess his long-past complicity to the authorities. The final problem with the play, however, is not that it accounts for more than one variety of motivation — a laudable attempt, certainly, to create a complex stage reality — but that its linear method renders such potential complexity irrelevant. When the past is nothing more than an irrefutable secret, when the relationship between past and present is unremittingly causal, and when the central character cannot bear to acknowledge his own part in forming this chain of events exposed by others, the possibilities for expressing multiple motivations diminish. Joe Keller's story is essentially a familial one, and Miller's attempts to expand the repercussions of Joe's actions beyond the Kellers' fenced-in yard are subverted by the uni-linear structure of the play — a structure which both prohibits personal exploration on Joe's part and restricts the establishment of a wider social context. In Miller's later plays, the public and private centers of interest are much more subtly related — a development many critics seem reluctant to acknowledge. The problem was never one of too many threads to weave together, but of a structure too narrow to incorporate all the

9

burg, 1961), p. 151; Edward Murray, Arthur Miller, Dramatist (New York: Ungar, 1967), p. 180; and Orm Overland, "The Action and Its Significance: Arthur Miller's Struggle with Dramatic Form," Modem Drama, 18 (1975), 2-4, who provides a good summary of this attack on Miller's work. Dennis Welland, Miller: A Study of His Plays (London: Methuen, 1979), p. 40.

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strands. In The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1956), both predominantly formally realistic plays like All My Sons, Miller developed structural methods for demonstrating the presence of the past and the consequences of actions, while at the same time linking public effects of actions with private ones. By expanding one or two significant components of formal realism but preserving the general method, Miller opened up his stage to a more complex and compelling vision of the past's invasion of the present. The cause-and-effect structure which so severely limits the action of All My Sons provides the perfect framework for the relentless causality of The Crucible, in which each action has an immediate impact on those that follow. Like Joe Keller, John Proctor has committed a moral transgression in the past: his "lechery" with the servant girl Abigail. Unlike Keller, however, Proctor has admitted his wrongdoing to his wife Elizabeth, dismissed Abigail from their service, and attempted to restore order to his life. But Proctor's rejection of Abigail has set in motion a disastrous chain of causally-linked events with multiple and widespread social consequences: Abigail's jealousy of Elizabeth leads to the girl's subsequent accusation that Elizabeth practices witchcraft; the accusation leads to Elizabeth's imprisonment; and the incarcerated Elizabeth's lie to the magistrates, intended to save John from sharing her punishment, conflicts with the confession he has already made and so results in his death sentence. The linear structure thus works in part because it mirrors the inflexible logic of the self-righteous magistrates and ministers who conduct the withcraft trials and decide the Proctors' fates. These figures of authority are rather like the Tyrones of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, who interpret the mere temporal sequence of events as unavoidable causality, and so absolve themselves from personal responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. The causal movement that these men wrongly discern, and that the play's structure echoes, produces the "certain marching tempo" (as Olivier calls it10) that propels the play to its inevitable conclusion. Miller's treatment of the past in The Crucible is also greatly improved over that in All My Sons. Most obvious is that John's "lechery," unlike Keller's crime, is not kept hidden from the audience: although the 10

Laurence Olivier (Lord Olivier of Brighton), letter to Arthur Miller, Michigan Quarterly Review, 6 (Summer 1967), p. 182; rpt. in The Crucible: Text and Criticism, ed. Gerald Weales (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 153.

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other characters do not discover the sin until act 3, we spectators learn of John's shameful secret midway through act 1. Likewise, the future of the Salem characters is not unknown to us: the Salem witchcraft trials are a notorious historical event, and we expect the deaths of many innocent townspeople. Because the past and future are thus apparent from the outset, the focus of attention can remain tightly on the process by which John Proctor "relates himself" to the consequences of his actions. By exposing the past early and predicting, by means of relentless causal structure and dramatic irony, the outcome of the events presented, Miller has provided a perspective which includes the cause-and-effect component of personal responsibility but also allows scope for the exploration of internal process. The surprise we feel as the secrets of All My Sons are revealed is here replaced by anticipation of the unavoidable future, and by participation in Proctor's exploration of his unfolding present. The emphasis in this play is thus shared by two separate sorts of process: one which depicts actions and consequences, and one which shows what happens in between those actions and their consequences — the process by which Proctor learns to accept public responsibility for the repercussions of even his most private actions. At the outset of the play, Proctor feels that his sinful "lechery" is a thing set apart in the private past, unconnected to the public present and no longer influential. The ensuing witchcraft trials, inspired primarily by the spiteful Abigail, soon disabuse him of this notion. That the events of the play enable Proctor to "relate himself" to the consequences of his actions is abundantly clear. Near the end of the play Proctor is offered the chance to sign a confession of witchcraft and so be set free. But Reverend Parris' gloating as Proctor prepares to sign the confession reminds Proctor that his actions may have unforeseeable consequences; Parris declares, "it will strike the village that Proctor confess" (I, 326). Heeding Parris' unwitting reminder of the possible public repercussions of his action, Proctor rejects their offer of life based on a lie (a sin which surely must have seemed, at first, inconsequential), and rejects their plan to use his signing to condemn others. He declares: Y o u will not use m e ! . . . I have three children — h o w m a y I teach them to w a l k like m e n in the w o r l d , and I sold my f r i e n d s ? . . . I b l a c k e n all of [those f r i e n d s ] w h e n this is nailed to the church the very d a y they h a n g f o r silence!

(I, 327)

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Recognizing the community-wide effects that his single, private action of signing could produce enables Proctor to accept both the continuing influence of the past on the present and the social context in which even the most personal actions — a love affair, a life-saving lie — reverberate. In Proctor, Miller has succeeded in linking the private and public worlds which remain unhappily separate in All My Sons, by showing how the individual error is replicated in the lives of others. This mingling of private and public is made possible largely by the communal nature of the theocratic society in which Proctor lives. What Proctor does not realize at the outset of the play is that the guilt he feels about his "lechery" is shared in some form or another by each member of his demanding and unforgiving society, and that this omnipresent sense of guilt is what allows the witch-hunt hysteria to erupt. As Miller has said, " N o man lives who has not got a panic button, and when it is pressed by the clean white hand of moral duty, a certain murderous train is set in motion."" Proctor's sin is both a private failing and a representation of the guilt-ridden repression endured by all his fellows, so the notion of the past important to this play includes the prior moral transgressions of the entire community, and thus the whole moral framework that makes the notion of transgression so inevitable. Guilt was no longer something for the playwright to expose, but something he could take for granted — his donnée. Miller says: It was no longer enough for me to build a play, as it were, upon the revelation of guilt. . . . N o w guilt appeared to me no longer the bedrock beneath which the probe could not penetrate. I saw it now as a betrayer, as possibly the most real of our illusions, but nevertheless a quality of mind capable of being overthrown. ("Introduction," p. 41)

The simple secret past of All My Sons is thus richly replaced in The Crucible by an entire network of prior sin and private guilt. Because the community at large unwittingly engineers the "murderous train" from the start, the long, rather slow first act of The Crucible succeeds where that of All My Sons did not. Instead of simply introducing a backyard full of dramatically functionless neighbors to establish "an atmosphere of undisturbed normality" ("Introduction," p. 18), The

11

Arthur Miller, "It Could Happen H e r e — And Did," New York Times, 30 April 1967, rpt. in The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, ed. Robert A. Martin (New York: Viking Press, 1978), p. 295.

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Crucible begins with the illness of the apparently bewitched Betty Parris, the interrogation of the guilty Abigail about her hedonistic dancing, and the greedy squabbling of the townspeople over property and boundary lines. The townsfolk introduced so early in the action are clearly more than the "clutter of minor characters'" 2 that Ferres and others object to: as they crowd into Betty's bedroom, the citizens of Salem demonstrate the overpowering presence of the theocracy, even in matters of the most personal nature. The emotional imprisonment imposed upon the characters by their theocracy and the relentless forward movement produced by the structure of the play are both represented visually in the play's four settings, each of which anticipates the Proctors' literal incarceration at the end. Act 1 takes place in Betty's clean but sparsely furnished attic room. The stage directions call for a criss-cross, cage-like pattern of light and shadow, as sunlight streams across the room from the single narrow window at the left, and the exposed beams of the rafters loom close overhead. The Proctor's house, scene of act 2, is represented by "a low, dark, and rather long room" (I, 261), typical of the time, but here emblematic of the theocratic systems of enclosure which are beginning to bear down on John and Elizabeth Proctor. The vestry room of the Salem meeting house provides the setting for act 3. "Now serving as the anteroom of the General Court" for the witchcraft trials, the room is described as "solemn, even forbidding" (I, 285) as its high windows, symmetrical arrangement of plain furnishings, and jutting, heavy beams repeat the bar-like imagery of act 1. Act 4, of course, takes place in an actual jail cell, in which the high barred window, simple benches, and streaks of moonlight seeping through the bars indicate how little the prison differs from the daily reality of the theocracy at large. Like the formally realistic structure of the play, the set itself reveals the inevitable results of the guilty terror which has long been smoldering in Salem. In The Crucible, Miller was able — for the first and only time in those of his plays which are predominantly realistic — to explore simultaneously both his interest in actions and consequences and his interest in the process between them, the process by which Proctor comes to terms with the impact of his past choices on the present and the future.

12

John H. Ferres, "Introduction," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Crucible, ed. John H. Ferres (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), p. 14.

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The importance of this shift in emphasis in Miller's work from given causality to constructed process is apparent in a comment of Miller's on A View from the Bridge: "It is not enough any more to know that one is at the mercy of social pressures; it is necessary to understand that such a sealed fate cannot be accepted.'" 3 From this point on in Miller's career, cause and effect relationships are not simply given, but remain open to discovery and reinterpretation; no character's fate is sealed before he discovers it, for in the process of discovering it he helps constitute it. Like The Crucible, A View from the Bridge presents causally linked events in a structure not bound by the temporal limits of the play, and focuses on Eddie Carbone, who, like John Proctor, refuses to accept the sealed fate his past offers him. Carbone, an immigrant dock worker, violates his society's code of honor in response to his own turbulent emotions (his unwittingly passionate attraction to his niece and ward) by reporting his wife's illegally immigrated cousins (one of whom is the niece's suitor) to the authorities. Eddie knows from the start what the inescapable consequences of his action will be: early in the first act he approvingly relates the story of a young man who was beaten up by his family and cast out by his community because he reported his uncle to the Immigration Bureau. That Miller was once again concerned with actions and their consequences is evident from his comments on the play: The pressure of time's madness is reflected in the strict and orderly causeand-effect structure of A View from the Bridge. Apart from its meaning, the manner in which the story itself is told was a rejection of the enervated "acceptance" of illogic which was the new wisdom of the age. Here, actions had consequences again, betrayal was not greeted with a fashionably lobotomized smile.14

The past which gives rise to this causal necessity, however, is no single secret or past error, but the entire social code to which Eddie and his peers subscribe. The play thus resembles The Crucible in its ability to locate in one character's personal conflict the problems besetting the community at large. In A View from the Bridge, however, Miller adds yet another dimension to the personal and community conflicts which the play shares with

13 14

Arthur Miller, "On Social Plays," in Theater Essays, p. 63. Arthur Miller, "What Makes Plays Endure?" New York Times, 15 August 1965, rpt. in Theater Essays, p. 261.

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The Crucible. Through the presence of the lawyer Alfieri, who functions as both legal advisor to Eddie within the plot and as narrator for the audience from outside the proscenium arch, Miller presents causal sequence as something to be adjudicated, a task in which he includes the audience by means of the lawyer's direct presentation of Eddie's case. At the outset of the play Alfieri helps us see Eddie's future actions in the context of a large historical perspective: . . . in some Caesar's year, in Calabria perhaps or on the cliff at Syracuse, another lawyer, quite differently dressed, heard the same complaint and sat there as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course. (I, 379)

With these words, Alfieri presents us with a vision of Eddie's past as a social involvement he shares with generations of ancestors, and also predicts the bloody outcome of the events we are about to witness. Later he accelerates this play's version of that "certain marching tempo," as he describes his first encounter with Eddie: I knew, I knew then and there — I could have finished the whole story that afternoon. It wasn't as though there was a mystery to unravel [as there had been in All My So»*!]. I could see every step coming, step after step, like a dark figure walking down a hall toward a certain door. (I, 410)

With Alfieri's help we too can foresee the inevitable outcome of Eddie's misguided passion. Alfieri's broadened perspective thus functions in much the same way as the historical time frame and resultant dramatic irony do in The Crucible: the play's linear structure emphasizes separable causes and effects, but Alfieri's narrative interruptions draw attention to the process which impels Eddie's decision, and away from the dreadful consequences we know to expect. As a result, the audience feels anticipation rather than surprise, and prolonged adjustment to the consequences of Eddie's actions replaces sudden resolution. Although Alfieri's narrative comments do somewhat disrupt the focus on Eddie, they allow us to know about and share in Eddie's decision-making process. In A View from the Bridge, Miller creates an interacting equilibrium between internal process and external causality, an equilibrium which is shaped in part by the audience's participation. Both The Crucible and A View from the Bridge demonstrate Miller's changing conception of the relationship between external causality and the inner processes by which characters come to recognize it. Both plays, however, provide only temporary structural solutions for this

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evolving notion of process. T h e auspicious combination of theme, historical perspective, and linear structure that The Crucible enjoys would be impossible to recapture in a modern context, and the device of the external narrator which extends the perspective in A View from the Bridge sits uneasily alongside the rest of the play's concentration on interior process. Both these plays succeed in demonstrating that actions have consequences for which the characters are responsible, and both depict part of the process by which the characters come to terms with this responsibility. But because of their essentially linear structure, both plays also present causal events as indisputable facts, not subject to reinterpretation during the central character's confrontation process. T h e past in these plays is entirely an externally verifiable set of experiences. In Miller's later plays, pivotal past events are opened up for further exploration: they are often multiple, obscured from view, reconstructed and re-created by the characters' fallible memories, and not necessarily capable of being forged into a chain of temporal causality, despite the characters' struggles to do so. In order to create a past more consistent with his evolving notion of ongoing process (and less dependent on a separable causal past and a predictable future), Miller had to de-emphasize linear realism and explore the mental processes of his characters in more detail. In Death of a Salesman, he did just that. As Miller says: W h e r e in All My Sons it had seemed necessary to prove the connections between past and present, between events and moral consequences, between manifest and hidden, in [ D e a t h of a Salesman] all was assumed as proven to begin with. ("Introduction," p. 24).

By taking the past's complex and multiple influence on the present for granted instead of striving to demonstrate a uni-linear connection between past and present, Miller prepared his stage world for his greatest dramatic successes.

DEATH

OF A SALESMAN:

A MOBILE C O N C U R R E N C Y O F PAST AND PRESENT

Willy Loman's past continually invades his present in Death of a Salesman (1949). As the play begins, we find Willy at a belated crossroads in his life: near retirement and unable to support his family, groping to understand the reasons f o r his failures as a father and as a salesman. U n known to Willy, somewhere in his soul-searching he has lost track of the

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boundary between past and present. His very first long speech demonstrates the collision of past and present in Willy's mind, as he conflates his present tale of driving his Studebaker with his memory of opening the windshield on the Chevy he used to own. As Miller has explained the germination of this character: T h e Salesman

image w a s f r o m the beginning absorbed with the c o n c e p t that

n o t h i n g in life c o m e s " n e x t , " b u t t h a t e v e r y t h i n g e x i s t s t o g e t h e r a n d at t h e s a m e t i m e w i t h i n u s ; t h a t t h e r e is n o p a s t t o b e " b r o u g h t f o r w a r d " in a h u m a n b e i n g , b u t t h a t h e is his p a s t at e v e r y m o m e n t a n d t h a t t h e p r e s e n t is m e r e l y t h a t w h i c h his p a s t is c a p a b l e o f n o t i c i n g a n d s m e l l i n g a n d r e a c t i n g to. ( " I n t r o d u c t i o n , " p. 2 3 )

It is clear from this statement that Miller has shifted his focus from disclosing the external facts of linear causal chains to depicting one character's attempt to locate them appropriately in his memory. The past thus portrayed in Death of a Salesman is one bound on all sides by the mind and imagination of Willy Loman. 15 In order to dramatize this simultaneous existence of past and present in Willy's mind, Miller interrupts the present action of the play twice in each act with enacted scenes from Willy's memory. Willy's recollections form a large part of his present reality; they influence his behavior as much as his current interactions with the other characters do. In order to portray this compelling inner world with all its potency, Miller chose to embody it on stage and so demonstrate the present impact of Willy's privately-held truths. Willy actually converses with his dead brother Ben, sometimes confusing Ben's voice with that of his neighbor Charley, who is physically present in Willy's kitchen, and sometimes suppressing the world of external reality entirely to seek Ben's advice. H e also recalls Biff's childhood adoration of him, and the boy's triumph as a high school football hero. Most important, he relives his version of the single

15

Alan S. D o w n e r has noted that the Salesman

method was a major departure from

Ibsenian realism; he says "The Effect [of Ibsen's retrospective technique] was to show simultaneously the cause and the event, so that the theme became inescapable. Miller's innovation is in the direction of more complete visualization; what Ibsen was content to leave as narrative, information conveyed by dialogue, Miller dramatizes" ( F i f t y Years of American Drama 1900-1950

[Chicago: H e n r y Regnery Co., 1951], pp. 7 3 - 7 4 ) . What

D o w n e r does not mention, however, is that in Salesman the causes of events are not clear to the central character, and that the process of locating and confronting these causes is the central action of the play.

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secret past mistake which doomed Joe Keller and John Proctor, and which Willy fears has doomed him: his affair with a woman in Boston, and the adolescent Biff's discovery of it. Early reviewers of the play (such as Worseley, Beyer, and Gassner — collected in Weales' edition' 6 ) saw Willy's reliving of the past as a simple flashback mechanism, but Miller more accurately describes the technique: There are no flashbacks in this play but only a mobile concurrency of past and present, and this, again, because in his desperation to justify his life Willy Loman has destroyed the boundaries between then and now. ("Introduction," p. 26)

T o portray this intertwining of past and present in Willy's mind, Miller presents the scenes from the past expressionistically, in contrast to the external linear realism of the present action. Each time Willy's memories begin to overwhelm him, the lighting softens, the leaves of autumns past begin to fall, and the flute music of Willy's childhood begins to play: all unnoticed by the other characters, but real to Willy and apparent to us. The young Linda and the adolescent sons who people Willy's imagination disregard the boundaries of realism, ignoring the wall-lines of the fragile little house that both shelters and confines them in the present world. This alternation of expressionistic devices with those of formal realism in the play's structure enabled Miller both to explore and to portray visually that "friction, collision, and tension between past and present which was at the heart of the play's particular construction" ("Introduction," p. 27). Because we spectators observe this repeated "friction" between past and present, the focus of our attention is directed not toward ultimate causes, but to the process by which these causes are reviewed and recreated in Willy's groping mind. There is, of course, a characteristically Milleresque chain of causal events in Willy's past, beginning with Biff's discovery of Willy's infidelity, the boy's subsequent refusal to finish high school or enter college, and the resultant animosity between the two as Biff continually fails to establish a career for himself and Willy continually attributes this failure to spitefulness. But the process that Miller emphasizes here is twofold, including both Willy's attempt to "relate himself to what the results of his actions were," and also his equally impor16

Gerald Weales, ed., Death of a Salesman: Books, 1977).

Text and Criticism (New York: Penguin

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tant yet incompatible need to deny his part in causing Biff's failures. T h e tension between given causality and reconstructed process is thus personified in Willy's psychological activity, and becomes the very subject of the play as well as its method of development. Willy suspects that he is in part responsible for his own and his son's failures, but he cannot bear to face his responsibility squarely. H e therefore retreats to his memory world, in part to confront the truth that lies there and in part to escape the consequences of the past that the linear present exposes. T h e causal past which Willy both seeks and fears to discover is unknown to us as the play begins, although we are given hints of it throughout act 1. T h e Boston woman's laughter from offstage (that is, from Willy's memory) counterpoints Linda's in the present, and the strain between Biff and Willy seems to spring from a hidden source which only the two of them know. But unlike J o e Keller, who carefully conceals his single, secret crime, Willy Loman simply refuses for most of the play to recognize the continuing consequences of his long-past affair. T h e past Miller discloses gradually throughout this play is thus part hidden and part obvious; part constructed by Willy, part ignored by him, and part discovered by him. It is not until the second and last act that Bernard, a neighbor, unwittingly discloses the real reason why Biff refused to finish high school, and in so doing forces Willy to acknowledge the truth that he in part engineered the train of events that led to Biff's present failures. Bernard asks Willy why Biff had refused to enroll in the summer class that would have enabled him to attend college, and Willy answers: Why? Why? Bernard, that question has been trailing me like a ghost for the last fifteen years. H e flunked the subject, and laid down and died like a hammer hit him!

But Bernard recognizes a different causality, and replies: N o , it wasn't right then. . . . H e wasn't beaten by it at all. But then, Willy, he disappeared from the block for almost a month. And I got the idea that he'd gone up to N e w England to see you. Did he have a talk with you then? . . . What happened in Boston, Willy? (I, 189-90)

It is only after Bernard forces Willy to recognize the impact that his infidelity has had on Biff that Willy can bear to remember the incident himself. In his very next retreat into his memory, Willy finally confronts what happened in Boston, and the causal link Willy has tried so desper-

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ately to hide from himself finally surfaces both on stage and in his consciousness. W e have not been duped here by a man hiding a crime (as we were by Joe Keller); instead, we share in the tortured mental processes by which Willy tries to forget the very truth he seeks, so to evade responsibility for the consequences of his actions. Willy Loman's failures extend beyond his shattered dreams for his son, however. Willy has never been able to realize his own dream of success in the business world, and part of the self-exploring process Willy enacts for us has been precipitated by his own disappointment. Willy's preoccupation with his lackluster career, like his obsession with his son, colors both his present actions and his memories of the past: we see Willy seeking a raise and borrowing money in the realistic present of the play, and we overhear a conversation with Ben in Willy's memory, in which Willy rejects his brother's offer of adventure and wealth in favor of a career in sales. Although Willy's failure to succeed financially as a salesman remains a mystery to him, the reasons soon become painfully obvious to us. Willy's skills are manual ones: he puts up a ceiling, rebuilds a stoop; as Charley says, " H e was a happy man with a batch of cement" (I, 221). But for Willy it seemed that selling was the greatest career a man could want. Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to g o . . . into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? (I, 180)

Willy craves membership in a large social world of successful businessmen, even while he resents the intrusion of the high-rise apartments and office buildings which accompany that world. Once again Miller has entangled the private, familial world of a character with that of his community. But in Death of a Salesman the problem of linking the two worlds is no longer just the playwright's, but the character's, as Willy seeks to reconcile his twin concerns for career and family. What Miller has done in Death of a Salesman is invert his inquiries: instead of attempting to document the community-wide consequences of individual action (as he did in All My Sons and would do again, in part, in The Crucible), he explores the pressures of society at large on one individual member of it. In this way he maintains his focus on Willy's internal struggles to confront his past, yet extends the implications of the chain of events that Willy finally constructs. By alternating scenes of ex-

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ternally valid causality with scenes of the random events Willy remembers, Miller asserts that society is inside of man and man is inside society, and y o u cannot even create a truthfully drawn psychological entity on the stage until y o u understand his social relations and their p o w e r to make him w h a t he is and to prevent him from being what he is not. T h e fish is in the water and the w a ter is in the fish. 17

The past operative in Willy Loman's world thus extends far beyond Willy's unfortunate Boston indiscretion. As Miller would do again in microcosm in The Crucible, in Death of a Salesman he has succeeded in implicating an entire society in the failure of one character to achieve success or even to know himself. The past exposed in Death of a Salesman, then, comprises an entire network of private choices, public forces, and one man's remembered version of them. The play stands as a major milestone in the career of a playwright whose concept of the past develops from the making public of a single, secret crime to the making accessible of an arena of privately constructed causalities and conflicting memories.

AFTER

THE FALL A N D THE PRICE: F R O M T H E I R O W N VIEWPOINTS

In After the Fall (1964) and The Price (1969), Miller continues the shift of emphasis begun in Death of a Salesman, and accents the internal process by which a character "relates himself" to his past. A character's responsibility for the consequences of his actions is still a central theme, but the process of uncovering linear causality is now subsumed by the process of simultaneous internal and external exploration. Instead of trying to conceal or avoid present responsibilities for known past actions, each protagonist in these exploratory dramas seeks causes in his past to explain his present situation and help him chart a future course of action. For if there is one overriding change that sets these late plays apart from Miller's earlier works it is that the protagonists survive: we meet them not at the end of their lives (and at the end of a linear chain of events) but at a crucial decision-point midway through them. 17

Arthur Miller, "The Shadows of the Gods," Harper's, 217 (August 1958); rpt. in Theater Essays, p. 185.

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The process of making this decision largely determines the dramatic form of these late plays. They are structured not according to an externally verifiable causal sequence — which focuses attention on actions and consequences, beginnings and ending — but according to a character's interior reconstruction of one. This retrospective action is thus presented, as Miller said of the Franz brothers in The Price, "from their own viewpoints" (II, 295). That Miller's evolving notion of the past is central to his development as a playwright becomes evident if we compare the past set forth in After the Fall with that of the early All My Sons. Instead of the single, indisputable causal event guarded by Joe Keller in All My Sons, in After the Fall the past is a myriad and fragmented world of memories, with causal events yet to be discovered, interpreted, and evaluated, even by the one remembering. The central action of the play is the process by which Quentin investigates the remembered past and constructs and reconstructs causal sequences that permit him to understand and control his present. The focus is sharply set on the process of exploration, since causal events can be located only provisionally, and proceed from a private viewpoint toward public acceptance rather than vice versa. As Quentin tells Maggie in the second act, "An event itself, dear, is not important; it's what you took from it" (II, 214). T o permit this investigation of a past which contains few clearly discernible causal actions, Miller structured After the Fall according to the associations within Quentin's memory, and not to demonstrate temporal sequence or the overt consequences of actions. As the first line of the stage directions tells us, the action of the play takes place entirely "in the mind, thought, and memory of Quentin" (II, 127). The set as Miller describes it resembles a human brain, with a "neolithic, a lavalike geography." Miller reminds us that "the mind has no color but its memories are brilliant against the grayness of the landscape." The actors in this play are the people of Quentin's memory, who "appear and disappear instantaneously, as in the mind," and so take their validity entirely from Quentin's perceptions. The overall effect Miller calls for is "the surging, flitting, instantaneousness of a mind questing over its own surfaces and into its depths." The only present action of the play is Quentin's ongoing dialogue with the unseen and unheard Listener, in which Quentin struggles to reach a decision about committing himself to a woman, Holga, whom he has recently grown to love. Every point in his decision-making process reminds him of past failures, of prior commitments he has failed to

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keep. In short, Quentin's decision-making process forms both the subject and the structure of the play. Late in the first act Quentin laments, " H o w few are the days that hold the mind in place; like a tapestry hanging on four or five hooks" (II, 169). T h e hooks that support the fabric of his own memory are the moments of betrayal (both of him and by him) and the events which led up to them. H e remembers his childhood and his mother's tricking him out of a vacation; he remembers walking out of his father's business when the old man most needed him. H e remembers his infidelity to his first wife, and her subsequent tendency to blame all their marital failures on him alone. H e remembers his relief at the suicide of his friend Lou, whose politically unpopular legal case Quentin had reluctantly taken on. Most of all he remembers the unhappily mixed motives that drew him and Maggie, his second wife, into marriage, and led her eventually to suicide. T h e play thus reverses the emphasis of Death of a Salesman, as Quentin stumbles through the uncharted recesses of his memory in an attempt to discover the source of his failures, and only occasionally returns to the single impending decision which locates him in the present and propels him into a future that Willy could not face. Throughout the play, Quentin is engaged in the activity that killed J o e Keller, Willy Loman, and John Proctor: he is "relating himself to what the consequences of his actions were." T h r o u g h the action of the play, Quentin comes to accept his responsibility for the effects of his actions, even if he is ignorant of them. Because Quentin feels that it is his responsibility to know, he feels "some vague . . . complicity" in any act of betrayal (II, 148; ellipsis Miller's). Quentin's dilemma is to accept the burden of his life without being crippled by it, to kiss the idiot child in his arms (as H o l g a does in her dream), to forgive himself for living an imperfect life in an imperfect, post-Edenic world. In order to do this, Quentin must undergo a Proctor-like jolt, a recognition and acceptance of even the unrealized yet possible consequences of his actions. Maggie's attempted suicide provides this jolt. Quentin at first tries to avoid taking any responsibility for his wife's desperate action; he tells her, "the question is no longer whether you'll survive, but also whether I will" (II, 228). H e makes one last-ditch effort to force Maggie into becoming solely accountable for her own life and death. H e tells her: D o you see it, M a g g i e ? Right now? You're trying to make me the one who does it to you? I take them [her sleeping pills]; and then we fight, and then I

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Patricia R. Schroeder give up, and y o u take the death from me. Y o u see what's happening? Y o u ' v e been setting m e up for a murder. D o y o u see it? But I'm g o i n g away; so you're not m y victim any more. It's just y o u , and y o u r hand. (II, 2 3 2 - 3 3 )

Both Quentin and Maggie at this point are reversing the causal logic used by Miller's earlier characters: they are attempting to assign culpability on the basis of effect rather than of cause, and so avoid acknowledging their part in creating the unintended consequences of actions. What Quentin comes to realize through his present exploration of this memory, however, is that even though he did not deliberately drive Maggie to suicide, and even though the responsibility for her action may rest ultimately with Maggie herself, he too must share a part of the blame for the despair which prompted that action. Maggie's suicide attempt thus forces Quentin to acknowledge two things: his responsibility for even the unplanned and unforeseeable consequences of his actions, and the terrible mixture of motives, both innocent and guilty, which lurks in all men's hearts. Because Quentin comes to see these mixed (albeit unconscious) motives in his own relationship with Maggie, he learns to accept the responsibility he bears. In the final scene of the play he confesses the implications of his quarrel with Maggie; he tells the Listener: L o o k , I'll say it. It's really all I came to say. Barbiturates kill by suffocation. A n d the signal is a kind of sighing — the diaphragm is paralyzed. With more difficulty. And I'd noticed it w h e n we'd begun to argue. . . . I k n o w , it usually does subside, but if not — each second can be most precious, w h y waste them arguing? W h a t can be so important to gamble her life to get? The tower lights, fierce, implacable. . . . M y innocence, do y o u see? T o get that back y o u kill most easily. . . . And her precious seconds squirming in my hands like bugs; and I heard. T h o s e deep, unnatural breaths, like the footfalls of my c o m i n g peace — and I k n e w . . . I wanted them. (II, 240)

What Quentin realizes here is that, even in his own heart, "the wish to kill is never killed" (II, 241); by learning about his past Quentin learns about himself and about society. The concentration-camp tower which looms over the stage and over Quentin's memories lights up "implacably" at this point to help unify Quentin's private vision of complicity with the theme of universal guilt shared by the survivors of the concen-

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tration camp. Early in the play Holga asserts that "no one they didn't kill can be innocent again" (II, 148). Quentin himself comes to share this vision of complicity in all acts of murder; he tells Maggie that "A suicide kills two people, Maggie. That's what it's for" (II, 231). By surviving Maggie's suicide — and, in fact, by inadvertently laying part of the foundation for it, just as some "innocent" stone masons built the camp tower — Quentin shares Maggie's guilt, her human ability to kill. Although a number of critics have failed to see the connections between Quentin's personal life and Nazi Germany, these connections become abundantly clear to Quentin himself as the play progresses.18 Miller has used Quentin as a sort of central intelligence, a perspective from which we can view the relationship between a single character's human frailties and the larger evil in the world — a relationship Proctor merely assumes, but which Quentin explores. Quentin believes he has participated in Maggie's death. He also understands the political repercussions of private choices, as he confesses his fear of being known as a "Red lawyer" because he has defended Lou. From this Proctor-like recognition of the interaction between private actions and public effects, it is no large step for Quentin to feel a "vague complicity" with the Germans who built the concentration camp he and Holga visited. At the moment when he confesses his relief at Lou's suicide — "the joy I felt now that my danger had spilled on the subway track" — Quentin admits that the concentration camp and all it stands for "is not some crazy aberration of human nature to me" (II, 184). What Quentin's exploration of his past finally enables him to do is to embrace his guilt-ridden life and all its fundamentally human sins (as Proctor eventually did), and to allow Holga's love to help him forgive it. The presence of the unseen Listener underscores the connection between private actions and social responsibility which is central to this play. In Miller's early plays the causal past was objectively verifiable, a matter of public record — as the presence of the narrator Alfieri in A View from the Bridge, or the long historical narrations in the stage directions of The Crucible, attest. In After the Fall, however, Quentin creates his own vision of the past and must subject it to the public testing that requires the presence of the Listener. If we as audience are to be equated with the Listener (as his imaginary presence in our midst would indicate), we provide the social context in which Quentin consistently seeks 18

See, for example, Hayman, pp. 85-94; Murray, pp. 154-55; Welland, pp. 94-98.

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to ground his reconstruction of the past, and we are implicated in the conclusions he draws. It is no coincidence that Quentin, like Alfieri, is a lawyer, determined to follow legal procedures. But, whereas Alfieri sought our agreement with a decision already handed down, Quentin seeks our judgment on the provisional causality he is investigating and on the notion of universal human guilt he is striving to apply to his own case. The Listener thus indicates the priority of public responsibility in this play, despite the structural focus on private vision by which that responsibility can be recognized. After the Fall received an overwhelmingly unfavorable critical reception, due in large part to its adherence to the interior logic of Quentin's mind. Even those critics who were able to look beyond the surface similarity between Quentin's history and Miller's life attacked the play's structural premises, and complained that the play failed to be something other than what it is. They charge that the scenes from the past are not clearly connected to Quentin's present predicament, or that the effect they want to call "expressionistic" is produced simply by rearranging otherwise realistic scenes in time and space.19 W h a t these critics fail to acknowledge is Miller's basic premise: that the action, the sequence of events, and the point of view are all uniquely Quentin's, that the process of his seeking public answers from his private past forms the sole ordering principle of the play. After the Fall asserts from the first that it is not an objective recording of events, and that the "evidence" of Quentin's life is not the "proof" found in the pasts of Miller's earlier protagonists. The logic by which Quentin interprets the causal sequences he idiosyncratically constructs, however, and the conclusions that he draws from them relate specifically to the wider social values of responsibility and human complicity that the play examines. 20 We cannot hope to under-

19

20

See Alan Casty, "Post-Loverly Love: A Comparative Report," Antioch Review, 26 (Fall 1966), 406; Allan Lewis, "Arthur Miller — Return to the Self," American Plays and Playwrights of the Contemporary Theatre, rev. ed. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1970), p. 44; Gerald Weales, "Arthur Miller," The American Theater Today, ed. Alan S. Downer (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 97-98. Paul T. Nolan and John Gassner have both argued favorably for the play's structure, but not because they have seen the connections between private vision and public accessibility to that vision (Nolan, "Two Memory Plays: The Glass Menagerie and After the Fall," McNeese Review, 17 [1966], 27-38; Gassner, "Broadway in Review," Educational Theatre Journal, 16 [May 1964], 177-79, rpt. in Dramatic Soundings, ed. Glenn Loney [New York: Crown Publishers, 1968], pp. 547-50).

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stand After the Fall unless we accept Miller's basic assumption that "this was a play which reflected the world as one man saw it. Through the play the mounting awareness of this man was the issue."21 Perhaps in response to the generally negative criticism After the Fall suffered, Miller shifted his emphasis in The Price to include more of the formal realism of his earlier plays. The Price is a rather austerely constructed play, with only four characters, unity of time, and the single naturalistic setting of an attic room cluttered with a lifetime's accumulated junk. But The Price does share an important assumption with the wider-ranging, more impressionistically constructed After the Fall: it assigns dramatic priority to the interior logic of individual hindsight, which alone can assign causality to past events. By thus combining formally realistic characters and staging with a retrospective plot based on interior notions of causality, Miller created the unique and concentrated power of The Price. There is very little conventional action in The Price, and the dramatic situation is simple. Victor and Walter Franz, a police patrolman and an eminent surgeon respectively, meet after sixteen years of estrangement to sell the contents of their long-dead parents' recently condemned house. The memories stirred up by their uncomfortable reunion force each man to reassess his understanding of the past events which in part created the present. What little present "action" the play includes is thus largely retrospective: either the characters analyze and explore their pasts through dialogue (as Victor and his wife Esther do in the opening minutes), or they unwittingly recapitulate it — as Victor and Walter do in their characteristic responses to the old junk dealer Solomon, who comes to represent their father from the minute he enters and sits in the old man's center-stage chair. The connections between actions and their consequences that Miller once struggled to illustrate are all taken for granted in The Price, as once again the playwright's former dramatic problems become personal problems for his characters. The characters each acknowledge, in one form or another, what Victor asserts in act 1 : "you've got to make decisions before you know what's involved, but you're stuck with the results anyway" (II, 327). What Victor himself does not at this point realize is that

21

Arthur Miller, "Interview" with Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron. The Paris Review, (Summer 1966); rpt. in Theater Essays, pp. 282-83.

10

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the decision-making process itself is at best an illusory one, that the moment he remembers so vividly as pivotal has undergone gradual reconstruction in his memory. The decision he made to support his father during the depression instead of continuing his own education seems to him now to have been unavoidable. But as the play progresses Victor is forced to acknowledge that his conviction that he "had to drop out to feed the old man" is not entirely justifiable. As Walter points out, the expensive golden harp that dominates the downstage area provides ample proof that their father was never destitute. The problem explored in The Price, then, is not so much one of relating actions to consequences, but of recognizing that causal incidents themselves are endlessly debatable, fixed only provisionally by individual memory. W h a t had seemed like a solution in After the Fall becomes the central problem of The Price. Miller is able to explore the complex connection between memory and causality in The Price because the present action is so minimal. Unlike After the Fall\ in which Quentin's queries derive their urgency from the present decision he must make, in The Price both actions and their consequences, both causes and their effects, are relegated to the past. Victor's decision to drop out of college has had its results: his unfulfilling and financially unrewarding career as a policeman. Walter's decision to leave home and pursue his medical degree has also shown its eventual consequences: financial security, accompanied by a divorce and a nervous breakdown. Each brother has paid the price for his choice. What is left to investigate is the process by which those choices were originally made. Miller in this way uses present process — Victor's growing recognition that his remembered truths are partial ones — as a structural principle to explore thematic process: how the brothers first made the decisions they now see as causal. By beginning in the present and moving backwards into the past, The Price reverses the linearity of Miller's earlier plays, and completes the shift in emphasis from unforeseen effects to unfixable causes that has grown throughout his career. The conflict between the two brothers is not primarily one of present tensions, but of the incompatible visions by which they have structured their mutual experience. After his hospitalization, Walter feels he has gained a new insight into his brother. H e feels that his own breakdown occurred over a period of time, as a result of social pressures and obligations. H e says: "It all happens so gradually. . . . You become a kind of instrument, an instrument that cuts money out of people, or fame out of the world" (II, 350). But despite Walter's belief that his own

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fate emerged gradually, he sees Victor's as the result of a conscious, causal decision: "You see," he tells Victor, "it never dawned on me until I got sick — that you'd made a choice. . . . You wanted a real life. And that's an expensive choice; it costs" (II, 350-51). But Victor's version of the past is quite different. For him, Walter deserted the family and refused to help his brother with tuition money. Like Walter, Victor feels himself to be the victim of time and circumstance, and sees Walter as the one who made a choice. H e refutes Walter's version by saying, "I didn't invent my life. N o t altogether. You had a responsibility here and you walked on it" (II, 363). The truth of the matter is that Victor has, in large part, re-invented his own past — as all four of the characters have. When Walter implies that Victor knew all along that their father had some hidden savings, Victor cries out, "I don't know what I knew" and "his voice and his words surprise him" (II, 365). In the light of Victor's growing awareness, Walter's words ring true when he says, "We invent ourselves, Vic, to wipe out what we know. You invent a life of self-sacrifice, a life of duty; but what never existed here cannot be upheld" (II, 369). Through the conflict with Walter, Victor discovers that the familial love he protected at the cost of his own future was an illusion. H e forces himself to remember the betrayal he felt when the family unit disintegrated merely because they lost their wealth in the depression. But in the process of facing this other possible truth about his past and its influence on his present life, Victor discovers in himself a set of values uniquely his. As Miller puts it, "in The Price a man is faced with the fact that he participated in his own alienation from himself and in so doing discovers himself in what he did."22 In The Price, then, Miller has moved well beyond his original notion of actions and consequences. The Price is, rather, an epistemological drama, exposing the processes by which the characters "know what they know," and exploring the limited influence of verifiable facts upon the lives the characters construct for themselves. The play seems to echo Victor's haunting question, "What's the difference what you know?" when the structuring of all experience depends upon something as fragile as memory. Because there can be no conclusive answer to the questions of what we know and how we know it, The Price can have no formal resolution. 22

In H a y m a n , p. 18.

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Walter's construction of his own life's truths has been as illusory and as valid as Victor's. As the opening stage directions tell us, "A fine balance of sympathy should be maintained in playing the roles of Victor and Walter. . . . As the world now operates, the qualities of both brothers are necessary to it" (II, 295). This equilibrium, essential to the play's theme, is reflected in its structure: if the present action consists primarily of retrospective exposition, then no forward movement — no resolution or denouement — is possible. Miller's interest in process finally, in The Price, pulls him away from his old insistence on discovering unquestioned causal events in the past, and plunges his characters into the world of individually designated causes and inwardly verifiable knowledge. As Miller has said, "a genuine work of art creates not completion, but a sustained image of things in tentative balance." 23 All that is left for the Franz brothers to do is to continue on the paths they now know they have blazed for themselves.

A H I G H L Y C O N D E N S E D I N T E R I O R LIFE Arthur Miller's literary career has been much more varied than my analysis in terms of causation and process might lead one to believe. His work to date includes a novel, an adaptation of Ibsen, several one-act plays, a number of screenplays, a collection of short stories, and a comic drama. But time and again throughout his career Miller has returned to his interest in dramatizing process, in exploring the ways in which a character discovers the seeds of his present in the soil of his past. Even in his more recent work, the unpublished The Archbishop's Ceiling (produced briefly in Washington, D. C., in 1977), Miller seems to be returning to the problem of how we know what we know. The play, as Welland describes it, explores the relationships between a group of writers and an actress in a politically repressive country, who fear (but never know for certain) that their conversations are being monitored by a device possibly hidden in the baroque ceiling. W e can see Miller's characteristic concerns — guilt, responsibility, and the illusory quality of our knowledge. As Welland describes the play's structure, "the whole play is exposition, for it involves virtually no action and there is no denouement

23

Miller, "Shadows," p. 189.

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in any tidily conventional sense."24 Exposition, however, also becomes complication, for in Miller's stage world it no longer exists as an indisputable set of given facts. From the beginning of Miller's career onward, he has returned repeatedly to the theme of consequences and the structures for exploring process. As his notion of causality expanded from local examples of the consequences of actions to a central thematic issue, the structure of his plays moved away from linear realism and toward, as Miller puts it, "a realistic recognition of events and characters on the surface of a highly condensed interior life" (II, 1). His various experiments notwithstanding, Miller's best and most enduring plays have been those — like Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, After the Fall, and The Price — in which the investigation of the past plays a central role and in which the struggle to understand that "highly condensed interior life" means as much as, and at times more than, the outcome of events.

24

W e l l a n d , p. 139.

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