Chapter 12

But he found no response. The listeners mistook his seriousness for satire, and broke out afresh at the excellence of such a joke; and recovering his presence of mind as quickly as he had lost it, he changed his tone, thanked those alike who had laughed with him, and who had wept with the "Lord of Tears;" and desired that the cup be consecrated to that genius of complex poetry which is tragedy and comedy in one. It was sacrilege, he declared, to part these two; for to do so was to hack at the Hermai[38]--to outrage the ideal union of the intellectual and the sensuous life in man. And from this new vantage-ground he launched another bolt at Euripides, whose coldness, he asserted, had belied this union, and made him guilty of a crime inexpiable in the sight of the gods.

Yet he could not dismiss him from his thoughts. He wanted to go over the old ground with him, and put himself in the right. Balaustion and her husband were in a manner representatives of the dead tragedian. That was why he had come. He was not sure that he expressed, or at the moment even felt, all that he had just repeated. "Drunk he was with the good Thasian, and drunk he probably had been." Nevertheless, the impulse he had thus obeyed sprang perhaps from some real, if hitherto undiscovered depths in his soul.

Up to this moment his defence has been carried on in a disjointed manner, and consists rather in defying attack than in resisting it: the defiant mood being only another aspect of the perturbed condition which has brought him to Balaustion's door. It finds its natural starting-point in the coarse treatment of things and persons which his "Thesmophoriazusae," with its "monkeying" of Euripides,[39] has so recently displayed. But he reminds Balaustion that the art of comedy is young. It is only three generations since Susarion gave it birth. (He explains this more fully later on.) It began when he and his companions daubed their faces with wine lees, mounted a cart, and drove by night through the villages: crying from house to house, how this man starved his labourers, that other kissed his neighbour's wife, and so on. The first comedian battered with big stones. He, Aristophanes, is at the stage of the wooden club which he has taken pains to plane smooth, and inlay with shining studs. The mere polished steel will be for his successors.

"And is he approaching the age of steel?" Balaustion asks, well knowing that he is not. "His play failed last year. Was his triumph to-night due to a gentler tone? Is he teaching mankind that brute blows are not human fighting, still less the expression of godlike power; and that ignorance and folly are convicted by their opposites, not by themselves?"

"Not he, indeed," he replies; "he improves on his art: he does not turn it topsy-turvy. _He_ does not work on abstractions. _His_ power is not that of the recluse. He wants human beings with their approbation and their sympathy, and his Athens, to be pleased in her own way. He leaves the rest to Euripides. Real life is the grist to _his_ mill. It is clear enough, however, that the times are against him. Every year more restrictions; Euripides with his priggishness; Socrates with his books and his moonshine, and his supercilious ways: never resenting his (Aristophanes') fun, nor seeming even to notice it[40], not condescending to take exception to any but the 'tragedians;' as if he, the author of the 'Birds,' was a mere comic poet!" Then follows a tirade on the variety of his subjects; their depth, their significance, and the mawkishness and pedantry which they are intended to confute.

"Drunk! yes, he owns that he is." This in answer to a look from Balaustion, which has rebuked a too hazardous joke--"Drink is the proper inspiration. How else was he beaten in the 'Clouds,' his masterpiece, but that his opponent had inspired himself with drink, and he this time had not?[41] Purity! he has learned what that is worth"--With more in the same strain. Now, however, that his adventure is told, the tumult of feeling in some degree subsides, and the more serious aspects of the apology will come into play.

Balaustion and her husband, seeing the sober mood return, once more welcome "the glory of Aristophanes" to their house, and bid him on his side share in their solemnity, and commemorate Euripides with them. This calls his attention to the portrait of the dead poet; those implements of his work which were his tokens of friendship to Balaustion; the papyrus leaf inscribed with the Herakles itself; and he cannot resist a sneer at this again unsuccessful play. His hostess rebukes him grandly for completing the long outrage on the living man by this petty attack on his "supreme calm;" and as supreme calmness means death, he begins musing on the immunities which death confers, and their injustice. "Give him only time and he will pulverize his opponents; _he_ will show them whether this work of his is unintelligible, or that other will not live. But let them die; and they slink out of his reach with their malice, stupidity, and ignorance, while survivors croak 'respect the dead' over the hole in which they are laid. At all events, he retorts on them when he can--unwisely perhaps, since those he flings mud at are only immortalized by the process. Euripides knew better than to follow his example."

Again Balaustion has her answer. "He has volleyed mud at Euripides himself while pretending to defend the same cause: the cause of art, of knowledge, of justice, and of truth;" and she makes his cheek burn by reminding him of what petty and what ignoble witticisms that mud was made up. At last he begins in real earnest. "Balaustion, he understands, condemns comedy both in theory and in practice, from the calm and rational heights to which she, with her tragic friend, has attained. Here are his arguments in its favour."

"It claims respect as an institution, because as such it is coeval with liberty--born of the feast of Bacchus, and therefore of the good gifts of the earth--a mode of telling truth without punishment, and of chastising without doing harm. It claims respect by its advance from simple objects to more composite, from plain thumping to more searching modes of attack. The men who once exposed wrong-doing by shouting it before the wrong-doer's door, now expose it by representing its various forms. The comic poets denounce not only the thief, the fool, the miser, but the advocates of war, the flatterers of the populace, the sophists who set up Whirligig[42] in the place of Zeus, the thin-blooded tragedian in league with the sophists, who preaches against the flesh. Where facts are insufficient he has recourse to fancy, and exaggerates the wronged truth the more strongly to enforce it (here follows a characteristic illustration.) To those who call Saperdion the Empousa, he shows her in a Kimberic robe;[43] in other words, he exposes her charms more fully than she does it herself, the better to convict those who malign them."

And here lies his grudge against Euripides. Euripides is one of those who call Saperdion a monster--who slander the world of sense with its beauties and its enjoyments, or who contemptuously set it aside. "Born on the day of Salamis--when heroes walked the earth; and gods were reverenced and not discussed--when Greeks guarded their home with its abundant joys, and left barbarian lands to their own starvation--he has lived to belie every tradition of that triumphant time. He has joined himself with a band of starved teachers and reformers to cut its very foundations away. He exalts death over life, misery over happiness; or, if he admits happiness, it is as an empty name."

"Moreover, he reasons away the gods; for they are, according to him, only forms of nature. Zeus _is_ the atmosphere. Poseidon _is_ the sea. Necessity rules the universe. Duty, once the will of the gods, is now a voice within ourselves bidding us renounce pleasure, and giving us no inducement to do so."

"He reasons away morality, for he shows there is neither right nor wrong, neither 'yours' nor 'mine,' nor natural privilege, nor natural subjection, that may not be argued equally for or against. Why be in such a hurry to pay one's debt, to attend one's mother, to bring a given sacrifice?"

"He reasons away social order, for he declares the slave as good as his master, woman equal to man, and even the people competent to govern itself. 'Why should not the tanner, the lampseller, or the mealman, who knows his own business so well, know that of the State too?'"

"He ignores the function of poetry, which is to see beauty, and to create it: for he places utility above grace, truth above all beauty. He drags human squalor on to the scene because he recognizes its existence. The world of the poet's fancy, that world into which he was born, does not exist for him. He spoils his art as well as his life, carving back to bull what another had carved into a sphinx."

"How are such proceedings to be dealt with? They appeal to the mob. The mob is not to be swayed by polished arguments or incidental hints. We don't scare sparrows with a Zeus' head, though the eagle may recognize it as his lord's. A big Priapus is the figure required."

"And this," so Aristophanes resumes his defence, "comedy supplies. Comedy is the fit instrument of popular conviction: and the wilder, the more effective: since it is the worship of life, of the originative power of nature; and since that power has lawlessness for its apparent law. Even Euripides, with his shirkings and his superiority, has been obliged to pay tribute to the real. He could not shake it off all at once. He tacked a Satyric play to some five of his fifty trilogies: and if this was grim enough at first, he threw off the mask in Alkestis, showing how one could be indecent in a decent way."[44]

For the reasons above given, which he farther expands and illustrates, Aristophanes chooses the "meaner muse" for his exponent. "And who, after all, is the worse for it? Does he strangle the enemies of the truth? No. He simply doses them with comedy, _i.e._ with words. Those who offend in words he pays back in them, exaggerating a little, but only so as to emphasize what he means; just as love and hate use each other's terms, because those proper to themselves have grown unmeaning from constant use. And what is the ground of difference between Balaustion and himself? Slender enough, in all probability, as he could show her, if they were discussing the question for themselves alone. As it is, Euripides has attacked him in the sight of the mob. His defence is addressed to it: he uses the arguments it can understand. It does not follow that they convey a literal statement of his own views. Euripides is not the only man who is free from superstition. He too on occasion can show up the gods;" and he describes the manner in which he will do this in his next play. All that is serious in the Apology is given in the concluding passage. "Whomever else he is hard upon, he will level nothing worse than a harmless parody at Sophocles, for he has no grudge against him:--

'He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith, But, living, lets live,' (vol. xiii. p. 110.)

And all his, Aristophanes', teaching is this:--

'... accept the old, Contest the strange! acknowledge work that's done, Misdoubt men who have still their work to do!' (p. 111.)

He has summed up his case. Euripides must own himself beaten. If Balaustion will not admit the defeat, let her summon her rosy strength, and do her worst against his opponent."

Balaustion pauses for a moment before relating her answer to this challenge: and gives us to understand that, in thus relieving her memory, she is reproducing not only this special experience, but a great deal of what she habitually thinks and feels; thus silencing any sense of the improbable, which so lengthened an argument accurately remembered, might create in the reader's mind.

Her tone is at first deprecating. "It is not for her, a mere mouse, to argue on a footing of equality with a forest monarch like himself. It is not for her to criticize the means by which his genius may attain its ends. She does not forget that the poet-class is that essentially which labours in the cause of human good. She does not forget that she is a woman, who may recoil from methods which a man is justified in employing. Lastly, she is a foreigner, and as such may blame many things simply because she does not understand them. She may yet have to learn that the tree stands firm at root, though its boughs dip and dance before the wind. She may yet have to learn that those who witness his plays have been previously braced to receive the good and reject the evil in them, like the freshly-bathed hand which passes unhurt through flame. She may judge falsely from what she sees."

"But," she continues,[45] "let us imagine a remote future, and a far-away place--say the Cassiterides[46]--and men and women, lonely and ignorant--strangers in very deed--but with feelings similar to our own. Let us suppose that some work of Zeuxis or Pheidias has been transported to their shores, and that they are compelled to acknowledge its excellence from its own point of view--its colouring true to nature, though not to their own type--its unveiled forms decorous, though not conforming to their own standard of decorum. Might they not still, and justly, tax it on its own ground with some flaw or incongruity, which proved the artist to have been human? And may not a stranger, judging you in the same way, recognize in you one part of peccant humanity, poet 'three parts divine' though you be?"

"You declare comedy to be a prescriptive rite, coeval in its birth with liberty. But the great days of Greek national life had been reached when comedy began. You declare also that you have refined on the early practice, and imported poetry into it. Comedy is therefore, as you defend it, not only a new invention, but your own. And, finally, you declare your practice of it inspired by a fixed purpose. You must stand or fall by the degree in which this purpose has been attained."

"You would, by means of comedy, discredit war. Do you stand alone in this endeavour?" And she quotes a beautiful passage from 'Cresphontes,' a play written by Euripides for the same end. "And how, respectively, have you sought your end? Euripides, by appealing to the nobler feelings which are outraged by war; you, by expatiating on the animal enjoyments which accompany peace. The 'Lysistrata' is your equivalent for 'Cresphontes.' Do you imagine that its obscene allurements will promote the cause of peace? Not till heroes have become mean voluptuaries, and Cleonymos,[47] whom you yourself have derided, becomes their type."

"You would discredit vice and error, hypocrisy, sophistry and untruth. You expose the one in all its seductions, and the other in grotesque exaggerations, which are themselves a lie; showing yourself the worst of sophists--one who plays false to his own soul."

"You would improve on former methods of comedy. You have returned to its lowest form. For you profess to strike at folly, not at him who commits it: yet your tactics are precisely to belabour every act or opinion of which you disapprove, in the form of some one man. You pride yourself, in fact, on giving personal blows, instead of general and theoretical admonitions; and even here you seem incapable of hitting fair; you libel where you cannot honestly convict, and do not care how ignoble or how irrelevant the libel may be. Does the poet deserve criticism as such? Does he write bad verse, does he inculcate foul deeds? The cry is, 'he cannot read or write;' 'he is extravagant in buying fish;' 'he allows someone to help him with his verse, and make love to his wife in return;' 'his uncle deals in crockery;' 'his mother sold herbs' (one of his pet taunts against Euripides); 'he is a housebreaker, a footpad, or, worst of all, a stranger;'"--a term of contempt which, as Balaustion reminds him has been repeatedly bestowed upon himself.

"What have you done," she continues, "beyond devoting the gold of your genius to work, which dross, in the person of a dozen predecessors or contemporaries, has produced as well. Pun and parody, satire and invective, quaintness of fancy, and elegance, have each had its representative as successful as you. Your life-work, until this moment, has been the record of a genius increasingly untrue to its better self. Such satire as yours, however well intended, could advance no honest cause. Its exaggerations make it useless for either praise or blame. Its uselessness is proved by the result: your jokes have recoiled upon yourself. The statues still stand which your mud has stained; the lightning flash of truth can alone destroy them. War still continues, in spite of the seductions with which you have invested peace. Such improvements as are in progress take an opposite direction to that which you prescribe. Public sense and decency are only bent on cleansing your sty."

And now her tone changes. "Has Euripides succeeded any better? None can say; for he spoke to a dim future above and beyond the crowd. If he fail, you two will be fellows in adversity; and, meanwhile, I am convinced that your wish unites with his to waft the white sail on its way.[48] Your nature, too, is kingly." She concludes with a tribute to the "Poet's Power," which is one with creative law, above and behind all potencies of heaven and earth; and to that inherent royalty of truth, in which alone she could venture to approach one so great as he. He too, as poet, must reign by truth, if he assert his proper sway.

"Nor, even so, had boldness nerved my tongue, But that the other king stands suddenly In all the grand investiture of death, Bowing your knee beside my lowly head-- Equals one moment!" (vol. xiii. p. 144.)

Then she bids him "arise and go." Both have done homage to Euripides.

"Not so," he replies; "their discussion is not at an end. She has defended Euripides obliquely by attacking himself. Let her do it in a more direct fashion." This leads up to what seems to her the best defence possible: that reading of the "Herakles" which the entrance of Aristophanes had suspended. Its closing lines set Aristophanes musing. The chorus has said:

"The greatest of all our friends of yore, We have lost for evermore!" (p. 231.)

"Who," he asks, "has been Athens' best friend? He who attracted her by the charm of his art, or he who repelled her by its severity?" He answers this by describing the relative positions of himself and Euripides in an image suggested by the popular game of Cottabos.[49] "The one was fixed within his 'globe;' the other adapted himself to its rotations. Euripides received his views of life through a single aperture, the one channel of 'High' and 'Right.' Aristophanes has welcomed also the opposite impressions of 'Low' and 'Wrong,' and reproduced all in their turn. Some poet of the future, born perhaps in those Cassiterides, may defy the mechanics of the case, and place himself in such a position as to see high and low at once--be Tragic and Comic at the same time. But he meanwhile has been Athens' best friend--her wisest also--since he has not challenged failure by attempting what he could not perform. He has not risked the fate of Thamyris, who was punished for having striven with the higher powers, as if his vision had been equal to their own."[50] And he recites a fragment of song, which Mr. Browning unfortunately has not completed, describing the fiery rapture in which that poet marched, all unconscious, to his doom. Some laughing promise and prophecy ensues, and Aristophanes departs, in the 'rose-streaked morning grey,' bidding the couple farewell till the coming year.

That year has come and gone. Sophocles has died: and Aristophanes has attained his final triumph in the "Frogs"--a play flashing with every variety of his genius--as softly musical in the mystics' chorus as croaking in that of the frogs--in which Bacchus himself is ridiculed, and Euripides is more coarsely handled than ever. And once more the voice of Euripides has interposed between the Athenians and their doom.[51] When Ægos Potamos had been fought, and Athens was in Spartan hands, Euthykles flung the "choric flower" of the "Electra" in the face of the foe, and

"... because Greeks are Greeks, though Sparté's brood, And hearts are hearts, though in Lusandros' breast, And poetry is power,...." (p. 253.)

the city itself was spared. But when tragedy ceased, comedy was allowed its work, and it danced away the Piræan bulwarks, which were demolished, by Lysander's command, to the sound of the flute.

And now Euthykles and Balaustion are nearing Rhodes. Their master lies buried in the land to which they have bidden farewell; but the winds and waves of their island home bear witness to his immortality: for theirs seems the voice of nature, re-echoing the cry, "There are no gods, no gods!" his prophetic, if unconscious, tribute to the One God, "who saves" him.

Balaustion has no genuine historic personality. She is simply what Mr. Browning's purpose required: a large-souled woman, who could be supposed to echo his appreciation of these two opposite forms of genius, and express his judgments upon them. But the Euripides she depicts is entirely constructed from his works; while her portrait of Aristophanes shows him not only as his works reflect, but as contemporary criticism represented him; he is one of the most vivid of Mr. Browning's characters. The two transcripts from Euripides seem enough to prove that that poet was far more human than Aristophanes professed to think; but the belief of Aristophanes in the practical asceticism of his rival was in some degree justified by popular opinion, if not in itself just; and we can understand his feeling at once rebuked and irritated by a contempt for the natural life which carried with it so much religious and social change. Aristophanes was a believer in the value of conservative ideas, though not himself a slave to them. He was also a great poet, though often very false to his poetic self. Such a man might easily fancy that one like Euripides was untrue to the poetry, because untrue to the joyousness of existence; and that he shook even the foundations of morality by reasoning away the religious conceptions which were bound up with natural joys. The impression we receive from Aristophanes' Apology is that he is defending something which he believes to be true, though conscious of defending it by sophistical arguments, and of having enforced it by very doubtful deeds; and we also feel that from his point of view, and saving his apparent inconsistencies, Mr. Browning is in sympathy with him. At the same time, Balaustion's rejoinder is unanswerable, as it is meant to be; and the double monologue distinguishes itself from others of the same group, by being not only more dramatic and more emotional, but also more conclusive; it is the only one of them in which the question raised is not, in some degree, left open.

The poem bristles with local allusions and illustrations which puzzle the non-classical reader. I add an explanatory index to some names of things and persons which have not occurred in my brief outline of it.

Vol. xiii. p. 4. _Koré._ (Virgin.) Name given to Persephoneé. In Latin, Proserpina.

P. 6. _Dikast_ and _Heliast._ Dicast=Judge, Heliast=Juryman, in Athens.

P. 7. 1. _Kordax-step._ 2. _Propulaia._ (Propylaia.) 1. An indecent dance. 2. Gateway of the Acropolis. 3. _Pnux._ (Pnyx.) 4. _Bema._ 3. Place for the Popular Assembly. 4. Place whence speeches were made.

P. 8 _Makaria._ Heroine in a play of Euripides, who killed herself for her country's sake.