Chapter 27

"IXION" is an imaginary protest of this victim of the anger of Zeus, wrung from him by his torments, as he whirls on the fiery wheel.[114] He has been sentenced to this punishment for presuming on the privileges which Zeus had conferred upon him, and striving to win Heré's[115] love; and he declares that the punishment is undeserved: "he was encouraged to claim the love of Heré, together with the friendship of Zeus; he has erred only in his trust in their professions. And granting that it were otherwise--that he had sinned in arrogance--that, befriended by the gods, he had wrongly fancied himself their equal: one touch from them of pitying power would have sufficed to dispel the delusion, born of the false testimony of the flesh!" He asks, with indignant scorn, what need there is of accumulated torment, to prove to one who has recovered his sight, that he was once blind; and in this scorn and indignation he denounces the gods, whose futile vindictiveness would shame the very nature of man; he denounces them as hollow imitations of him whom they are supposed to create: as mere phantoms to which he imparts the light and warmth of his own life. Then rising from denunciation to prophecy, he bids his fellow-men take heart. "Let them struggle and fall! Let them press on the limits of their own existence, to find only human passions and human pettiness in the sphere beyond; let them expiate their striving in hell! The end is not yet come. Of his vapourized flesh, of the 'tears, sweat, and blood' of his agony, is born a rainbow of hope; of the whirling wreck of his existence, the pale light of a coming joy. Beyond the weakness of the god his tormenter he descries a Power, unobstructed, all-pure.

"Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink!"

If any doubt were still possible as to Mr. Browning's attitude towards the doctrine of eternal punishment, this poem must dispel it.

"JOCHANAN HAKKADOSH" relates how a certain Rabbi was enabled to extend his life for a year and three months beyond its appointed term, and what knowledge came to him through the extension. Mr. Browning professes to rest his narrative on a Rabbinical work, of which the title, given by him in Hebrew, means "Collection of many lies;" and he adds, by way of supplement, three sonnets, supposed to fantastically illustrate the old Hebrew proverb, "From Moses to Moses[116] never was one like Moses," and embodying as many fables of wildly increasing audacity. The main story is nevertheless justified by traditional Jewish belief; and Mr. Browning has made it the vehicle of some poetical imagery and much serious thought.

Jochanan Hakkadosh was at the point of death. He had completed his seventy-ninth year. But his faculties were unimpaired; and his pupils had gathered round him to receive the last lessons of his experience; and to know with what feelings he regarded the impending change. Jochanan Hakkadosh had but one answer to give: his life had been a failure. He had loved, learned, and fought; and in every case his object had been ill-chosen, his energies ill-bestowed. He had shared the common lot, which gives power into the hand of folly, and places wisdom in command when no power is left to be commanded. With this desponding utterance he bade his "children" farewell.

But here a hubbub of protestation arose. "This must not be the Rabbi's last word. It need not be so;" for, as Tsaddik, one of the disciples, reminded his fellows, there existed a resource against such a case. Their "Targums" (commentaries) assured them that when one thus combining the Nine Points of perfection was overtaken by years before the fruits of his knowledge had been matured, respite might be gained for him by a gift from another man's life: the giver being rewarded for the wisdom to which he ministered by a corresponding remission of ill-spent time. The sacrifice was small, viewed side by side with the martyrdoms endured in Rome for the glory of the Jewish race.[117] "Who of those present was willing to make it?" Again a hubbub arose. The disciples within, the mixed crowd without, all clamoured for the privilege of lengthening the Rabbi's life from their own. Tsaddik deprecated so extensive a gift. "Their teacher's patience should not be overtaxed, like that of Perida (whose story he tells), by too long a spell of existence." He accepted from the general bounty exactly one year, to be recruited in equal portions from a married lover, a warrior, a poet, and a statesman; and, the matter thus settled, Jochanan Hakkadosh fell asleep.

Four times the Rabbi awoke, in renewed health and strength: and four times again he fell asleep: and at the close of each waking term Tsaddik revisited him as he sat in his garden--amidst the bloom or the languors, the threatenings or the chill, of the special period of the year--and questioned him of what he had learned. And each time the record was like that of the previous seventy-nine years, one of disappointment and failure. For the gift had been drawn in every case from a young life, and been neutralized by its contact with the old. As a lover, the Rabbi declares, he has dreamed young dreams, and his older self has seen through them. He has known beforehand that the special charms of his chosen one would prove transitory, and that the general attraction of her womanhood belonged to her sex and not to her. As a warrior, he has experienced the same process of disenchantment. For the young believe that the surest way to the Right and Good, is that, always, which is cut by the sword: and that the exercise of the sword is the surest training for those self-devoting impulses which mark the moral nature of man. The old have learned that the most just war involves, in its penalties, the innocent no less than the guilty; that violence rights no wrong which time and patience would not right more fully; and that for the purposes of self devotion, unassisted love is more effective than hate. (Picturesque illustrations are made to support this view.) As poet, he has recalled the glow of youthful fancy to feel it quenched by the experience of age: to see those soaring existences whose vital atmosphere is the future, frozen by their contact with a dead past. As statesman, he has looked out upon the forest of life, again seeing the noble trees by which the young trace their future path. And, seeing these, he has known, that the way leads, not by them, but among the brushwood and briars which fill the intervening space; that the statist's work is among the mindless many who will obstruct him at every step, not among the intellectual few by whom his progress would be assisted.

As he completes his testimony another change comes over him; and Tsaddik, kissing the closing eyelids, leaves his master to die.

The rumour of a persecution scatters the Jewish inhabitants of the city. Not till three months have expired do they venture to return to it; and when Tsaddik and the other disciples seek the cave where their master lies, they find him, to their astonishment, alive. Then Tsaddik remembers that even children urged their offering upon him, and concludes that some urchin or other contrived to make it "stick;" and he anxiously disclaims any share in the "foisting" this crude fragment of existence on the course of so great a life. Hereupon the Rabbi opens his eyes, and turns upon the bystanders a look of such absolute relief, such utter happiness, that, as Tsaddik declares, only a second miracle can explain it. It is a case of the three days' survival of the "Ruach" or spirit, conceded to those departed saints whose earthly life has anticipated the heavenly; who have died, as it were, half in the better world.[118]

Tsaddik has, however, missed the right solution of the problem. Jochanan Hakkadosh can only define his state as one of _ignorance confirmed by knowledge_; but he makes it very clear that it is precisely the gift of the child's consciousness, which has produced this ecstatic calm. The child's soul in him has reconciled the differing testimony of youth and manhood: solving their contradictions in its unquestioning faith and hope. It has lifted him into that region of harmonized good and evil, where bliss is greater than the human brain can bear. And this is how he feels himself to be dying; bearing with him a secret of perfect happiness, which he vainly wishes he could impart.[119]

"NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE" is a fanciful expression of love and longing, provoked by the opposition of circumstances.

The name of "PAMBO" or "Pambus" is known to literature,[120] as that of a foolish person, who spent months--Mr. Browning says years--in pondering a simple passage from Psalm xxxix.; and remained baffled by the difficulty of its application. The passage is an injunction that man look to his ways, so that he do not offend with his tongue. And Pambo finds it easy to practise the first part of this precept, but not at all so the second. Mr. Browning declares himself in the same case. "He also looks to his ways, and is guided along them by the critic's torch. But he offends with his tongue, notwithstanding."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 104: Ethics, VII. vi. 2.]

[Footnote 105: The story is told in Pausanias. A painting of Echetlos was to be seen in the Poecile at Athens.]

[Footnote 106: Petrus Aponensis: author of a work quoted in the Idyl: Conciliator Differentiarum. Abano is a village near Padua.]

[Footnote 107: Some expressions in this Idyl may require explaining. "Salomo si nôsset" (novisset) (p. 136). "Had Solomon but known this." "Teneo, vix" (p. 136). "I scarcely contain myself." "Hact[=e]nus" (p. 136). The "e" is purposely made long. "Hitherto." "Peason" (p. 138). The old English plural of "pea." "Pou sto" (p. 138). "Where I may stand:" The alleged saying of Archimedes--"I could move the world had I a place for my _fulcrum_--'where I might stand' to move it." "Tithon" (p. 141). Tithonus--Aurora's lover: for whom she procured the gift of eternal life. "Apage, Sathanas!" (p. 143). "Depart Satan." Customary adjuration.

The term "Venus," as employed in the postscript to the Idyl, signified in Roman phraseology, the highest throw of the dice. It signified, therefore the highest promise to him, who, in obedience to the oracle, had tested his fortunes at the fount at Abano, by throwing golden dice into it. The "crystal," to which Mr. Browning refers, is the water of the well or fount, at the bottom of which, as Suetonius declared, the dice thrown by Tiberius, and their numbers, were still visible. The little air which concludes the post-script reflects the careless or "lilting" mood in which Mr. Browning had thrown the "fancy dice" which cast themselves into the form of the poem.]

[Footnote 108: "If it is proper to be credited."]

[Footnote 109: This version is more crudely reproduced by the Persian poet Jami.]

[Footnote 110: The word "conster," which rhymes in the poem with "monster," is Old English for "construe."]

[Footnote 111: Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and Queen of Sweden.]

[Footnote 112: Some confusion has here arisen between Francis I., whose emblem was the salamander, and Henry II., the historic lover of Diane de Poitiers. But Francis was also said to have been, for a short time, attached to her; and the poetic contrast of the frigid moon and the fiery salamander was perhaps worth the dramatic sacrifice of Cristina's accuracy.]

[Footnote 113: A village close to Fontainebleau, in the church of which Monaldeschi was buried.]

[Footnote 114: "Winged" or "fiery:" fiery from the rapidity of its motion.]

[Footnote 115: Juno.]

[Footnote 116: That is, to Moses Maimonides.]

[Footnote 117: The names and instances given are, as well as the main fact, historical.]

[Footnote 118: A Talmudic doctrine still held among the Jews. The "Halaphta," with whom Mr. Browning connects it, was a noted Rabbi.]

[Footnote 119: The "Bier" and the "three daughters" was a received Jewish name for the Constellation of the Great Bear. Hence the simile derived from this (vol. xv. pp. 217-244).

The "Salem," mentioned at p. 218, is the mystical New Jerusalem to be built of the spirits of the great and good.]

[Footnote 120: "Chetw. Hist. Collect.," cent. I., p. 17. Quoted by Nath. Wanley, "Wonders of the Little World," p. 138.]

SUPPLEMENT.

"FERISHTAH'S FANCIES."

The idea of "FERISHTAH'S FANCIES" grew out of a fable by Pilpay, which Mr. Browning read when a boy. He lately put this into verse; and it then occurred to him to make the poem the beginning of a series, in which the Dervish, who is first introduced as a learner, should reappear in the character of a teacher. Ferishtah's "fancies" are the familiar illustrations, by which his teachings are enforced. Each fancy or fable, with its accompanying dialogue, is followed by a Lyric, in which the same or cognate ideas are expressed in an emotional form; and the effect produced by this combination of moods is itself illustrated in a Prologue by the blended flavours of a favourite Italian dish, which is fully described there. An introductory passage from "King Lear" seems to tell us what we soon find out for ourselves, that Ferishtah's opinions are in the main Mr. Browning's own.

Fancy 1. "THE EAGLE," contains the lesson which determined Ferishtah, not yet a Dervish, to become one. He has learned from the experience which it describes, that it is man's mission to feed those hungry ones who are unable to feed themselves. "The soul often starves as well as the body. He will minister to the hunger of the soul. And to this end he will leave the solitude of the woods in which the lesson came to him, and seek the haunts of men."

The Lyric deprecates the solitude which united souls may enjoy, by a selfish or fastidious seclusion from the haunts of men.

2. "THE MELON-SELLER," records an incident referred to in a letter from the "Times'" correspondent, written many years ago. It illustrates the text--given by Mr. Browning in Hebrew--"Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and shall we not receive evil?" and marks the second stage in Ferishtah's progress towards Dervish-hood.

The Lyric bids the loved one be unjust for once if she will. "The lover's heart preserves so many looks and words, in which she gave him more than justice."

3. "SHAH ABBAS" shows Ferishtah, now full Dervish, expounding the relative character of belief. "We wrongly give the name of belief to the easy acquiescence in those reported facts, to the truth of which we are indifferent; or the name of unbelief to that doubting attitude towards reported facts, which is born of our anxious desire that they may be true. It is the assent of the heart, not that of the head, which is valued by the Creator."

Lyric. Love will guide us smoothly through the recesses of another's heart. Without it, as in a darkened room, we stumble at every step, wrongly fancying the objects misplaced, against which we are stumbling.

4. "THE FAMILY" again defends the heart against the head. It defends the impulse to pray for the health and safety of those we love, though such prayer may imply rebellion to the will of God. "He, in whom anxiety for those he loves cannot for the moment sweep all before it, will sometimes be more than man, but will much more often be less."

Lyric. "Let me love, as man may, content with such perfection as may fill a human heart; not looking beyond it for that which only an angel's sense can apprehend."

5. "THE SUN" justifies the tendency to think of God as in human form. Life moves us to many feelings of love and praise. These embrace in an ascending scale all its beneficent agencies, unconscious and conscious, and cannot stop short of the first and greatest of all. This First Cause must be thought of as competent to appreciate our praise and love, and as moved by a beneficent purpose to the acts which have inspired them. The sun is a symbol of this creative power--by many even imagined to be its reality. But that mighty orb is unconscious of the feelings it may inspire; and the Divine Omnipotence, which it symbolizes, must be no less incompetent to earn them. For purpose is the negation of power, implying something which power has not attained; and would imply deficiency in an existence which presents itself to our intelligence as complete. Reason therefore tells us that God can have no resemblance with man; but it tells us, as plainly, that, without a fiction of resemblance, the proper relation between Creator and creature, between God and man, is unattainable.[121] If one exists, for whom the fiction or fancy has been converted into fact--for whom the Unknowable has proved itself to contain the Knowable: the ball of fire to hold within it an earthly substance unconsumed; he deserves credit for the magnitude, not scorn for the extravagance, of his conception.

Lyric. "Fire has been cradled in the flint, though its Ethereal splendours may disclaim the association."

6. "MIHRAB SHAH" vindicates the existence of physical suffering as necessary to the consciousness of well-being; and also, and most especially, as neutralizing the differences, and thus creating the one complete bond of sympathy, between man and man.

Lyric. "Your soul is weighed down by a feeble body. In me a strong body is allied to a sluggish soul. You would fitly leave me behind. Impeded as you also are, I may yet overtake you."

7. "A CAMEL-DRIVER" declares the injustice of punishment, in regard to all cases in which the offence has been committed in ignorance; and shows also that, while a timely warning would always have obviated such an offence, it is often sufficiently punished by the culprit's too tardy recognition of it. "God's justice distinguishes itself from that of man in the acknowledgment of this fact."

The Lyric deals specially with the imperfections of human judgment. "You have overrated my small faults, you have failed to detect the greater ones."

8. "TWO CAMELS" is directed against asceticism. "An ill-fed animal breaks down in the fulfilment of its task. A man who deprives himself of natural joys, not for the sake of his fellow-men, but for his own, is also unfitted for the obligations of Life. For he cannot instruct others in its use and abuse. Nor, being thus ignorant of earth, can he conceive of heaven."

The Lyric shows how the Finite may prefigure the Infinite, by illustrations derived from science and from love.

9. "CHERRIES" illustrates the axiom that a gift must be measured, not by itself, but by the faculty of the giver, and by the amount of loving care which he has bestowed upon it. Man's general performance is to be judged from the same point of view.

The Lyric connects itself with the argument less closely and less seriously in this case than in the foregoing ones. The speaker has striven to master the art of poetry, and found life too short for it. "He contents himself with doing little, only because doing nothing is worse. But when he turns from verse-making to making love, or, as the sense implies, seeks to express in love what he has failed to express in poetry, all limitations of time and power are suspended; every moment's realization is absolute and lasting."

10. "PLOT-CULTURE" is a distinct statement of the belief in a purely personal relation between God and man. It justifies every experience which bears moral fruit, however immoral from human points of view; and refers both the individual and his critic to the final harvest, on which alone the Divine judgment will be passed.

The Lyric repeats the image in which this idea is clothed, more directly than the idea itself. A lover pleads permission to love with his whole being--with Sense as well as with Soul.

11. "A PILLAR AT SEBZEVAR" lays down the proposition that the pursuit of knowledge is invariably disappointing: while love is always, and in itself, a gain.

The Lyric modifies this idea into the advocacy of a silent love: one which reveals itself without declaration.

12. "A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE-EATING" is a summary of Mr. Browning's religious and practical beliefs. We cannot, it says, determine the prevailing colour of any human life, though we have before us a balanced record of its bright and dark days. For light or darkness is only absolute in so far as the human spirit can isolate or, as it were, stand still within, it. Every living experience, actual or remembered, takes something of its hue from those which precede or follow it: now catching the reflection of the adjoining lights and shades; now brighter or darker by contrast with them. The act of living fuses black and white into grey; and as we grasp the melting whole in one backward glance, its blackness strikes most on the sense of one man, its whiteness on that of another.

Ferishtah admits that there are lives which seem to be, perhaps are, stained with a black so deep that no intervening whiteness can affect it; and he declares that this possibility of absolute human suffering is a constant chastener to his own joys. But when called upon to reconcile the avowed optimism of his views with the actual as well as sympathetic experience of such suffering, he shows that he does not really believe in it. One race, he argues, will flourish under conditions which another would regard as incompatible with life; and the philosophers who most cry down the value of life are sometimes the least willing to renounce it. He cannot resist the conviction that the same compensating laws are at work everywhere.

In explanation of the fact, that nothing given in our experience affords a stable truth--that the black or white of one moment is always the darker or lighter grey of another--Ferishtah refers his disciples to the will of God. Our very scheme of goodness is a fiction, which man the impotent cannot, God the all-powerful does not, convert into reality. But it is a fiction created by God within the human mind, that it may work for truth there; so also is it with the fictitious conceptions which blend the qualities of man with those of God. To the objection

"A power, confessed past knowledge, nay, past thought, --Thus thought and known!" (vol. xvi. p. 84.)

Ferishtah replies that to know the power by its operation, is all we _need_ in the case of a human benefactor or lord: all we _can_ in the case of those natural forces which we recognize in every act of our life. And when reminded that the sense of indebtedness implies a debtor--one ready to receive his due: and that we need look no farther for the recipient than the great men who have benefited our race: his answer is, that such gratitude to his fellow-men would be gratitude to himself, in whose perception half their greatness lies. "He might as well thank the starlight for the impressions of colour, which have been supplied by his own brain."

The Lyric disclaims, in the name of one of the world's workers, all excessive--_i.e._, loving recognition of his work. The speaker has not striven for the world's sake, nor sought his ideals there. "Those who have done so may claim its love. For himself he asks only a just judgment on what he has achieved."

Mr. Browning here expresses for the first time his feeling towards the "Religion of Humanity;" and though this was more or less to be inferred from his general religious views, it affords, as now stated, a new, as well as valuable, illustration of them. The Theistic philosophy which makes the individual the centre of the universe, is, perhaps, nowhere in his works, so distinctly set forth as in this latest of them. But nowhere either has he more distinctly declared that the fullest realization of the individual life is self-sacrifice.

"Renounce joy for my fellows sake? That's joy Beyond joy;" (_Two Camels_, vol. xvi p. 50.)