CHAPTER VIII.

ECCLESIASTES AND ITS CRITICS (FROM A LITERARY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW).

It is not every critic of Ecclesiastes who helps the reader to enjoy the book which is criticised. Too much criticism and too little taste have before now spoiled many excellent books on the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes needs a certain preparation of the mind and character, a certain ‘elective affinity,’ in order to be appreciated as it deserves. To enjoy it, we must find our own difficulties and our own moods anticipated in it. We must be able to sympathise with its author either in his world-weariness and scepticism or in his victorious struggle (if so be it was victorious) through darkness into light. We must at any rate have a taste for the development of character, and an ear for the fragments of truth which a much-tried pilgrim gathered up in his twilight wanderings. Never so much as in our own time have this taste and this ear been so largely possessed, as a recent commentary has shown in delightful detail, and I can only add to the names furnished by the writer that of one who perhaps least of all should be omitted, Miss Christina Rossetti.[360] But to prove the point in my own way, let me again select four leading critics, as representatives not so much of philology as of that subtle and variable thing—the modern spirit, viz. RENAN, GRÄTZ, STANLEY, and PLUMPTRE. The first truly is a modern of the moderns, though it is not every modern who will subscribe to his description of Ecclesiastes as ‘livre charmant, le seul livre aimable qui ait été composé par un Juif’[361] One might excuse it perhaps if in some degree dictated by a bitter grief at the misfortunes of his country; pessimism might be natural in 1872. But alas! ten years later the same view is repeated and deliberately justified, nor can the author of Koheleth be congratulated. He is now described[362] as ‘le charmant écrivain qui nous a laissé cette délicieuse fantaisie philosophique, aimant la vie, tout en en voyant la vanité,’ or, as a French reviewer condenses the delicate phrases of his author, ‘homme du monde et de la bonne société, qui n’est, à proprement parler, ni blasé ni fatigué, mais qui sait en toutes choses garder la mesure, sans enthousiasme, sans indignation, et sans exaltation d’aucune espèce.’ A speaking portrait of a Parisian _philosophe_, but does it fit the author of Ecclesiastes? No; Koheleth has had too hard a battle with his own tongue to be a ‘charming writer,’ and even if not exactly _blasé_ (see however ii. 1-11), he is ‘fatigued’ enough with the oppressive burdens of Jewish life in the second century B.C. That he has no enthusiasm, and none of those visions which are the ‘creators and feeders of the soul,’[363] is cause for pity, not for admiration; but that he has had no visitings of _sæva indignatio_, is an unjust inference from his acquired calmness of demeanour. He is an amiable egoïst, says M. Renan; but would Koheleth have troubled himself to write as he does, if egoïsm were the ripened fruit of his life’s experience? Why does this critic give such generous sympathy to the Ecclesiastes of the Slav race,[364] and such doubtful praise to his great original? It is true, Koheleth _seems_ to despair of the future, but only perhaps of the immediate future (iii. 21), and Turgenieff does this too. ‘Will the right men come?’ asks one of the personages of Turgenieff’s _Helen_, and his friend, as the only reply, directs a questioning look into the distance. That is the Russian philosopher’s last word; Koheleth has not told us his. His literary executors, no doubt, have forced a last word upon him; but we have an equal right to imagine one for ourselves. M. Renan ‘likes to dream of a Paul become sceptical and disenchanted;’[365] his Koheleth is an only less unworthy dream. M. Renan praises Koheleth for the moderation of his philosophising; he repeatedly admits that there was an element of truth in the Utopianism of the prophets; why not ‘dream’ that Koheleth felt, though he either ventured not or had no time left to express it, some degree of belief in the destiny of his country?

M. Renan, in fact, seems to me at once to admire Koheleth too much, and to justify his admiration on questionable grounds. It might have been hoped that the unlikeness of this book to the other books of the Canon would have been the occasion of a worthy and a satisfying estimate from this accomplished master. A critic of narrower experience represents Koheleth partly as a cynical Hebrew Pasquin, who satirises the hated foreigner, Herod the Great, and the minions of his court, partly as an earnest opponent of a dangerous and growing school of ascetics. I refer to this theory here, not to criticise it, but to call attention to its worthier conception of Koheleth’s character. The tendency of Ecclesiastes Dr. Grätz considers to be opposed to the moral and religious principles of Judaism and Christianity, but to the man as distinguished from his book he does full justice. It is a mistake when this writer’s theory is represented by Dean Plumptre as making Koheleth teach ‘a license like that of a St. Simonian rehabilitation of the flesh.’[366] Koheleth’s choice of language is not indeed in good taste, but it was only a crude way of emphasising his opposition to a dangerous spirit of asceticism. Such at least is Dr. Grätz’s view. ‘Koheleth is not the slave of an egoïstic eudemonism, but merely seeks to counteract pietistic self-mortification.’[367] Dr. Grätz thinks, too, and rightly, that he can detect an old-fashioned Judaism in the supposed sceptical philosopher: Koheleth controverts the new tenet of immortality, but not that of the resurrection. I am anticipating again, but do so in order to contrast the sympathetic treatment of the Breslau professor with the unsympathetic or at least unsuitable portraiture of Koheleth given by the Parisian critic.

Of all writers known to me, however, none is so sympathetic to Koheleth as Dr. Plumptre, in whose pleasing article in Smith’s Dictionary we have the germ of the most interesting commentary in the language. A still wider popularity was given to the Herder-Plumptre theory by Dr. Stanley, who eloquently describes Ecclesiastes as ‘an interchange of voices, higher and lower, within a single human soul.’ ‘It is like,’ he continues, ‘the perpetual strophe and antistrophe of Pascal’s _Pensées_. But it is more complicated, more entangled, than any of these, in proportion as the circumstances from which it grows are more perplexing, as the character which it represents is vaster, and grander, and more distracted.’[368] In his later work, Dr. Plumptre aptly compares the ‘Two Voices’ of our own poet (strictly, he remarks, there are three voices in Ecclesiastes), in which, as in Koheleth, though more decidedly, the voice of faith at last prevails over that of pessimism.[369] I fear, however, that Dr. Plumptre’s generous impulse carries him farther than sober criticism can justify. The aim of writing an ‘ideal biography’ closing with the ‘victory of faith’ seems to me to have robbed his pen of that point which, though sometimes dangerous, is yet indispensable to the critic. The theory of the ‘alternate voices,’ of which Dr. Plumptre is, not the first,[370] but the most eloquent advocate, seems to me to be an offspring of the modern spirit. It is so very like their own case—the dual nature[371] which a series of refined critics has attributed to Koheleth, that they involuntarily invest Koheleth with the peculiar qualities of modern seekers after truth. To them, in a different sense from M. Renan’s, Ecclesiastes is ‘un livre aimable,’ just as Marcus Aurelius and Omar Khayyâm are the favourite companions of those who prefer more consistent thinking.

Certainly the author of Ecclesiastes might well be satisfied with the interest so widely felt in his very touching confidences. It is the contents, of course, which attract so many of our contemporaries—not the form: only a student of Hebrew can appreciate the toilsome pleasure of solving philosophical enigmas. And yet M. Renan has made it possible even for an _exigeant_ Parisian to enjoy, not indeed the process, but the results, of philological inquiry, in so far as they reveal the literary characteristics of this unique work; he has, indeed, in his function of artistic translator, done Koheleth even more than justice. In particular, his translations of the rhythmic passages of Koheleth which relieve the surrounding prose are real _tours de force_. These passages M. Renan, following M. Derenbourg,[372] regards as quotations from lost poetical works, reminding us that such poetical quotations are common in Arabic literature. To represent in his translation the character of the Hebrew rhythm, which is ‘dancing, light, and pretentiously elegant,’ M. Renan adopts the metres of Old French poetry. ‘Il s’agissait de calquer en français des sentences conçues dans le ton dégagé, goguenard et pru-d’homme à la fois de Pibrac, de Marculfe ou de Chatonnet, de produire un saveur analogue à celle de nos quatrains de moralités ou de nos vieux proverbes en bouts-rimés.’ Of the poem on old age he says that it is ‘une sorte de joujou funèbre qu’on dirait ciselé par Banville ou par Théophile Gautier et que je trouve supérieur même aux quatrains de Khayyâm.’[373] I should have thought the comparison very unjust to the Persian poet. To me, I confess, the prelude or overture (i. 4-8), though not in rhythmic Hebrew, is the gem of the book. Questionable though its tendency may seem, if we look at the context, its poetry is of elemental force, and appeals to the modern reader in some of his moods more than almost anything else in the Old Testament outside the Book of Job. I cannot help alluding to Carlyle’s fine application of its imagery in _Sartor Resartus_, ‘Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement.’ How differently Koheleth,—

One generation goeth, another cometh; but the earth abideth for ever: And the sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and panteth unto his place where he ariseth: It goeth to the south, and whirleth about unto the north, the wind whirleth about continually; and upon his circuits the wind returneth. All streams run into the sea, and the sea is not full; unto the place whither the streams go, thither they go again. All things are full of weariness; no man can utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

Compare with this the words, so Greek in tone, of xi. 7, as well as the constantly recurring formula ‘under the sun’ (e.g. i. 3, iv. 3). We can see that even Koheleth was affected by nature, but without any lightening of his load of trial. The wide-open eye of day seemed to mock him by its unfeeling serenity. He lacked that susceptibility for the whispered lessons of nature which the poet of _Job_ so pre-eminently possessed; he lacked too the great modern conception of progress, embodied in that fine passage from Carlyle. He was prosaic and unimaginative, and it is partly because there is so little poetry in Ecclesiastes that there is so little Christianity. But I am already passing to another order of considerations, without which indeed we cannot estimate this singular autobiography aright. We have next to consider Koheleth from a directly religious and moral point of view.

Footnote 360:

See especially her early sonnet ‘Vanity of Vanities,’ and her striking poem ‘A Testimony.’

Footnote 361:

_L’Antéchrist_, p. 101.

Footnote 362:

_L’Ecclésiaste_, pp. 24, 90.

Footnote 363:

Mordecai in _Daniel Deronda_.

Footnote 364:

See his funeral _éloge_, reprinted in _Academy_, Oct. 13, 1883, p. 248.

Footnote 365:

_L’Antéchrist_, p. 200.

Footnote 366:

_Ecclesiastes_, p. 8.

Footnote 367:

Grätz, _Kohelet_, p. 33.

Footnote 368:

_Jewish Church_, ii. 256.

Footnote 369:

_Ecclesiastes_, pp. 53, 259.

Footnote 370:

See the passage from Herder quoted in Appendix (end).

Footnote 371:

Comp. Jacobi’s confession (imitated by Coleridge?) that he was with the head a heathen, and with the heart a Christian.

Footnote 372:

_Revue des études juives_, i. 165-185. I do not myself see why Koheleth, who sought ‘pleasant words,’ should not have written poetry as well as prose.

Footnote 373:

_L’Ecclésiaste_, pp. 83, 84.