Chapter 13

It were cruel, I say, to condemn these attempts as little above those of Sternhold and Hopkins, or even of those of Tate and Brady: for Milton made them at fifteen years old, and he who afterwards consecrated his youth to poetry soon learned to know better. And yet, bearing in mind the passages in "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" which paraphrase the Scriptural narrative, I cannot forbear the suspicion that, though as an artist he had the instinct to feel it, he never quite won to _knowing_ the simple fact that the thing had already been done and surpassingly well done: he, who did so much to liberate poetry from rhyme--he--even he who in the grand choruses of "Samson Agonistes" did so much to liberate it from strict metre never quite realised, being hag-ridden by the fetish that rides between two panniers, the sacred and the profane, that this translation of "Job" already belongs to the category of poetry, _is_ poetry, already above metre, and in rhythm far on its way to the insurpassable. If rhyme be allowed to that greatest of arts, if metre, is not rhythm above both for her service? Hear in a sentence how this poem uplifts the rhythm of the Vulgate:

_Ecce, Deus magnus vincens scientiam nostram; numerus annorum_ _ejus inestimabilis!_

But hear, in a longer passage, how our English rhythm swings and sways to the Hebrew parallels:

Surely there is a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine. Iron is taken out of the earth, And brass is molten out of the stone. _Man_ setteth an end to darkness, And searcheth out to the furthest bound The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death. He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; They are forgotten of the foot _that passeth by_; They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. The atones thereof are the place of sapphires, And it hath dust of gold. That path no bird of prey knoweth, Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it: The proud beasts have not trodden it, Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; He overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out channels among the rocks; And his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; Neither is it found in the land of the living. The deep saith, It is not in me: And the sea saith, It is not with me. It cannot be gotten for gold, Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, With the precious onyx, or the sapphire. Gold and glass cannot equal it: Neither shall the exchange thereof be jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal: Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, Neither shall it be valued with pure gold. Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, And kept close from the fowls of the air. Destruction and Death say, We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, And he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, And seeth under the whole heaven; To make a weight for the wind; Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, And a way for the lightning of the thunder: Then did he see it, and declare it; He established it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, _that_ is wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding.

Is that poetry? Surely it is poetry. Can you improve it with the embellishments of rhyme and strict scansion? Well, sundry bold men have tried, and I will choose, for your judgment, the rendering of a part of the above passage by one who is by no means the worst of them--a hardy anonymous Scotsman. His version was published at Falkirk in 1869:

His hand on the rock the adventurer puts, And mountains entire overturns by the roots; New rivers in rocks are enchased by his might, And everything precious revealed to his sight; The floods from o'er-flowing he bindeth at will, And the thing that is hid bringeth forth by his skill.

But where real wisdom is found can he shew? Or the place understanding inhabiteth? No! Men know not the value, the price of this gem; 'Tis not found in the land of the living with them. It is not in me, saith the depth; and the sea With the voice of an echo, repeats, Not in me.

(I have a suspicion somehow that what the sea really answered, in its northern vernacular, was 'Me either.')

Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place Understanding hath chosen, since this is the case?...

Enough! This not only shows how that other rendering can be spoilt even to the point of burlesque by an attempt, on preconceived notions, to embellish it with metre and rhyme, but it also hints that parallel verse will actually resent and abhor such embellishment even by the most skilled hand. Yet, I repeat, our version of "Job" is poetry undeniable. What follows?

Why, it follows that in the course of studying it as literature we have found experimentally settled for us--and on the side of freedom--a dispute in which scores of eminent critics have taken sides: a dispute revived but yesterday (if we omit the blank and devastated days of this War) by the writers and apostles of _vers libres._ 'Can there be poetry without metre?' 'Is free verse a true poetic form?' Why, our "Book of Job" being poetry, unmistakable poetry, of course there can, to be sure it is. These apostles are butting at an open door. Nothing remains for them but to go and write _vers libres_ as fine as those of "Job" in our English translation. Or suppose even that they write as well as M. Paul Fort, they will yet be writing ancestrally, not as innovators but as renewers. Nothing is done in literature by arguing whether or not this or that be possible or permissible. The only way to prove it possible or permissible is to go and do it: and then you are lucky indeed if some ancient writers have not forestalled you.

IV

Now for another question (much argued, you will remember, a few years ago) 'Is there--can there be--such a thing as a Static Theatre, a Static Drama?'

Most of you (I daresay) remember M. Maeterlinck's definition of this and his demand for it. To summarise him roughly, he contends that the old drama--the traditional, the conventional drama-- lives by action; that, in Aristotle's phrase, it represents men doing, [Greek: prattontas], and resolves itself into a struggle of human wills--whether against the gods, as in ancient tragedy, or against one another, as in modern. M. Maeterlinck tells us--

There is a tragic element in the life of every day that is far more real, far more penetrating, far more akin to the true self that is in us, than is the tragedy that lies in great adventure.... It goes beyond the determined struggle of man against man, and desire against desire; it goes beyond the eternal conflict of duty and passion. Its province is rather to reveal to us how truly wonderful is the mere act of living, and to throw light upon the existence of the soul, self-contained in the midst of ever-restless immensities; to hush the discourse of reason and sentiment, so that above the tumult may be heard the solemn uninterrupted whisperings of man and his destiny.

To the tragic author [he goes on, later], as to the mediocre painter who still lingers over historical pictures, it is only the violence of the anecdote that appeals, and in his representation thereof does the entire interest of his work consist.... Indeed when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I were spending a few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life as though it were something that was primitive, arid and brutal.... I am shown a deceived husband killing his wife, a woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging his father, a father slaughtering his children, murdered kings, ravished virgins, imprisoned citizens--in a word all the sublimity of tradition, but alas how superficial and material! Blood, surface-tears and death! What can I learn from creatures who have but one fixed idea, who have no time to live, for that there is a rival, a mistress, whom it behoves them to put to death?

M. Maeterlinck does not (he says) know if the Static Drama of his craving be impossible. He inclines to think--instancing some Greek tragedies such as "Prometheus" and "Choephori"--that it already exists. But may we not, out of the East--the slow, the stationary East--fetch an instance more convincing?

V

The Drama of Job opens with a "Prologue" in the mouth of a Narrator.

There was a man in the land of Uz, named Job; upright, God-fearing, of great substance in sheep, cattle and oxen; blest also with seven sons and three daughters. After telling of their family life, how wholesome it is, and pious, and happy--

The Prologue passes to a Council held in Heaven. The Lord sits there, and the sons of God present themselves each from his province. Enters Satan (whom we had better call the Adversary) from his sphere of inspection, the Earth, and reports. The Lord specially questions him concerning Job, pattern of men. The Adversary demurs. 'Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not set a hedge about his prosperity? But put forth thy hand and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face.' The Lord gives leave for this trial to be made (you will recall the opening of "Everyman"):

So, in the midst of his wealth, a messenger came to job and says--

The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have taken them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped; and he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

So the Adversary is foiled, and Job has not renounced God. A second Council is held in Heaven; and the Adversary, being questioned, has to admit Job's integrity, but proposes a severer test:

Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face.

Again leave is given: and the Adversary smites job with the most hideous and loathsome form of leprosy. His kinsfolk (as we learn later) have already begun to desert and hold aloof from him as a man marked out by God's displeasure. But now he passes out from their midst, as one unclean from head to foot, and seats himself on the ash-mound--that is, upon the Mezbele or heap of refuse which accumulates outside Arab villages.

'The dung,' says Professor Moulton, `which is heaped upon the Mezbele of the Hauran villages is not mixed with straw, which in that warm and dry land is not needed for litter, and it comes mostly from solid-hoofed animals, as the flocks and oxen are left over-night in the grazing places. It is carried in baskets in a dry state to this place ... and usually burnt once a month.... The ashes remain.... If the village has been inhabited for centuries the Mezbele reaches a height far overtopping it. The winter rains reduce it into a compact mass, and it becomes by and by a solid hill of earth.... The Mezbele serves the inhabitants for a watchtower, and in the sultry evenings for a place of concourse, because there is a current of air on the height. There all day long the children play about it; and there the outcast, who has been stricken with some loathsome malady, and is not allowed to enter the dwellings of men, lays himself down begging an alms of the passers-by by day, and by night sheltering himself among the ashes which the heat of the sun has warmed.'

Here, then, sits in his misery 'the forsaken grandee'; and here yet another temptation comes to him--this time not expressly allowed by the Lord. Much foolish condemnation (and, I may add, some foolish facetiousness) has been heaped on Job's wife. As a matter of fact she is _not_ a wicked woman--she has borne her part in the pious and happy family life, now taken away: she has uttered no word of complaint though all the substance be swallowed up and her children with it. But now the sight of her innocent husband thus helpless, thus incurably smitten, wrings, through love and anguish and indignation, this cry from her:

Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and die.

But Job answered, soothing her:

Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?

So the second trial ends, and Job has sinned not with his lips.

But now comes the third trial, which needs no Council in Heaven to decree it. Travellers by the mound saw this figure seated there, patient, uncomplaining, an object of awe even to the children who at first mocked him; asked this man's history; and hearing of it, smote on their breasts, and made a token of it and carried the news into far countries: until it reached the ears of Job's three friends, all great tribesmen like himself--Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. These three made an appointment together to travel and visit Job. 'And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept.' Then they went up and sat down opposite him on the ground. But the majesty of suffering is silent:

Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it....

No, not a word.... And, with the grave courtesy of Eastern men, they too are silent:

So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.

The Prologue ends. The scene is set. After seven days of silence the real drama opens.

VI

Of the drama itself I shall attempt no analysis, referring you for this to the two books from which I have already quoted. My purpose being merely to persuade you that this surpassing poem can be studied, and ought to be studied, as literature, I shall content myself with turning it (so to speak) once or twice in my hand and glancing one or two facets at you.

To begin with, then, you will not have failed to notice, in the setting out of the drama, a curious resemblance between "Job" and the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus. The curtain in each play lifts on a figure solitary, tortured (for no reason that seems good to us) by a higher will which, we are told, is God's. The chorus of Sea-nymphs in the opening of the Greek play bears no small resemblance in attitude of mind to job's three friends. When job at length breaks the intolerable silence with

Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man child conceived.

he uses just such an outburst as Prometheus: and, as he is answered by his friends, so the Nymphs at once exclaim to Prometheus

Seest thou not that thou hast sinned?

But at once, for anyone with a sense of comparative literature, is set up a comparison between the persistent West and the persistent East; between the fiery energising rebel and the patient victim. Of these two, both good, one will dare everything to release mankind from thrall; the other will submit, and justify himself--mankind too, if it may hap--by submission.

At once this difference is seen to give a difference of form to the drama. Our poem is purely static. Some critics can detect little individuality in Job's three friends, to distinguish them. For my part I find Eliphaz more of a personage than the other two; grander in the volume of his mind, securer in wisdom; as I find Zophar rather noticeably a mean-minded greybeard, and Bildad a man of the stand-no-nonsense kind. But, to tell the truth, I prefer not to search for individuality in these men: I prefer to see them as three figures with eyes of stone almost expressionless. For in truth they are the conventions, all through,--the orthodox men--addressing Job, the reality; and their words come to this:

Thou sufferest, therefore must have sinned. All suffering is, must be a judgment upon sin. Else God is not righteous.

They are statuesque, as the drama is static. The speeches follow one another, rising and falling, in rise and fall magnificently and deliberately eloquent. Not a limb is seen to move, unless it be when job half rises from the dust in sudden scorn of their conventions:

No doubt but _ye_ are the people, And wisdom shall die with you!

or again

Will ye speak unrighteously for God, And talk deceitfully for him? Will _ye_ respect _his_ person? Will _ye_ contend for God?

Yet--so great is this man, who has not renounced and will not renounce God, that still and ever he clamours for more knowledge of Him. Still getting no answer, he lifts up his hands and calls the great Oath of Clearance; in effect 'If I have loved gold overmuch, hated mine enemy, refused the stranger my tent, truckled to public opinion':

If my land cry out against me, And the furrows thereof weep together; If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: Let thistles grow instead of wheat, And cockle instead of barley.

With a slow gesture he covers his face:

The words of Job are ended.

VII

They are ended: even though at this point (when the debate seems to be closed) a young Aramaean Arab, Elihu, who has been loitering around and listening to the controversy, bursts in and delivers his young red-hot opinions. They are violent, and at the same time quite raw and priggish. Job troubles not to answer: the others keep a chilling silence. But while this young man rants, pointing skyward now and again, we see, we feel--it is most wonderfully conveyed--as clearly as if indicated by successive stage-directions, a terrific thunder-storm gathering; a thunder-storm with a whirlwind. It gathers; it is upon them; it darkens them with dread until even the words of Elihu dry on his lips:

If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up.

It breaks and blasts and confounds them; and out of it the Lord speaks.

Now of that famous and marvellous speech, put by the poet into the mouth of God, we may say what may be said of all speeches put by man into the mouth of God. We may say, as of the speeches of the Archangel in "Paradise Lost" that it is argument, and argument, by its very nature, admits of being answered. But, if to make God talk at all be anthropomorphism, here is anthropomorphism at its very best in its effort to reach to God.

There is a hush. The storm clears away; and in this hush the voice of the Narrator is heard again, pronouncing the Epilogue. Job has looked in the face of God and reproached him as a friend reproaches a friend. Therefore his captivity was turned, and his wealth returned to him, and he begat sons and daughters, and saw his sons' sons unto the fourth generation. So Job died, being old and full of years.

VIII

Structurally a great poem; historically a great poem; philosophically a great poem; so rendered for us in noble English diction as to be worthy in any comparison of diction, structure, ancestry, thought! Why should we not study it in our English School, if only for purpose of comparison? I conclude with these words of Lord Latymer:

There is nothing comparable with it except the "Prometheus Bound" of Aeschylus. It is eternal, illimitable ... its scope is the relation between God and Man. It is a vast liberation, a great gaol-delivery of the spirit of Man; nay, rather a great Acquittal.

[Footnote 1: It is fair to say that Myers cancelled the Damascus stanza in his final edition.]

LECTURE XI

OF SELECTION

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1918

I

Let us hark back, Gentlemen, to our original problem, and consider if our dilatory way have led us to some glimpse of a practical solution.

We may re-state it thus: Assuming it to be true, as men of Science assure us, that the weight of this planet remains constant, and is to-day what it was when mankind carelessly laid it on the shoulders of Atlas; that nothing abides but it goes, that nothing goes but in some form or other it comes back; you and I may well indulge a wonder what reflections upon this astonishing fact our University Librarian, Mr Jenkinson, takes to bed with him. A copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom is--or I had better say, should be--deposited with him. Putting aside the question of what he has done to deserve it, he must surely wonder at times from what other corners of the earth Providence has been at pains to collect and compact the ingredients of the latest new volume he handles for a moment before fondly committing it to the cellars.

'Locked up, not lost.'

Or, to take it in reverse--When the great library of Alexandria went up in flames, doubtless its ashes awoke an appreciable and almost immediate energy in the crops of the Nile Delta. The more leisurable process of desiccation, by which, under modern storage, the components of a modern novel are released to fresh unions and activities admits, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, a wide solution, and was just the question to tease that good man. Can we not hear him discussing it? 'To be but pyramidally extant is a fallacy in duration.... To burn the bones of the King of Edom for lime seems no irrational ferity: but to store the back volumes of Mr Bottomley's "John Bull" a passionate prodigality.'

II