Part 14

In this world we must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend that we have nothing to express; the choice lies between a mask and a fig-leaf. Art and discipline render seemly what would be unseemly without them, but hypocrisy hides it ostentatiously under something irrelevant, and the fig-leaf is only a more ignominious mask. For the moment it is certainly easier to suppress the wild impulses of our nature than to manifest them fitly, at the right times and with the proper fugitive emphasis; yet in the long run suppression does not solve the problem, and meantime those maimed expressions which are allowed are infected with a secret misery and falseness. It is the charm and safety of virtue that it is more natural than vice, but many moralists do their best to deprive it of this advantage. They seem to think it would lose its value if they lost their office. Their precepts, as distinguished from the spontaneous appreciations of men, are framed in the interests of utility, and are curiously out of sympathy with the soul. Precept divides the moral world materially into right and wrong things; but nothing concrete is right or wrong intrinsically, and every object or event has both good and bad effects in the context of nature. Every passion, like life as a whole, has its feet in one moral climate and its head in another. Existence itself is not a good, but only an opportunity. Christians thank God for their creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but life is the condition and source of all evil, and the Indians thank Brahma or Buddha for lifting them out of it. What metaphysical psychologists call Will is the great original sin, the unaccountable and irrational interest which the spirit takes, when it is incarnate, in one thing happening rather than another; yet this mad interest is the condition of generosity and of every virtue. Love is a red devil at one end of its spectrum and an ultra-violet angel at the other end.

Nor is this amphibious moral quality limited to the passions; all facts and objects in nature can take on opposite moral tints. When abstracted from our own presence and interests, everything that can be found or imagined is reduced to a mere essence, an ideal theme picked out of the infinite, something harmless, marvellous, and pure, like a musical rhythm or geometrical design. The whole world then becomes a labyrinth of forms and motions, a castle in the clouds built without labour and dissolved without tears. The moment the animal will reawakes, however, these same things acquire a new dimension; they become substantial, not to be created without effort nor rent without resistance; at the same time they become objects of desire and fear; we are so engrossed in existence that every phenomenon becomes questionable and ominous, and not so much a free gift and manifestation of its own nature as a piece of good or bad news. We are no longer surprised, as a free spirit would be, at the extraordinary interest we take in things turning out one way rather than another. We are caught in the meshes of time and place and care; and as the things we have set our heart on, whatever they may be, must pass away in the end, either suddenly or by a gentle transformation, we cannot take a long view without finding life sad, and all things tragic. This aspect of vanity and self-annihilation, which existence wears when we consider its destiny, is not to be denied or explained away, as is sometimes attempted in cowardly and mincing philosophies. It is a true aspect of existence in one relation and on a certain view; but to take this long view of existence, and look down the avenues of time from the station and with the emotions of some particular moment, is by no means inevitable, nor is it a fair and sympathetic way of viewing existence. Things when they are actual do not lie in that sort of sentimental perspective, but each is centred in itself; and in this intrinsic aspect existence is nothing tragic or sad, but rather something joyful, hearty, and merry. A buoyant and full-blooded soul has quick senses and miscellaneous sympathies: it changes with the changing world; and when not too much starved or thwarted by circumstances, it finds all things vivid and comic. Life is free play fundamentally and would like to be free play altogether. In youth anything is pleasant to see or to do, so long as it is spontaneous, and if the conjunction of these things is ridiculous, so much the better: to be ridiculous is part of the fun.

Existence involves changes and happenings and is comic inherently, like a pun that begins with one meaning and ends with another. Incongruity is a consequence of change; and this incongruity becomes especially conspicuous when, as in the flux of nature, change is going on at different rates in different strands of being, so that not only does each thing surprise itself by what it becomes, but it is continually astonished and disconcerted by what other things have turned into without its leave. The mishaps, the expedients, the merry solutions of comedy, in which everybody acknowledges himself beaten and deceived, yet is the happier for the unexpected posture of affairs, belong to the very texture of temporal being; and if people repine at these mishaps, or rebel against these solutions, it is only because their souls are less plastic and volatile than the general flux of nature. The individual grows old and lags behind; he remembers his old pain and resents it when the world is already on a new tack. In the jumble of existence there must be many a knock and many a grief; people living at cross purposes cannot be free from malice, and they must needs be fooled by their pretentious passions. But there is no need of taking these evils tragically. At bottom they are gratuitous, and might have been avoided if people had not pledged their hearts to things beyond their control and had not entrenched themselves in their illusions. At a sufficient remove every drama seems pathological and makes much ado about what to other people is nothing. We are interested in those vicissitudes, which we might have undergone if placed under the given circumstances; but we are happy to have escaped them. Thus the universe changes its hues like the chameleon, not at random but in a fashion which moral optics can determine, as it appears in one perspective or another; for everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

Existence is indeed distinguishable from the platonic essences that are embodied in it precisely by being a conjunction of things mutually irrelevant, a chapter of accidents, a medley improvised here and now for no reason, to the exclusion of the myriad other farces which, so far as their ideal structure is concerned, might have been performed just as well. This world is contingency and absurdity incarnate, the oddest of possibilities masquerading momentarily as a fact. Custom blinds persons who are not naturally speculative to the egregious character of the actual, because custom assimilates their expectations to the march of existing things and deadens their power to imagine anything different. But wherever the routine of a barbaric life is broken by the least acquaintance with larger ways, the arbitrariness of the actual begins to be discovered. The traveller will first learn that his native language is not the only one, nor the best possible, nor itself constant; then, perhaps, he will understand that the same is true of his home religion and government. The naturalist will begin by marvelling at the forms and habits of the lower animals, while continuing to attribute his own to their obvious propriety; later the heavens and the earth, and all physical laws, will strike him as paradoxically arranged and unintelligible; and ultimately the very elements of existence--time, change, matter, habit, life cooped in bodies--will reveal themselves to him in their extreme oddity, so that, unless he has unusual humility and respect for fact, he will probably declare all these actual things to be impossible and therefore unreal. The most profound philosophers accordingly deny that any of those things exist which we find existing, and maintain that the only reality is changeless, infinite, and indistinguishable into parts; and I call them the most profound philosophers in spite of this obvious folly of theirs, because they are led into it by the force of intense reflection, which discloses to them that what exists is unintelligible and has no reason for existing; and since their moral and religious prejudices do not allow them to say that to be irrational and unintelligible is the character proper to existence, they are driven to the alternative of saying that existence is illusion and that the only reality is something beneath or above existence. That real existence should be radically comic never occurs to these solemn sages; they are without one ray of humour and are persuaded that the universe too must be without one. Yet there is a capital joke in their own systems, which prove that nothing exists so strenuously, that existence laughs aloud in their vociferations and drowns the argument. Their conviction is the very ghost which it rises to exorcise; yet the conviction and the exorcism remain impressive, because they bear witness to the essential strangeness of existence to the spirit. Like the Ghost in _Hamlet_ this apparition, this unthinkable fact, is terribly disturbing and emphatic; it cries to us in a hollow voice, "Swear!" and when in an agony of concern and affection we endeavour to follow it, "Tis here! 'Tis here! Tis gone!" Certainly existence can bewitch us; it can compel us to cry as well as to laugh; it can hurt, and that is its chief claim to respect. Its cruelty, however, is as casual as its enchantments; it is not cruel on purpose but only rough, like thoughtless boys. Coarseness--and existence is hopelessly coarse--is not an evil unless we demand refinement. A giggling lass that peeps at us through her fingers is well enough in her sphere, but we should not have begun by calling her Dulcinea. Dulcinea is a pure essence, and dwells only in that realm. Existence should be met on its own terms; we may dance a round with it, and perhaps steal a kiss; but it tempts only to flout us, not being dedicated to any constant love. As if to acknowledge how groundless existence is, everything that arises instantly backs away, bowing its excuses, and saying, "My mistake!" It suffers from a sort of original sin or congenital tendency to cease from being. This is what Heraclitus called [Greek: _Dikè_], or just punishment; because, as Mephistopheles long afterwards added, _alles was entsteht ist wert dass es zugrunde geht_--whatsoever arises deserves to perish; not of course because what arises is not often a charming creation, but because it has no prerogative to exist not shared by every Cinderella-like essence that lies eternally neglected in that limbo to which all things intrinsically belong--the limbo of unheard melodies and uncreated worlds. For anything to emerge from that twilight region is inexplicable and comic, like the popping up of Jack-in-the-box; and the shock will amuse us, if our wits are as nimble as nature and as quick as time. We too exist; and existence is a joy to the sportive side of our nature, itself akin to a shower of sparks and a patter of irrevocable adventures. What indeed could be more exhilarating than such a rout, if only we are not too exacting, and do not demand of it irrelevant perfections? The art of life is to keep step with the celestial orchestra that beats the measure of our career, and gives the cue for our exits and our entrances. Why should we willingly miss anything, or precipitate anything, or be angry with folly, or in despair at any misadventure? In this world there should be none but gentle tears, and fluttering tip-toe loves. It is a great Carnival, and amongst these lights and shadows of comedy, these roses and vices of the playhouse, there is no abiding.

35

QUEEN MAB

Nature, which is far more resourceful than logic, has found a way out of the contradiction between the human need for expression and the British distaste for personal outbursts. This way is rambling fiction. When out of shyness, or because they have shocked each other, the inner man and the outer man are not on speaking terms, loud language and vehement gestures are incompatible with depth of feeling. What lies deep must in such a case remain unexpressed, and will seem inexpressible. A man's heart will be revealed, even to himself, only in long stretches of constant endeavour and faithful habit: towards the end of his life he may begin to discern his ruling motives. In the meantime, however, his fancy may have played at self-revelation; he may have indulged in day-dreams and romantic transformations of himself, as boys do; and without pledging his real person too much he may have made trial of candour, or, if need be, of extravagance, in imaginary substitutes for himself, thus trying the paces of his inner man without cheapening his secret feelings or publishing them in common and second-hand terms. Such a man will talk little about himself; his opinions and preferences will not be very explicit, but he will privily nurse and develop them by endless variations played upon them in fancy, as he reads or perhaps writes a book of fiction by his chimney corner. He will dream of what Queen Mab makes other people dream.

Romantic fiction is a bypath of expression; it meanders through fields of possible experience that stretch harmlessly between the highroads of actual lives, far from the precipices of private and public passions. The labyrinth is infinite, but the path chosen in it is always traceable by a sort of Ariadne's thread spun out of the poet's heart. He means to forget himself and to feign some charming monster in some picturesque landscape, the more exotic the better; but in doing so he obeys the dream-impulses of his own soul, and recasts or corrects the images supplied by his experience. His very extravagances and hectic concentration of fancy betray him; they manifest his impatience, his affections, his potentialities; for he paints what he can conceive and what fascinates him in conceiving it. That which he might have been, and was not, comforts him. Such a form of self-expression, indirect, bashful, and profoundly humorous, being play rather than art, is alone congenial to the British temperament; it is the soul of English literature. Like English politics and religion, it breathes tolerance, plasticity, waywardness, infinitude; it is tender and tentative, shapeless and guileless. Its straggling march forms a vast national soliloquy, rich in casual touches, in alternatives, in contrasts, in suspended themes; the plot grows out of the episodes, it is always being remodelled and always to be continued. The facts, though much talked of in detail, are never faced as a whole, nor is the soul ever gathered together to pronounce upon them; the whole procedure is a subterfuge, and may be easily disparaged by people with other gifts and aspirations. Intelligence certainly does not dominate it; its conclusions, when it reaches conclusions, are false, and its methods cumbrous; and foreigners who adopt them are catching only the vices of their model. But its virtues are transcendent; if the mind of England is wrapped in mists, it is touched with ethereal colours; and who shall measure the benign influences, the lights, the manliness, the comforts, the moral sanity that have spread from it through the world? Its very incapacities are full of promise; it closes no doors; it is the one fountain of kindly liberty on earth. The Englishman's prejudices are so obviously prejudices as to be almost innocent, and even amiable; his consecrated formulas (for of course he has them) are frankly inadequate and half humorous; he would not have you suppose he has said his all, nor his last word. He is jealous of preserving, far from public observation or censure, the free play of his potential sentiments; from thence he will occasionally fetch some scrap of a word, or let slip some hint of emotion; he will only murmur or suggest or smile his loves. Everybody dislikes a caricature of himself; and the Englishman feels (I think justly) that any figure a man can cut in other people's eyes is a caricature. Therefore, if there is anything in him, he fears to betray it; and if there is nothing in him, he fears to betray that; and in either case he is condemned to diffidence and shyness. He wishes you to let him alone; perhaps if you do he may presently tell you, about quite another imaginary person, some vivid and tender story.

This story may be a fairy tale or it may be a piece of realistic fiction, in which the experiences of sundry characters, as different as possible from oneself and from one another, are imagined and lived through. The author may fairly say that these creations are not masks for his own person; it is expressly not his own feelings that he is evoking and developing. He is fancying other feelings; and yet, as this fancy and the magic life it constitutes are necessarily his own, his mind is being secretly agitated and relieved by these fictions; and his sensibility, instead of being sublimated into some ultimate tragic passion, is diffused over a thousand picturesque figures and adventures with which he acknowledges no moral kinship, save such as is requisite for a lively interest in them and a minute portrayed. It is only by accident that any of his poetic offspring may resemble their parent. What cares he what curious eye may note their deformity? _He_ need not blush for them. He may even be bent on unmasking and fiercely condemning them, as a scrupulous penitent is bent on ferreting out and denouncing his real or fancied sins. In the most searching truth of fiction there is accordingly no indiscretion; the author's inmost and least avowable feelings may be uttered through it without reserve. Like a modest showman behind the curtain of his booth, he manipulates his marionettes and speaks for them in a feigned voice, by a sort of ventriloquy. Here is no religious tragedy, no distilled philosophy, no overarching cosmic myth. The scale is pleasantly small and the tone familiar, though the sum of the parts may fade into the infinite. We do not find in this complicated dream any life greater than our own or less accidental. We do not need to outgrow ourselves in order to understand it; no one summons us to pause, to recant, to renounce any part of our being. On the contrary, we simply unwind our own reel; we play endlessly at living, and in this second visionary life we survive all catastrophes, and we exchange one character for another without carrying over any load of memory or habit or fate. We seem still to undergo the vicissitudes of a moral world, but without responsibility.

Queen Mab is a naughty sprite, full of idle curiosity and impartial laughter. When she flutters over the roofs of cities, she is no angel with a mission, coming to sow there some chosen passion or purpose of her own; nor does she gather from those snoring mortals any collective sentiment or aspiration, such as a classic muse might render articulate, or such as religion or war or some consecrated school of art might embody. She steals wilily like a stray moonbeam into every crack and dark old corner of the earth. Her deft touch, as she pretends, sets all men dreaming, each after his own heart; but like other magicians, she is a fraud. Those garden fancies about her fairy equipage are all a joke to amuse the children; her wings are, in reality, far finer than gossamer, and the Equivocation she rides on is nimbler than any grasshopper. All she professes to spy out or provoke is her own merry invention. Her wand really works no miracle and sets no sleeper dreaming; on the contrary, it is rather an electric spark from the lover's brain or the parson's nose, as she tickles it, that quickens her own fancy, and hatches there an interminable brood of exquisite oddities, each little goblin perfectly ridiculous, each quite serious and proud of its little self, each battling bravely for its little happiness. Queen Mab is the genius proper to the art of a nation whose sensibility is tender, but whose personal life is drab and pale. To report, however poetically, the events and feelings they have actually experienced would be dull, as dull as life; their imagination craves entertainment with something richer, more wayward, more exciting. Every one is weary of his own society; the lifelong company of so meagre and warped a creature has become insufferable. We see that the passions of Mercutio are potentially deep and vivid; but they have been crossed by fortune, and on fortune his kindly humour mockingly takes its revenge, by feigning no end of parodies and escapades for the ineffable bright mischiefs lurking in his bosom. Queen Mab is the frail mothlike emanation of such a generous but disappointed mind; her magic lies in the ironical visions which, like the dust of the poppy, she can call forth there. A Cinderella at home, she becomes a seer in her midnight travels. Hence Table Rounds and Ivanhoes; hence three-volume novels about Becky Sharps and David Copperfields. These imagined characters are often alive, not only because the scene in which they move may be well indicated, with romantic absorption in the picturesque aspects of human existence, but also because their minds are the author's mind dreaming; they skirt the truth of his inner man; in their fancifulness or their realism they retain a secret reference to the deepest impulses in himself.

English lovers, I believe, seldom practise what in Spain is called conjugating the verb; they do not spend hours ringing the changes on I love, you love, we love. This, in their opinion, would be to protest too much. They prefer the method of Paolo and Francesca: they will sit reading out of the same book, and when they come to the kissing, she will say, "How nice that is!" and he will reply, "Isn't it?" and the story will supply the vicarious eloquence of their love. Fiction and poetry, in some supposititious instance, report for the Englishman the bashful truth about himself; and what English life thereby misses in vivacity, English literature gains in wealth, in tenderness, in a rambling veracity, and in preciousness to the people's heart.

36

A CONTRAST WITH SPANISH DRAMA

In classical Spanish drama the masks are few. The characters hardly have individual names. The lady in Calderon, for instance, if she is not Beatriz will be Leonor, and under either name so superlatively beautiful, young, chaste, eloquent, devoted, and resourceful, as to be indistinguishable from her namesakes in the other plays. The hero is always exaggeratedly in love, exaggeratedly chivalrous, and absolutely perfect, save for this heroic excess of sensitiveness and honour. The old father is always austere, unyielding, perverse, and sublime. All the maids in attendance possess the same roguishness, the same genius for intrigue and lightning mendacity; whilst the valet, whether called Crispin or Florin, is always a faithful soul and a coward, with the same quality of rather forced humour. No diversity from play to play save the diversity in the fable, in the angle at which the stock characters are exhibited and the occasion on which they versify; for they all versify in the same style, with the same inexhaustible facility, abundance, rhetorical finish, and lyric fire.