Chapter 13
Hers is not the language of frustration, but of complete and satisfying possession. It may seem marvellous in the mouth of a woman destitute of all emotional experience, in the restricted sense; but the real wonder would have been a _Wuthering Heights_ born of any personal emotion; so certain is it that it was through her personal destitution that her genius was so virile and so rich. At its hour it found her virgin, not only to passion but to the bare idea of passion, to the inner and immaterial event.
And her genius was great, not only through her stupendous imagination, but because it fed on the still more withdrawn and secret sources of her soul. If she had had no genius she would yet be great because of what took place within her, the fusion of her soul with the transcendent and enduring life.
It was there that, possessing nothing, she possessed all things; and her secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on "the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would have been the last thing in any religion that she looked for. But, for height and depth of supernatural attainment, there is no comparison between Emily's grip of divine reality and poor Anne's spasmodic and despairing clutch; and none between Charlotte's piety, her "God willing"; "I suppose I ought to be thankful", and Emily's acceptance and endurance of the event.
I am reminded that one event she neither accepted nor endured. She fought death. Her spirit lifted the pathetic, febrile struggle of weakness with corruption, and turned it to a splendid, Titanic, and unearthly combat.
And yet it was in her life rather than her death that she was splendid. There is something shocking and repellent in her last defiance. It shrieks discord with the endurance and acceptance, braver than all revolt, finer than all resignation, that was the secret of her genius and of her life.
There is no need to reconcile this supreme detachment with the storm and agony that rages through _Wuthering Heights_, or with the passion for life and adoration of the earth that burns there, an imperishable flame; or with Catherine Earnshaw's dream of heaven: "heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy". Catherine Earnshaw's dream has been cited innumerable times to prove that Emily Brontë was a splendid pagan. I do not know what it does prove, if it is not the absolute and immeasurable greatness of her genius, that, dwelling as she undoubtedly did dwell, in the secret and invisible world, she could yet conceive and bring forth Catherine Earnshaw.
It is not possible to diminish the force or to take away one word of Mr. Swinburne's magnificent eulogy. There _was_ in the "passionate great genius of Emily Brontë", "a dark, unconscious instinct as of primitive nature-worship". That was where she was so poised and so complete; that she touches earth and heaven, and is at once intoxicated with the splendour of the passion of living, and holds her spirit in security and her heart in peace. She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her immersion.
It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of these antagonistic attitudes. It is not only entirely possible and compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them. Emily Brontë was nothing if not comprehensive. There was no distance, no abyss too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for her embracing soul. Without a hint, so far as we know, from any philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the world and crystallized it in two lines:
The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.
It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake's vision that she has reached there. She too knew what it was
To see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.
She sees by a flash what he saw continuously; but it is by the same light she sees it and wins her place among the mystics.
Her mind was not always poised. It swung between its vision of transparent unity and its love of earth for earth's sake. There are at least four poems of hers that show this entirely natural oscillation.
In one, a nameless poem, the Genius of Earth calls to the visionary soul:
Shall earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer now? Since passion may not fire thee, Shall nature cease to bow?
Thy mind is ever moving In regions dark to thee; Recall its useless roving, Come back, and dwell with me.
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Few hearts to mortals given On earth so wildly pine; Yet few would ask a heaven More like this earth than thine.
"The Night-Wind" sings the same song, lures with the same enchantment; and the human voice answers, resisting:
Play with the scented flower, The young tree's supple bough, And leave my human feelings In their own course to flow.
But the other voice is stronger:
The wanderer would not heed me; Its kiss grew warmer still. "Oh, come," it sighed so sweetly; "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.
"Were we not friends from childhood? Have I not loved thee long? As long as thou, the solemn night, Whose silence wakes my song.
"And when thy heart is resting Beneath the church-aisle stone, _I_ shall have time for mourning, And _thou_ for being alone."
There are nine verses of "The Night-Wind", and the first eight are negligible; but, as for the last and ninth, I do not know any poem in any language that renders, in four short lines, and with such incomparable magic and poignancy, the haunting and pursuing of the human by the inhuman, that passion of the homeless and eternal wind.
And this woman, destitute, so far as can be known, of all metaphysical knowledge or training, reared in the narrowest and least metaphysical of creeds, did yet contrive to express in one poem of four irregular verses all the hunger and thirst after the "Absolute" that ever moved a human soul, all the bewilderment and agony inflicted by the unintelligible spectacle of existence, the intolerable triumph of evil over good, and did conceive an image and a vision of the transcendent reality that holds, as in crystal, all the philosophies that were ever worthy of the name.
Here it is. There are once more two voices: one of the Man, the other of the Seer:
THE PHILOSOPHER
Oh, for the time when I shall sleep Without identity. And never care how rain may steep, Or snow may cover me! No promised heaven, these wild desires Could all, or half fulfil; No threatened hell, with quenchless fires, Subdue this restless will.
So said I, and still say the same; Still, to my death, will say-- Three gods, within this little frame, Are warring night and day; Heaven could not hold them all, and yet They all are held in me; And must be mine till I forget My present entity! Oh, for the time, when in my breast Their struggles will be o'er! Oh, for the day, when I shall rest, And never suffer more!
I saw a spirit, standing, man, Where thou dost stand--an hour ago, And round his feet three rivers ran, Of equal depth, and equal flow-- A golden stream--and one like blood, And one like sapphire seemed to be; But where they joined their triple flood It tumbled in an inky sea. The spirit sent his dazzling gaze Down through that ocean's gloomy night; Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,-- The glad deep sparkled wide and bright-- White as the sun, far, far more fair Than its divided sources were!
And even for that spirit, seer, I've watched and sought my lifetime long; Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air, An endless search and always wrong. Had I but seen his glorious eye _Once_ light the clouds that 'wilder me, I ne'er had raised this coward cry To cease to think, and cease to be; I ne'er had called oblivion blest, Nor, stretching eager hands to death, Implored to change for senseless rest This sentient soul, this living breath-- Oh, let me die--that power and will Their cruel strife may close, And conquered good and conquering ill Be lost in one repose!
That vision of the transcendent spirit, with the mingled triple flood of life about his feet, is one that Blake might have seen and sung and painted.
The fourth poem, "The Prisoner", is a fragment, and an obscure fragment, which may belong to a very different cycle. But whatever its place, it has the same visionary quality. The vision is of the woman captive, "confined in triple walls", the "guest darkly lodged", the "chainless soul", that defies its conqueror, its gaoler, and the spectator of its agony. It has, this prisoner, its own unspeakable consolation, the "Messenger":
He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars. Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise and change that kill me with desire.
* * * * *
But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till earth was lost to me.
Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found, Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.
That is the language of a mystic, of a mystic who has passed beyond contemplation; who has known or imagined ecstasy. The joy is unmistakable; unmistakable, too, is the horror of the return:
Oh! dreadful is the check--intense the agony-- When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.
There is no doubt about those three verses; that they are the expression of the rarest and the most tremendous experience that is given to humanity to know.
If "The Visionary" does not touch that supernal place, it belongs indubitably to the borderland:
Silent is the house; all are laid asleep: One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep, Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze That whirls the wildering drift and bends the groaning trees.
Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor; Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door; The little lamp burns straight, the rays shoot strong and far I trim it well to be the wanderer's guiding-star.
Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame! Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame; But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know, What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow.
What I love shall come like visitant of air, Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; What loves me no word of mine shall e'er betray, Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay.
Burn then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear-- Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air; He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me: Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy.
Those who can see nothing in this poem but the idealization of an earthly passion must be strangely and perversely mistaken in their Emily Brontë. I confess I can never read it without thinking of one of the most marvellous of all poems of Divine Love: "En una Noche Escura".
EN UNA NOCHE ESCURA[A]
Upon an obscure night Fevered with Love's anxiety (O hapless, happy plight!) I went, none seeing me, Forth from my house, where all things quiet be.
* * * * *
Blest night of wandering In secret, when by none might I be spied, Nor I see anything; Without a light to guide Save that which in my heart burnt in my side.
That light did lead me on More surely than the shining of noontide, Where well I knew that One Did for my coming bide; Where he abode might none but he abide.
O night that didst lead thus; O night more lovely than the dawn of light; O night that broughtest us Lover to lover's sight, Lover to loved, in marriage of delight!
[Footnote A: "St. John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul." Translated by Arthur Symons in vol. ii. of his _Collected Poems_.]
* * * * *
We know what love is celebrated there, and we do not know so clearly what manner of supernal passion is symbolized in Emily Brontë's angel-lover. There is a long way there between Emily Brontë and St. John of the Cross, between her lamp-lit window and his "Dark Night of the Soul", and yet her opening lines have something of the premonitory thrill, the haunting power of tremendous suggestion, the intense, mysterious expectancy of his. The spiritual experience is somewhat different, but it belongs to the same realm of the super-physical; and it is very far from Paganism.
She wrote of these supreme ardours and mysteries; and she wrote that most inspired and vehement song of passionate human love, "Remembrance":
Cold in the earth--and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee....
But "Remembrance" is too well known for quotation here. So is "The Old Stoic".
These are perfect and unforgettable things. But there is hardly one of the least admirable of her poems that has not in it some unforgettable and perfect verse or line:
And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star Has tracked the chilly grey! What, watching yet? how very far The morning lies away.
That is how some watcher on Wuthering Heights might measure the long passage of the night.
"The Lady to her Guitar", that recalls the dead and forgotten player, sings:
It is as if the glassy brook Should image still its willows fair, _Though years ago the woodman's stroke Laid low in dust their Dryad-hair_.
She has her "dim moon struggling in the sky", to match Charlotte's "the moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, glad as if she gave herself to his fierce caress with love". At sixteen, in the schoolroom,[A] she wrote verses of an incomparable simplicity and poignancy:
A little while, a little while, The weary task is put away, And I can sing and I can smile, Alike, while I have holiday.
Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- What thought, what scene invites thee now? What spot, or near or far apart, Has rest for thee, my weary brow?
* * * * *
The house is old, the trees are bare, Moonless above bends twilight's dome; But what on earth is half so dear-- So longed for--as the hearth of home?
The mute bird sitting on the stone, The dank moss dripping from the wall, The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, I love them--how I love them all!
Still, as I mused, the naked room, The alien firelight died away, And, from the midst of cheerless gloom, I passed to bright, unclouded day.
A little and a lone green lane That opened on a common wide; A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain Of mountains circling every side.
A heaven so clear, an earth so calm. So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; And, deepening still the dream-like charm, Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere.
[Footnote A: Madame Duclaux assigns to these verses a much later date--the year of Emily Brontë's exile in Brussels. Sir William Robertson Nicoll also considers that "the 'alien firelight' suits Brussels better than the Yorkshire hearth of 'good, kind' Miss Wooler". To me the schoolroom of the Pensionnat suggests an "alien" stove, and not the light of any fire at all.]
* * * * *
There was no nostalgia that she did not know. And there was no funeral note she did not sound; from the hopeless gloom of
In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, A grey stone standing over thee; Black mould beneath thee spread, And black mould to cover thee.
Well--there is rest there, So fast come thy prophecy; The time when my sunny hair Shall with grass-roots entwined be.
But cold--cold is that resting-place Shut out from joy and liberty, And all who loved thy living face Will shrink from it shudderingly.
From that to the melancholy grace of the moorland dirge:
The linnet in the rocky dells, The moor-lark in the air, The bee among the heather-bells That hide my lady fair:
The wild deer browse above her breast; The wild birds raise their brood; And they, her smiles of love caressed, Have left her solitude.
* * * * *
Well, let them fight for honour's breath, Or pleasure's shade pursue-- The dweller in the land of death Is changed and careless too.
And if their eyes should watch and weep Till sorrow's source were dry, She would not, in her tranquil sleep, Return a single sigh.
Blow, west wind, by the lowly mound, And murmur, summer-streams-- There is no need of other sound To soothe my lady's dreams.
There is, finally, that nameless poem--her last--where Emily Brontë's creed finds utterance. It also is well known, but I give it here by way of justification, lest I should seem to have exaggerated the mystic detachment of this lover of the earth:
No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life--that in me has rest, As I--undying Life--have power in thee!
Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.
To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by thine infinity; So surely anchored on The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou--THOU art Being and Breath, And what THOU art may never be destroyed.
It is not a perfect work. I do not think it is by any means the finest poem that Emily Brontë ever wrote. It has least of her matchless, incommunicable quality. There is one verse, the fifth, that recalls almost painfully the frigid poets of Deism of the eighteenth century. But even that association cannot destroy or contaminate its superb sincerity and dignity. If it recalls the poets of Deism, it recalls no less one of the most ancient of all metaphysical poems, the poem of Parmenides on Being:
[Greek: pos d' an epeit apoloito pelon, pos d' an ke genoito; ei ge genoit, ouk est', oud ei pote mellei esesthai.
* * * * *
tos, genesis men apesbestai kai apiotos olethros. oude diaireton estin, epei pan estin homoion oude ti pae keneon.... ....eon gar eonti pelazei.]
Parmenides had not, I imagine, "penetrated" to Haworth; yet the last verse of Emily Brontë's poem might have come straight out of his [Greek: ta pros halaetheiaen]. Truly, an astonishing poem to have come from a girl in a country parsonage in the 'forties.
But the most astonishing thing about it is its inversion of a yet more consecrated form: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee". Emily Brontë does not follow St. Augustine. She has an absolutely inspired and independent insight:
Life--that in me has rest, As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!
For there was but little humility or resignation about Emily Brontë. Nothing could be prouder than her rejection of the view that must have been offered to her every Sunday from her father's pulpit. She could not accept the Christian idea of separation and the Mediator. She knew too well the secret. She saw too clearly the heavenly side of the eternal quest. She heard, across the worlds, the downward and the upward rush of the Two immortally desirous; when her soul cried she heard the answering cry of the divine pursuer: "My heart is restless till it rests in Thee." It is in keeping with her vision of the descent of the Invisible, who comes
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars,
her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly consummation.
There is no doubt about it. And there is no doubt about the Paganism either. It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Brontë.
The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only in her poems. That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte discovered them.
* * * * *
Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte had discovered all there were. Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished poems appeared in America. And the world went on unaware of what had happened.
And now Mr. Clement Shorter, in his indefatigable researches, has unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and with Charlotte's thirty-nine.[A]
[Footnote A: _Complete Works of Emily Brontë._ Vol. I.--Poetry. (Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.)]
And the world continues more or less unaware.
I do not know how many new poets Vigo Street can turn out in a week. But I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of some of them. But this event, in which Vigo Street has had no hand, the publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily Brontë, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of acclaim.
And yet there could hardly well have been an event of more importance in its way. If the best poems in Mr. Shorter's collection cannot stand beside the best in Charlotte's editions of 1846 and 1850, many of them reveal an aspect of Emily Brontë's genius hitherto unknown and undreamed of; one or two even reveal a little more of the soul of Emily Brontë than has yet been known.
There are no doubt many reasons for the world's indifference. The few people in it who read poetry at all do not read Emily Brontë much; it is as much as they can do to keep pace with the perpetual, swift procession of young poets out of Vigo Street. There is a certain austerity about Emily Brontë, a superb refusal of all extravagance, pomp, and decoration, which makes her verses look naked to eyes accustomed to young lyrics loaded with "jewels five-words long". About Emily Brontë there is no emerald and beryl and chrysoprase; there are no vine-leaves in her hair, and on her white Oread's feet there is no stain of purple vintage. She knows nothing of the Dionysiac rapture and the sensuous side of mysticism. She can give nothing to the young soul that thirsts and hungers for these things.