Part 8

These hints suggest the doctrine that the goal of life is the very bosom of God; not any finite form of existence, however excellent, but a complete absorption and disappearance in the Godhead. So the Neoplatonists had thought, from whom all this heavenly landscape is borrowed; and the reservations that Christian orthodoxy requires have not always remained present to the minds of Christian mystics and poets. Dante broaches this very point in the memorable interview he has with the spirit of Piccarda, in the third canto of the _Paradiso_. She is in the lowest sphere of heaven, that of the inconstant moon, because after she had been stolen from her convent and forcibly married, she felt no prompting to renew her earlier vows. Dante asks her if she never longs for a higher station in paradise, one nearer to God, the natural goal of all aspiration. She answers that to share the will of God, who has established many different mansions in his house, is to be truly one with him. The wish to be nearer God would actually carry the soul farther away, since it would oppose the order he has established.[19]

Even in heaven, therefore, the Christian saint was to keep his essential fidelity, separation, and lowliness. He was to feel still helpless and lost in himself, like Tobias, and happy only in that the angel of the Lord was holding him by the hand. For Piccarda to say that she accepts the will of God means not that she shares it, but that she submits to it. She would fain go higher, for her moral nature demands it, as Dante--incorrigible Platonist--perfectly perceived; but she dare not mention it, for she knows that God, whose thoughts are not her thoughts, has forbidden it. The inconstant sphere of the moon does not afford her a perfect happiness; but, chastened as she is, she says it brings her happiness enough; all that a broken and a contrite heart has the courage to hope for.

Such are the conflicting inspirations beneath the lovely harmonies of the _Paradiso_. It was not the poet’s soul that was in conflict here; it was only his traditions. The conflicts of his own spirit had been left behind in other regions; on that threshing-floor of earth which, from the height of heaven, he looked back upon with wonder,[20] surprised that men should take so passionately this trouble of ants, which he judges best, says Dante, who thinks least of it.

In this saying the poet is perhaps conscious of a personal fault; for Dante was far from perfect, even as a poet. He was too much a man of his own time, and often wrote with a passion not clarified into judgement. So much does the purely personal and dramatic interest dominate us as we read of a Boniface or an Ugolino that we forget that these historical figures are supposed to have been transmuted into the eternal, and to have become bits in the mosaic of Platonic essences. Dante himself almost forgets it. The modern reader, accustomed to insignificant, wayward fictions, and expecting to be entertained by images without thoughts, may not notice this lack of perspective, or may rejoice in it. But, if he is judicious, he will not rejoice in it long. The Bonifaces and the Ugolinos are not the truly deep, the truly lovely figures of the _Divine Comedy_. They are, in a relative sense, the vulgarities in it. We feel too much, in these cases, the heat of the poet’s prejudice or indignation. He is not just, as he usually is; he does not stop to think, as he almost always does. He forgets that he is in the eternal world, and dips for the moment into a brawl in some Italian market-place, or into the council-chamber of some factious _condottiere_. The passages--such as those about Boniface and Ugolino--which Dante writes in this mood are powerful and vehement, but they are not beautiful. They brand the object of their invective more than they reveal it; they shock more than they move the reader.

This lower kind of success--for it is still a success in rhetoric--falls to the poet because he has abandoned the Platonic half of his inspiration and has become for the moment wholly historical, wholly Hebraic or Roman. He would have been a far inferior mind if he had always moved on this level. With the Platonic spheres and the Aristotelian ethics taken out, his _Comedy_ would not have been divine. Persons and incidents, to be truly memorable, have to be rendered significant; they have to be seen in their place in the moral world; they have to be judged, and judged rightly, in their dignity and value. A casual personal sentiment towards them, however passionate, cannot take the place of the sympathetic insight that comprehends and the wide experience that judges.

Again (what is fundamental with Dante) love, as he feels and renders it, is not normal or healthy love. It was doubtless real enough, but too much restrained and expressed too much in fancy; so that when it is extended Platonically and identified so easily with the grace of God and with revealed wisdom, we feel the suspicion that if the love in question had been natural and manly, it would have offered more resistance to so mystical a transformation. The poet who wishes to pass convincingly from love to philosophy (and that seems a natural progress for a poet) should accordingly be a hearty and complete lover--a lover like Goethe and his Faust--rather than like Plato and Dante. Faust, too, passes from Gretchen to Helen, and partly back again; and Goethe made even more passages. Had any of them led to something which not only was loved, but deserved to be loved, which not only could inspire a whole life, but which ought to inspire it--then we should have had a genuine progress.

In the next place, Dante talks too much about himself. There is a sense in which this egotism is a merit, or at least a ground of interest for us moderns; for egotism is the distinctive attitude of modern philosophy and of romantic sentiment. In being egotistical Dante was ahead of his time. His philosophy would have lost an element of depth, and his poetry an element of pathos, had he not placed himself in the centre of the stage, and described everything as his experience, or as a revelation made to himself and made for the sake of his personal salvation. But Dante’s egotism goes rather further than was requisite, so that the transcendental insight might not fail in his philosophy. It extended so far that he cast the shadow of his person not only over the terraces of purgatory (as he is careful to tell us repeatedly), but over the whole of Italy and of Europe, which he saw and judged under the evident influence of private passions and resentments.

Moreover, the personality thrust forward so obtrusively is not in every respect worthy of contemplation. Dante is very proud and very bitter; at the same time, he is curiously timid; and one may tire sometimes of his perpetual tremblings and tears, of his fainting fits and his intricate doubts. A man who knows he is under the special protection of God, and of three celestial ladies, and who has such a sage and magician as Virgil for a guide, might have looked even upon hell with a little more confidence. How far is this shivering and swooning philosopher from the laughing courage of Faust, who sees his poodle swell into a monster, then into a cloud, and finally change into Mephistopheles, and says at once: _Das also war des Pudels Kern_! Doubtless Dante was mediaeval, and contrition, humility, and fear of the devil were great virtues in those days; but the conclusion we must come to is precisely that the virtues of those days were not the best virtues, and that a poet who represents that time cannot be a fair nor an ultimate spokesman for humanity.

Perhaps we have now reviewed the chief objects that peopled Dante’s imagination, the chief objects into the midst of which his poetry transports us; and if a poet’s genius avails to transport us into his enchanted world, the character of that world will determine the quality and dignity of his poetry. Dante transports us, with unmistakable power, first into the atmosphere of a visionary love; then into the history of his conversion, affected by this love, or by the divine grace identified with it. The supreme ideal to which his conversion brought him back is expressed for him by universal nature, and is embodied among men in the double institution of a revealed religion and a providential empire. To trace the fortunes of these institutions, we are transported next into the panorama of history, in its great crises and its great men; and particularly into the panorama of Italy in the poet’s time, where we survey the crimes, the virtues, and the sorrows of those prominent in furthering or thwarting the ideal of Christendom. These numerous persons are set before us with the sympathy and brevity of a dramatist; yet it is no mere carnival, no _danse macabre_: for throughout, above the confused strife of parties and passions, we hear the steady voice, the implacable sentence, of the prophet that judges them.

Thus Dante, gifted with the tenderest sense of colour, and the firmest art of design, has put his whole world into his canvas. Seen there, that world becomes complete, clear, beautiful, and tragic. It is vivid and truthful in its detail, sublime in its march and in its harmony. This is not poetry where the parts are better than the whole. Here, as in some great symphony, everything is cumulative: the movements conspire, the tension grows, the volume redoubles, the keen melody soars higher and higher; and it all ends, not with a bang, not with some casual incident, but in sustained reflection, in the sense that it has not ended, but remains by us in its totality, a revelation and a resource for ever. It has taught us to love and to renounce, to judge and to worship. What more could a poet do? Dante poetized all life and nature as he found them. His imagination dominated and focused the whole world. He thereby touched the ultimate goal to which a poet can aspire; he set the standard for all possible performance, and became the type of a supreme poet. This is not to say that he is the “greatest” of poets. The relative merit of poets is a barren thing to wrangle about. The question can always be opened anew, when a critic appears with a fresh temperament or a new criterion. Even less need we say that no greater poet can ever arise; we may be confident of the opposite. But Dante gives a successful example of the _highest species_ of poetry. His poetry covers the whole field from which poetry may be fetched, and to which poetry may be applied, from the inmost recesses of the heart to the uttermost bounds of nature and of destiny. If to give imaginative value to something is the minimum task of a poet, to give imaginative value to all things, and to the system which things compose, is evidently his greatest task.

Dante fulfilled this task, of course under special conditions and limitations, personal and social; but he fulfilled it, and he thereby fulfilled the conditions of supreme poetry. Even Homer, as we are beginning to perceive nowadays, suffered from a certain conventionality and one-sidedness. There was much in the life and religion of his time that his art ignored. It was a flattering, a euphemistic art; it had a sort of pervasive blandness, like that which we now associate with a fashionable sermon. It was poetry addressed to the ruling caste in the state, to the conquerors; and it spread an intentional glamour over their past brutalities and present self-deceptions. No such partiality in Dante; he paints what he hates as frankly as what he loves, and in all things he is complete and sincere. If any similar adequacy is attained again by any poet, it will not be, presumably, by a poet of the supernatural. Henceforth, for any wide and honest imagination, the supernatural must figure as an idea in the human mind,--a part of the natural. To conceive it otherwise would be to fall short of the insight of this age, not to express or to complete it. Dante, however, for this very reason, may be expected to remain the supreme poet of the supernatural, the unrivalled exponent, after Plato, of that phase of thought and feeling in which the supernatural seems to be the key to nature and to happiness. This is the hypothesis on which, as yet, moral unity has been best attained in this world. Here, then, we have the most complete idealization and comprehension of things achieved by mankind hitherto. Dante is the type of a consummate poet.

* * * * *

[1] Plato, _Phaedo_,97B-99C, Jowett’s translation. I have changed the rendering of _νοῡς_ from “mind” to “reason.”

[2] “Est pro fundamento tenenda veritas historiae et desuper spirituales expositiones fabricandae.” Thomas Aquinas, _Summa Theologiae_, i. quaest. 102, conclusio.

[3] _Paradiso_, xv. 97, 99:

Fiorenza dentro dalla cerchia antica... Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica.

[4] Ibid., 100-26:

Non avea catenella, non corona, Non donne contigiate, non cintura Che fosse a veder pin che la persona. Non faceva nascendo ancor paura La figlia al padre, chè il tempo e la dote Non fuggan quinci e quindi la misura. Non avea case di famiglia vote; Non v’era giunto ancor Sardanapalo A mostrar ciò che in camera si puote.... O fortunate! Ciascuna era certa Delia sua sepoltura, ed ancor nulla Era per Francia nel letto deserta. L’ una vegghiava a studio della culla, E consolando usava l’ idioma Che prima i padri e le madri trastulla; L’ altra traendo alia rocca la chioma, Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia De’ Troiani, di Fiesole, e di Roma.

[5] _Paradiso_, xxxiii. 143-45:

Volgeva il mio disiro e il _velle,_ Si come rota ch’ egualmente è mossa, L’ amor che move il sole e l’ altre stelle.

[6] _Vita Nuova_, § 22: Secondo l’ usanza della sopradetta cittade, donne con donne, e uomini con uomini si adunino a cotale tristizia; molte donne s’ adunaro colà, ove questa Beatrice piangea pietosamente, &c.

Also, _Purgatorio_, xxxi. 50, 51:

Le belle membra in ch’ io Rinchiusa fui, e sono in terra sparte.

[7] _Vita Nuova_,§ v.

[8] _Schermo della veritade_,--natural philosophy.

[9] _Convito_, II. cap. 16: _Faccia che gli occhi d’ esta Donna miri_; gli occhi di questa Donna sono le sue _dimostrazioni_, le quali dritte negli occhi dello intelletto inhamorano l’ anima, libera nelle condizioni. Oh dolcissimi ed ineffabili sembianti, e rubatori subitani della mente umana, che nelle dimostrazioni negli occhi della Filosofia apparite, quando essa alli suoi drudi ragiona! Veramente in voi è la salute, per la quale si fa beato chi vi guarda, e salvo dalla morte della ignoranza e delli vizi.... E cosi, in fine di questo secondo Trattato, dico e affermo che la Donna, di cui io innamorai appresso lo primo amore, fu la bellissima e onestissima figlia dello Imperadore dell’ universo, alla quale Pittagora pose nome _Filosofia_.

[10] _Purgatorio_, xvii. 106-11:

Or perchè mai non può dalla salute Amor del suo suggetto volger viso, Dall’ odio proprio son le cose tute: E perchè intender non si può diviso, E per sè stante, alcuno esser dal primo, Da quello odiare ogni affetto è deciso.

[11] _Inferno_, iii. 64-66:

Questi sciaurati, che mai non fur vivi, Erano ignudi e stimolati molto Da mosconi e da vespe ch’ erano ivi.

[12] _Ibid._, iv. 41, 42:

Semo perduti, e sol di tanto offesi Che senza speme vivemo in disio.

Cf. _Purgatorio_, iii. 37-45, where Virgil says:

“State contenti, umana gente, al _quia_; Chè se potuto aveste veder tutto, Mestier non era partorir Maria; E disiar vedeste senza frutto Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato, Ch’eternalmente è dato lor per lutto. Io dico d’Aristotele e di Plato, E di molti altri.” E qui chinò la fronte; E più non disse, e rimase turbato.

[13] _Inferno_, ix. 106-33, and x.

[14] _Ibid_., xxviii.

[15] _Inferno_, iii. 124-26:

E pronti sono a trapassar lo rio, Chè la divina giustizia gli sprona Si che la tema si volge in disio.

[16] _Purgatorio_, xxi. 61-69:

Della mondizia sol voler fa prova, Che, tutta libera a mutar convento, L’alma sorprende, e di voler le giova.... Ed io che son giaciuto a questa doglia Cinquecento anni e più, pur mo sentii Libera volontà di miglior soglia.

[17] _Inferno_, xiv. 63-66:

“O Capaneo, in ciò che non s’ammorza La tua superbia, se’ tu più punito: Nullo martirio, fuor che la tua rabbia, Sarebbe al tuo furor dolor compito.”

[18] Alfred de Musset, _Poésies Nouvelles, Souvenir_:

Dante, pourquoi dis-tu qu’il n’est pire misère Qu’un souvenir heureux dans les jours de douleur? Quel chagrin t’a dicté cette parole amère, Cette offense au malheur?

... Ce blasphème vanté ne vient pas de ton cœur. Un souvenir heureux est peut-être sur terre Plus vrai que le bonheur....

Et c’est à ta Françoise, à ton ange de gloire, Que tu pouvais donner ces mots à prononcer, Elle qui s’interrompt, pour conter son histoire, D’un éternel baiser!

[19] _Paradiso_, iii. 73-90:

“Se disiassimo esser più superne, Foran discordi li nostri disiri Dal voler di colui che qui ne cerne,... E la sua volontate è nostra pace; Ella è quel mare al qual tutto si move Ciò ch’ella crea, e che natura face.” Chiaro mi fu allor com’ ogni dove In cielo è Paradiso, e sì la grazia Del sommo ben d’un modo non vi piove.

[20] _Paradiso_, xxii. 133-39:

Col viso ritornai per tutte e quante Le sette spere, e vidi questo globo Tal, ch’io sorrisi del suo vil sembiante; E quel consiglio per migliore approbo Che l’ha per meno; e chi ad altro pensa Chiamar si puote veramente probo.

IV.

GOETHE’S FAUST

In approaching the third of our philosophical poets, there is a scruple that may cross the mind. Lucretius was undoubtedly a philosophical poet; his whole poem is devoted to expounding and defending a system of philosophy. In Dante the case is almost as plain. The _Divine Comedy_ is a moral and personal fable; yet not only are many passages explicitly philosophical, but the whole is inspired and controlled by the most definite of religious systems and of moral codes. Dante, too, is unmistakably a philosophical poet. But was Goethe a philosopher? And is _Faust_ a philosophical poem?

If we say so, it must be by giving a certain latitude to our terms. Goethe was the wisest of mankind; too wise, perhaps, to be a philosopher in the technical sense, or to try to harness this wild world in a brain-spun terminology. It is true that he was all his life a follower of Spinoza, and that he may be termed, without hesitation, a naturalist in philosophy and a pantheist. His adherence to the general attitude of Spinoza, however, did not exclude a great plasticity and freedom in his own views, even on the most fundamental points. Thus Goethe did not admit the mechanical interpretation of nature advocated by Spinoza. He also assigned, at least to privileged souls, like his own, a more personal sort of immortality than Spinoza allowed. Moreover, he harboured a generous sympathy with the dramatic explanations of nature and history current in the Germany of his day. Yet such transcendental idealism, making the world the expression of a spiritual endeavour, was a total reversal of that conviction, so profound in Spinoza, that all moral energies are resident in particular creatures, themselves sparks in an absolutely infinite and purposeless world. In a word, Goethe was not a systematic philosopher. His feeling for the march of things and for the significance of great personages and great ideas was indeed philosophical, although more romantic than scientific. His thoughts upon life were fresh and miscellaneous. They voiced the genius and learning of his age. They did not express a firm personal attitude, radical and unified, and transmissible to other times and persons. For philosophers, after all, have this advantage over men of letters, that their minds, being more organic, can more easily propagate themselves. They scatter less influence, but more seeds.

If from Goethe we turn to _Faust_--and it is as the author of _Faust_ only that we shall consider him--the situation is not less ambiguous. In the play, as the young Goethe first wrote it, philosophy appeared in the first line,--_Hab nun ach die Philosophey_; but it appeared there, and throughout the piece, merely as a human experience, a passion or an illusion, a fund of images or an ambitious art. Later, it is true, under the spell of fashion and of Schiller, Goethe surrounded his original scenes with others, like the prologue in heaven, or the apotheosis of Faust, in which a philosophy of life was indicated; namely, that he who strives strays, yet in that straying finds his salvation. This idea left standing all that satirical and Mephistophelian wisdom with which the whole poem abounds, the later parts no less than the earlier. Frankly, it was a moral that adorned the tale, without having been the seed of it, and without even expressing fairly the spirit which it breathes. _Faust_ remained an essentially romantic poem, written to give vent to a pregnant and vivid genius, to touch the heart, to bewilder the mind with a carnival of images, to amuse, to thrill, to humanize; and, if we must speak of philosophy, there were many express maxims in the poem, and many insights, half betrayed, that exceeded in philosophic value the belated and official moral which the author affixed to it, and which he himself warned us not to take too seriously.[1]

_Faust_ is, then, no philosophical poem, after an open or deliberate fashion; and yet it offers a solution to the moral problem of existence as truly as do the poems of Lucretius and Dante. Heard philosophies are sweet, but those unheard may be sweeter. They may be more unmixed and more profound for being adopted unconsciously, for being lived rather than taught. This is not merely to say what might be said of every work of art and of every natural object, that it could be made the starting-point for a chain of inferences that should reveal the whole universe, like the flower in the crannied wall. It is to say, rather, that the vital straining towards an ideal, definite but latent, when it dominates a whole life, may express that ideal more fully than could the best-chosen words.

Now _Faust_ is the foam on the top of two great waves of human aspiration, merging and heaping themselves up together,--the wave of romanticism rising from the depths of northern traditions and genius, and the wave of a new paganism coming from Greece over Italy. These are not philosophies to be read into _Faust_ by the critic; they are passions seething in the drama. It is the drama of a philosophical adventure; a rebellion against convention; a flight to nature, to tenderness, to beauty; and then a return to convention again, with a feeling that nature, tenderness, and beauty, unless found there, will not be found at all. Goethe never depicts, as Dante does, the object his hero is pursuing; he is satisfied with depicting the pursuit. Like Lessing, in his famous apologue, he prefers the pursuit of the ideal to the ideal itself; perhaps, as in the case of Lessing, because the hope of realizing the ideal, and the interest in realizing it, were beginning to forsake him.