For the next
eight years Vondel did no original work, being seemingly satisfied
with the leisurely development of his powers.
eight years Vondel did no original work, being seemingly satisfied
with the leisurely development of his powers.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
The savage of
Canada subsists and attains old age, not less than the English
landlord with fifty thousand guineas a year. But who would ever
compare the country of the Iroquois to England ?
Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug enact
sumptuary laws: they are quite right. The poor must not exceed
their means; but I have somewhere read that, with some harm,
luxury on the whole does great good.
If by luxury you mean excess, let us at once admit that ex-
cess is pernicious,- in abstinence as well as in gluttony, in parsi.
mony as in profusion. In my own village, where the soil is
meagre, the imposts heavy, and the prohibition against a man's
exporting the corn he has himself sown and reaped, intolerable,
there is hardly a cultivator who is not well clothed, and who has
not sufficient warmth and food. Should this cultivator plow in
his best clothes, and with his hair dressed and powdered, he
would display the most absurd luxury; but were a rich citizen of
Paris or London to appear at the play in the dress of this peas-
ant, he would exhibit the grossest, the most ridiculous parsimony.
«Some certain mean in all things may be found,
To mark our virtues' and our vices' bound. ”
On the invention of scissors, what was not said of those who
pared their nails, and cut off the hair that was hanging down
over their eyes? They were doubtless regarded as prodigals and
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VOLTAIRE
coxcombs, buying an extravagant instrument fit only to spoil the
work of the Creator. What a sin to pare the horn which God
himself made to grow at our finger-ends! It was an insult to
Divinity! With shirts and socks it was far worse. With what
wrath and indignation did the old counselors, who had never
worn socks, exclaim against the young magistrates who encour-
aged so fatal a luxury!
PASSAGES FROM THE PAMPHLETS
LO
OVE truth, but pardon error. The mortal who goes astray
is still a man and thy brother. Be wise for thyself alone;
compassionate for him. Achieve thine own welfare by bless-
ing others.
TAKE revenge upon a rival by surpassing him.
To DESIRE all is the mark of a fool. Excess is his portion.
Moderation is the treasure of the wise: he knows how to control
his tastes, his labors, his pleasures.
Work is often the father of pleasure. I pity the man over-
whelmed with the weight of his own leisure. Happiness is a
good that nature sells us.
ONE day some mice said to one another, How charming
"
is this world! What an empire is ours! This palace so superb
was built for us; from all eternity God made for us these large
holes. Do you see those fat hams under that dim ceiling? they
were created there for us by Nature's hands; those mountains
of lard, inexhaustible aliment, will be ours till the end of time.
Yes, we are, great God, if our sages tell us the truth, the master-
piece, the end, the aim, of all thy works! Cats are dangerous
and prompt to devour, but it is to instruct and correct us! ”
MIRACLES are good; but to relieve a brother, to draw a
friend from the depths of misery, to pardon the virtues of our
enemies – these are greater miracles.
The secret of wearying your reader is to tell him everything.
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VOLTAIRE
15481
The true virtue then is beneficence”; a new word in the
French language, but the whole universe ought to cherish the
idea.
Souls communicate with souls, and can measure one another
without need of an intermediate body. It is only the greatness
or the worth of a soul that ought to frighten or intimidate
a
us. To fear or to respect the body and its accessories - force,
beauty, royalty, rank, office-- is pure imbecility. Men are born
equal and die equal. Let us respect the virtue, the merit of
their souls, and pity the imperfections of these souls.
DOUBTLESS we should by prudence avoid the evil which that
physical force [of rulers] can do us, as we should guard ourselves
against a crowned bull, an enthroned monkey, a savage dog, let
loose upon us.
Let us beware of such. Let us even endeavor,
if possible, to moderate them, to soften them; but this sentiment
is very different from the esteem and respect which we owe to
souls.
Having it clearly in your heart that all men are equal, and
in your head that the exterior distinguishes them, you can get
on very well in the world.
BELIEVE that in his eternal wisdom the Most High has, with
his own hand, engraved at the bottom of thy heart natural reli-
gion. Believe that the native candor of thy soul will not be the
object of God's eternal hate. Believe that before his throne, in
all times and in all places, the heart of the just person is pre-
cious. Believe that a modest bonze, a charitable dervish, finds
favor in his eyes sooner than a pitiless Jansenist or an ambitious
pontiff. God judges us according to our virtues, not our sacri-
fices.
AFTER all, it is right to give every possible form to our soul.
It is a flame that God has intrusted to us: we are bound to feed
it with all that we find most precious. We should introduce into
our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door of the
soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings: so long
as it does not all go in pell-mell, there is plenty of room for
everything
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VOLTAIRE
One who has many witnesses of his death can die with cour-
age.
I ENVY the beasts two things,-their ignorance of evil to come,
and their ignorance of what is said about them.
Does not experience prove that influence over men's minds
is gained only by offering them the difficult, nay, the impossible,
to perform or believe? Offer only things that are reasonable,
and all the world will answer, “We knew as much as that. ” But
enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the Deity as ever
armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars: and
you will win the multitude's ear, and everybody will say of you,
“He must be right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so
marvelous. »
A sure means of not yielding to the desire to kill yourself is
to have always something to do.
OPINION rules the world, and wise men rule opinion.
All nature is nothing but mathematics.
TO MAKE a good book, one must have a prodigious length of
time and the patience of a saint.
The human race would be too unhappy if it vere as common
to commit atrocious things as it is to believe them.
Most men die without having lived.
Who ought to be the king's favorite? The people.
I Know no great men except those who have rendered great
services to the human race.
Yes, without doubt, peace is of more value than truth; that is
to say, we must not vex our neighbor by arguments: but it is
necessary to seek the soul's peace in truth, and to tread under
foot the monstrous errors which would perturb it, and render it
the prey of knaves.
CONTROVERSY never convinced any man; men can be influenced
by making them think for themselves, by seeming to doubt with
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15483
them, by leading them as if by the hand, without their perceiving
it. A good book lent to them, which they read at leisure, pro-
duces upon them surer effects, because they do not then blush to
be subjugated by the superior reason of an antagonist.
WE ARE in this world only to do good in it.
The more you know, the less sure you are.
COUNTRY LIFE
From the Correspondence)
TO MADAME DU DEFFAND
I
OWE life and health to the course I have taken. If I dared
I would believe myself wise, so happy am I. I have lived
only since the day I chose my retreat; every other kind of
life would now be insupportable to me. Paris is necessary to
you; to me it would be deadly: every one must remain in his
element. I am very sorry that mine is incompatible with yours,
and it is assuredly my only affliction. You wished also to try the
country: it is not suitable to you. The taste for proprietorship
and labor is absolutely necessary when you live in the country.
I have very extensive possessions, which I cultivate. I make
more account of your drawing-room than of my grain-fields and
my pastures; but it was my destiny to end my career between
drills, cows, and Genevese.
To DUPONT
VAST rustic house, with wagons loaded with the spoils of the
A
lars of oak which sustain the whole frame are placed at
equal distances upon pedestals of stone; long stables are seen on
the right and on the left. Fifty cows, properly fastened, occupy
one side, with their calves; the horses and oxen are on the other
side: their fodder falls into their racks from immense mows above.
The floors where the grain is threshed are in the middle; and
you know that all the animals lodged in their several places in
this great edifice have a lively sense that the forage, the hay, the
## p. 15484 (#434) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
oats, which it contains, belong to them of right. To the south
of these beautiful monuments of agriculture are the poultry-yards
and sheepfolds; to the north are the presses, store-rooms, fruit-
houses; to the east are the abodes of the manager and thirty
servants; toward the west extend large meadows, pastured and
fertilized by all the animals, companions of the labor of man.
The trees of the orchard, loaded with fruits, small and great, are
still another source of wealth. Four or five hundred beehives
are set up near a little stream which waters this orchard. The
bees give to the possessor a considerable harvest of honey and
wax, without his troubling himself with all the fables which are
told of that industrious creature; without endeavoring in vain to
learn whether that nation lives under the rule of a pretended
queen who presents her subjects with sixty to eighty thousand
children. There are some avenues of mulberry-trees as far as
the eye can reach, the leaves of which nourish those precious
worms which are not less useful than the bees. A part of this
vast inclosure is formed by an impenetrable rampart of haw-
thorn, neatly clipped, which rejoices the senses of smell and
sight.
VOLTAIRE TO ROUSSEAU
From the “Correspondence)
I
HAVE received, monsieur, your new book against the human
race; I thank you for it. You will please men
to whom
you tell truths which concern them, but you will not correct
them. One could not paint in stronger colors the horrors of
human society, from which our ignorance and our weakness ex-
pect so many consolations, No one has ever employed so much
intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to
walk on four paws, when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it
is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortu-
nately, that it is impossible for me to resume it; and I leave that
natural mode of walking to those who are more worthy of it than
Nor can I embark to go among the savages of Can-
ada: first because the maladies with which I am afflicted detain
me near the greatest physician in Europe, and I should not find
the same succor among the Missouris; secondly because war has
you and I.
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15485
broken out in that country, and the example of our nation has
rendered the savages almost as wicked as we are. I limit myself
to be a peaceful savage in the solitude which I have chosen in
your country, where you ought to be.
I agree with you that literature and the sciences have some.
times been the cause of much evil. The enemies of Tasso ren-
dered his life a tissue of misfortunes; those of Galileo made him
groan in prison at the age of seventy years for having known
the motion of the earth, and what was more shameful, they com-
pelled him to retract. No sooner had your friends begun the
Dictionnaire Encyclopédique than those who presumed to be
their rivals called them deists, atheists, and even Jansenists.
If I dared to reckon myself among those whose labors have
been recompensed by persecution alone, I should show you men
in a rage to destroy me, from the day that I gave the tragedy of
'Edipe”; I should show you a library of ridiculous calumnies
printed against me; an ex-Jesuit priest, whom I saved from capi-
tal punishment, paying me by defamatory libels for the service
which I had rendered him; I should show you a man still more
culpable, printing my own work upon the Age of Louis XIV. ,'
with notes, in which the most brutal ignorance poured forth the
most infamous impostures;
I should show you society in-
fested with this kind of men, unknown to all antiquity, who, not
being able to embrace an honest calling, whether that of workman
or of lackey, and knowing unfortunately how to read and write,
become courtiers of literature, live upon our works, steal manu-
scripts, disfigure them, and sell them;
I should paint you
ingratitude, imposture, and rapine pursuing me for forty years,
even to the foot of the Alps, even to the brink of my tomb.
But what shall I conclude from all these tribulations ? That I
ought not to complain; that Pope, Descartes, Bayle, Camoens,
and a hundred others, have experienced the same injustice and
greater; that this destiny is that of almost all those whom the
love of letters has too powerfully influenced.
Confess, monsieur, that these are trifling private misfortunes,
which the community scarcely perceives. What does it matter
to the human race that some hornets pillage the honey of some
bees? Men of letters make a great noise about all these little
quarrels; the rest of the world does not know them, or laughs at
them.
.
.
## p. 15486 (#436) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
Of all the bitternesses spread over human life, these are the
least fatal. The thorns attached to literature and to the reputa-
tion which it gives are flowers compared with other evils, which
in all times have overwhelmed the earth. Admit that neither
Cicero, nor Varro, nor Lucretius, nor Virgil, nor Horace, had the
least share in the proscriptions. Marius was an ignorant man;
the barbarous Sylla, the debauched Antony, the imbecile Lepidus,
read little of Plato and Socrates; and as to that tyrant without
courage, Octavius Cepias, surnamed so unworthily Augustus, he
was merely a detestable assassin while he was deprived of the
society of men of letters.
Confess that Petrarch and Boccaccio did not cause the intes-
tine troubles of Italy; confess that the badinage of Marot did not
cause the massacre of St. Bartholomew, nor the tragedy of The
Cid the troubles of the Fronde. Great crimes have seldom been
committed except by celebrated ignoramuses. That which makes,
and will always make, of this world a vale of tears, is the insa-
tiable cupidity and the indomitable pride of men, from Thomas
Kouli-kan who did not know how to read, to a clerk of the tax
office who knows only how to cipher. Literature nourishes the
soul, rectifies it, consoles it: it was of service to you, monsieur,
at the time when you wrote against it. You are like Achilles
who inveighed against glory, and like Father Malebranche whose
brilliant imagination wrote against imagination.
If any one ought to complain of literature, it is myself, since
at all times and in all places it has served to persecute me: but
we must love it, despite the abuse which is made of it, as we
must love society, the agreeableness of which is corrupted by so
many wicked men; as we must love our country, whatever injust-
ice we suffer in it; as we must love and serve the Supreme
Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so
often dishonor his worship.
M. Chappuis informs me that your health is very bad: you
should come to re-establish it in your native air, to enjoy liberty,
to drink with me the milk of our cows, and browse our herbs.
I am very philosophically, and with the most tender esteem, etc.
## p. 15487 (#437) ##########################################
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15487
THE DRAMA
From a Letter to an Italian Nobleman
Thea
He theatre is the chef-d'oeuvre of society. Men in general
are compelled to labor at the mechanic arts, and their time
is happily occupied; while men of rank and wealth have
the misfortune to be abandoned to themselves, to the ennui insep-
arable from idleness, to gaming more fatal than ennui, to petty
factions more dangerous than play and idleness.
What is the true drama ? It is the art of teaching virtue and
good manners by action and dialogue. How cold in comparison
is the eloquence of monologue! Have we retained a single phrase
of thirty or forty thousand moral discourses? And do we not
know by heart admirable sentences placed with art in interesting
dialogues ? «Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. ”
It is this which makes one of the great merits of Terence; it
is that of our own good tragedies, of our good comedies. They
have not excited a profitless admiration; they have often corrected
men. I have seen a prince pardon an injury after a representa-
tion of the clemency of Augustus. A princess, who had despised
her mother, went away to throw herself at her feet after wit-
nessing the scene in which Rhodope asks her mother's forgive-
ness. A man well known sought reconciliation with his wife
after seeing Préjudice à la Mode. ' I saw the proudest man in
the world become modest after the comedy of the Glorieux. '
And I could cite more than six sons of distinguished families
whom the comedy of the Prodigal Son reformed. If our bank-
ers are no longer coarse, if the people of the court are vain dan-
dies no longer, if doctors have abjured the robe, the cap, and
consultations in Latin, if some pedants have become men,- to
what are
we indebted for it ? To the theatre,- to the theatre
alone.
What pity ought we not, then, to have for those who wage
war upon this first of the literary arts; who imagine that we
ought to judge the theatre of to-day by the trestles of our ages
of ignorance; and who confound Sophocles, Menander, Varius, and
Terence, with Tabarin and Punch! But how much more to be
pitied are they who admit Punch and Tabarin, while rejecting
Polyeucte,' 'Athalie,' Zaïre,' and 'Alzire'! Such are the incon-
sistencies into which the human mind falls every day.
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VOLTAIRE
Let us pardon the deaf who speak against music, the blind
who hate beauty: such persons are less enemies of society, less
conspirators to destroy its consolation and its charm, than the
unfortunate beings to whom nature has denied certain organs.
I have had the pleasure of seeing at my country-house
'Alzire performed,- that tragedy wherein Christianity and the
rights of man triumph equally. I have seen Mérope's maternal
love bringing tears without the aid of the love of gallantry.
Such subjects move the rudest soul, as they do the most refined;
and if the common people were in the habit of witnessing such
spectacles of human worth, there would be fewer souls gross
and obdurate. It was such exhibitions that made the Athenians
a superior nation. Their workmen did not spend upon indecent
farces the money which should have nourished their families; but
the magistrates, during their celebrated festivals, summoned the
whole nation to representations which taught virtue and the love
of country. The plays which are given among us are but a
feeble imitation of that magnificence; but after all, they do pre-
serve some idea of it. They are the most beautiful education
which we can give to youth, the noblest recreation after labor,
the best instruction for all orders of citizens; they furnish almost
the only mode of getting people together for the purpose of ren-
dering them social beings.
TO THEURIET
YES
ES, I will scold you till I have cured you of your indolence.
You live as if man had been created only to sup; and you
exist only between 10 P. M. and 2 A. M. When you are old
and deserted, will it be a consolation to you to say, “Formerly I
drank champagne in good company »?
GREATNESS AND UTILITY
From (Letters on the English)
W"
HOEVER arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote prov-
ince, with money to spend and a name in ac or ille, can
talk about “a man like me,” “a man of my quality," and
hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The merchant again so
## p. 15489 (#439) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15489
constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain that he is
fool enough to blush for it. Yet is there not a question which
is the more useful to a State,- a thickly bepowdered lord who
knows exactly at what time the King rises and what time he
goes to bed, and gives himself mighty airs of greatness while he
plays the part of a slave in a minister's ante-room; or the mer-
chant who enriches his country, gives orders from his counting-
house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of a
whole globe?
Not long ago a distinguished company were discussing the
trite and frivolous question who was the greatest man, Cæsar,
Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell. Somebody answered that it
was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. He was right; for if true great-
ness consists in having received from heaven a powerful under-
standing, and in using it to enlighten one's self and all others,
then such a one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with once
in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.
It is to him
who masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who
enslave men by violence; it is to him who understands the uni-
verse, not to those who disfigure it, - that we owe our reverence!
TO A LADY
wonder
Yº Though eighty
years have left their chill)
My superannuated Muse,
That hums a quavering measure still.
In wintry wolds a tuft of bloom
Will sometimes through the snowdrifts smile,
Consoling nature in her gloom,
But withering in a little while.
A bird will trill a chirping note,
Though summer's leaves and light be o'er,
But melody forsakes his throat -
He sings the song of love no more.
'Tis thus still my harp entune,
Whose strings no more my touch obey;
'Tis thus I lift my voice, though soon
That voice will silent be for aye.
XXVI–969
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VOLTAIRE
Tibullus to his mistress said,
“I would thus breathe my last adieu,
My eyes still with your glances fed,
My dying hand caressing you. ”
But when this world grows all remote,
When with the life the soul must go,
Can yet the eye on Delia dote ?
The hand a lover's touch bestow ?
Death changes, as we pass his gate,
What in our days of strength we knew:
Who would with joy anticipate
At his last gasp love's rendezvous ?
And Delia, in her turn, no less
Must pass into eternal night,
Oblivious of her loveliness,
Oblivious of her youth's delight.
We enter life, we play our part,
We die - nor learn the reason here;
From out the unknown void we start,
And whither bound ? — God knows, my dear.
Translation of Edward Bruce Hamley.
## p. 15491 (#441) ##########################################
15491
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
(1587-1679)
. .
HE long life of Joost van der Vondel, Holland's greatest poet,
was contemporaneous with the most brilliant period of the
Gelo Dutch renaissance. As triumphant England in Elizabeth's
reign brought forth mighty children, so the new-born Republic of the
United Provinces in its turn gave birth to such men as Hooft and
Vondel, Brederoo and Huygens. The background of Vondel's life was
the city of Amsterdam, whose society, representative perhaps of the
most assertive forces in Holland's intellectual and spiritual develop-
ment, was expressing its intense vitality in
the pursuit of literature, of art, in the heats
of religious controversy, seeking in a thou-
sand ways to give metropolitan embodiment
to the new-born national consciousness. To
this city Vondel 'had come as a boy. He
had been born at Cologne, November 17th,
1587; his maternal grandfather, Peter Kran-
ken, had taken no mean rank among the
poets of Brabant. His parents were Ana-
baptists, who moved from city to city in the
pursuit of religious freedom, settling finally
at Amsterdam.
Vondel, being designed for a tradesman, Joost VAN DER VONDEL
received but an indifferent education; his
innate love of learning drawing him, however, to independent study,
he was throughout his long life a student, seeking his inspiration at
the fountain-heads of culture. In 1612 he produced his first drama,
(Het Pascha, the subject of which was the Exodus of the Children
of Israel. After the approved Dutch model, it was written in Alex-
andrines, in five acts, with choral interludes between. It gave little
evidence of the genius which was to produce (Lucifer.
For the next
eight years Vondel did no original work, being seemingly satisfied
with the leisurely development of his powers. The death of Brederoo,
Holland's greatest comic dramatist, left a high place vacant, which
Vondel was soon to fill. In 1620 he published a second tragedy,
Jerusalem Laid Desolate'; and in 1625 a third, which secured him his
## p. 15492 (#442) ##########################################
15492
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
fame. Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence,' owed its notoriety as
much perhaps to the nature of its subject as to its intrinsic merits;
appearing as it did at a time when all Holland was palpitating with
religious controversy. In the hero of the play, Palamedes, the people
of Amsterdam recognized Barneveldt; whose support of the Arminian
doctrine had led to his execution in 1618 through the powerful influ-
ence of the Calvinists, headed by Prince Maurice of Nassau. Von-
del at once became popular with the highest circles in Amsterdam
and Holland. The obscure tradesman obtained fame in a night.
Plunging into the controversy, he now began to wage war against the
Counter-Remonstrants, as the Calvinists were termed; launching at
them a great number of satirical pamphlets in verse, among the most
noted of which are (The Harpoon,' 'The Horse-Comb,' and 'The
Decretum Horrible. '
In 1638 an event occurred which diverted the genius of Vondel
into another channel. The Dutch Academy, founded in 1617 as in
the main a dramatic guild, had later coalesced with the two noted
chambers of rhetoric, the “Eglantine” and the White Lavender. ”
In 1638, on the strength of these reinforcements, it erected what it
had long needed, a large public theatre. On the opening night a
new tragedy by Vondel was presented, -'Gysbreght van Aemstel,'
founded upon incidents in early Dutch history. For many years fol-
lowing, Vondel wrote Scriptural pieces for the theatre in the heroic
style; among them, “Solomon' (Samson,' 'Adonijah,'' (Adam in Ban-
ishment, and Noah, or the Destruction of the Old World. In 1654
appeared his great masterpiece, Lucifer'; a tragedy of sublime con-
ception, to which a peculiar interest is attached as being supposedly
the work which suggested to Milton the subject of Paradise Lost. '
Milton is known to have studied the Dutch language about the time
of the production of "Lucifer'; there are verbal correspondences be-
tween the two plays. The theory of Milton's indebtedness to Vondel
has been considered by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, by Edmund Gosse,
and by Mr. George Edmundson in a monograph entitled Milton and
Vondel. ' Vondel's (Lucifer, however, is concerned with the fall of
Lucifer and not with the fall of Adam.
The years following the production of his mightiest tragedy were
full of labor and sorrow to Vondel. Reverses had come upon him;
from 1658 to 1668 he was obliged to work as a clerk in a bank, a
servant of hard taskmasters, who were incapable of appreciation of
or reverence for his genius. In his eightieth year he was liberated
from this slavery by the city of Amsterdam, from which he received
a pension. Until his death in 1679 Vondel continued to write, his.
literary energy being seemingly inexhaustible. Among his works
of this period is a rendition of the Metamorphoses) of Ovid into
## p. 15493 (#443) ##########################################
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
15493
Dutch verse. His entire writings fill nine quarto volumes, embracing
almost every conceivable subject and every well-known verse form.
Vondel remains the most powerful, and perhaps the most represent-
ative, poet of Holland, whose writings gave adequate embodiment to
the manifold forces of her golden age.
TO GEERAERT VOSSIUS
ON The Loss of His SON
Hy mourn'st thou, Vossius? why has pain
Its furrows to thy pale brow given ?
Seek not to hold thy son from heaven!
'Tis heaven that draws,-resign him, then!
WY
Yes, banish every futile tear;
And offer to its Source above,
In gratitude and humble love,
The choicest of thy treasures here.
We murmur if the bark should strand;
But not when richly laden she
Comes from the wild and raging sea,
Within a haven safe to land.
We murmur if the balm be shed:
Yes, murmur for the odor's sake;
But not whene'er the glass may break,
If that which filled it be not fled.
He strives in vain who seeks to stay
The bounding waters in their course,
When hurled from rocks with giant force,
Towards some calm and spacious bay.
Thus turns the earthly globe; – though o'er
His infant's corse a father mourn,
Or child bedew its parents' urn,
Death passes neither house nor door.
Death nor for gay and blooming youth,
Nor peevish age, his stroke defers;
He chains the lips of orators,
Nor cares for wisdom, worth, or truth.
## p. 15494 (#444) ##########################################
15494
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
Blest is the mind that, fixed and free,
To wanton pleasures scorns to yield,
And wards as with a pliant shield
The arrows of adversity.
Translation of Sir John Bowring.
FROM LUCIFER)
[The scene of the drama is laid throughout in heaven. The actors are the
angels. Lucifer has sent Apollyon to Eden to view the new-made man and
woman, and to inquire into their state. Apollyon thus describes Eve. )
EARCH all our angel bands, in beauty well arrayed,
Sof a
maid.
Beelzebub -
It seems you burn in love for this new womankind!
Apollyon —
My great wing-feather in that amorous flame, I find
I've singed! 'Twas hard indeed to soar up from below,
To sweep, and reach the verge of Angel-borough so;
I parted, but with pain, and three times looked around:
There shines no seraph form in all the ethereal bound
Like hers, whose hanging hair, in golden glory, seems
To rush down from her head in a torrent of sunbeams,
And flow along her back. So clad in light and grace,
Stately she treads, and charms the daylight with her face:
Let pearls and mother o’pearl their claims before her furl,
Her brightness passes far the beauty of a pearl!
Beelzebub -
But what can profit man this beauty that must fade,
And wither like a flower, and shortly be decayed ?
[Lucifer's jealousy of the new race being aroused, he thus addresses bis
attendant angels. ]
Swift spirits, let us stay the chariot of the dawn;
For high enough, in sooth, God's morning star is drawn, -
Yea, driven up high enough! 'tis time for my great car
To yield before the advent of this double star,
That rises from below, and seeks, in sudden birth,
To tarnish heaven's gold with splendor from the earth!
## p. 15495 (#445) ##########################################
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
15495
Embroider no more crowns on Lucifer's attire,
And gild his forehead not with eminent dawn-fire
Of the morning star enrayed, that rapt archangels prize;
For see another blaze in the light of God arise !
The stars grow faint before the eyes of men below;
'Tis night with angels, and the heavens forget to glow.
[The loyal angels, perceiving that a change has come over a number of
their order, inquire into its cause. )
Why seem the courteous angel-faces
So red? Why streams the holy light
So red upon our sight,
Through clouds and mists from mournful places ?
What vapor dares to blear
The pure, unspotted, clear
And luminous sapphire ?
The flame, the blaze, the fire
Of the bright Omnipotence ?
Why does the splendid light of God
Glow, deepened to the hue of blood,
That late, in flowing hence,
Gladdened all hearts ?
[The chorus answers. )
When we, enkindled and uplifted
By Gabriel's trumpet, in new ways
Began to chant God's praise,
The perfume of rose-gardens drifted
Through paths of Paradise,
And such a dew and such a spice
Distilled, that all the flowery grass
Rejoiced. But Envy soon, alas!
From the underworld came sneaking.
A mighty crowd of spirits, pale
And dumb and wan, came, tale on tale,
Displeased, some new thing seeking;
With brows that crushed each scowling eye,
And happy foreheads bent and wrinkled :
The doves of heaven, here on high,
Whose innocent pinions sweetly twinkled,
Are struck with mourning, one and all,
As though the heavens were far too small
## p. 15496 (#446) ##########################################
15496
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
For them, now Adam's been elected,
And such a crown for man selected.
This blemish blinds the light of grace,
And dulls the flaming of God's face.
[Beelzebub, feigning submission to Deity, thus addresses the rebel angels. )
Oh, cease from wailing; rend your badges and your robes
No longer without cause, but make your faces bright,
And let your foreheads flash, O children of the light!
The shrill sweet throats, that thank the Deity with song,
Behold, and be ashamed that ye have mixed so long
Discords and bastard tones with music so divine.
[They appeal from him to Lucifer. ]
Forbid it, Lucifer, nor suffer that our ranks
Be mortified so low and sink without a crime,
While man, above us raised, may flash and beam sublime
In the very core of light, from which we seraphim
Pass quivering, full of pain, and fade like shadows dim. . . .
We swear, by force, beneath thy glorious flag combined,
To set thee on the throne for Adam late designed !
We swear, with one accord, to stay thine arm forever:
Lift high thy battle-axe! our wounded rights deliver!
[Gabriel relates to Michael the effect which the knowledge of the rebellion
produced at the throne of God himself. ]
I saw God's very gladness with a cloud of woe
O’ershadowed; and there burst a flame out of the gloom
That pierced the eye of light, and hung, a brand of doom,
Ready to fall in rage. I heard the mighty cause
Where Mercy pleaded long with God's all-righteous laws;
Grace, soothly wise and meek, with Justice arguing well.
I saw the cherubim, who on their faces fell,
And cried out, “Mercy, mercy! God, let Justice rest!
But even as that shrill sound to his great footstool pressed,
And God seemed almost moved to pardon and to smile,
Up curled the odious smoke of incense harsh and vile,
Burned down below in praise of Lucifer, who rode
With censers and bassoons and many a choral ode:
The heaven withdrew its face from such impieties,
Cursèd of God and spirits and all the hierarchies.
## p. 15497 (#447) ##########################################
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
15497
[The rebel angels form themselves into an army. They fight against
Michael and his host, and are conquered. The victorious angels sing. )
Blest be the hero's hour,
Who smote the godless power,
And his might, and his light, and his standard,
Down toppling like a tower:
His crown was near God's own,
But from his lofty throne,
With his might, into night he hath vanished;
God's name must shine alone.
Outblazed the uproar fell,
When valorous Michaël
With the brand in his hand quenched the passion
Of spirits that dared rebel.
He holds God's banner now;
With laurels crown his brow!
Peace shall reign here again, and her forehead
Shall vanquished Discord bow. .
Amid the conquering throng
Praises to God belong;
Honor bring to the King of all kingdoms!
He gives us stuff for song.
(After this, Gabriel enters bearing the tidings of man's fall. ]
Gabriel —
Alas! alas! alas! to adverse fortune bow!
What do ye here? In vain are songs of triumph now;
In vain of spoil of arms and gonfalons ye boast!
Michael
What hear I, Gabriel ?
Gabriel -
Oh, Adam is fallen and lost!
The father and the stock of all the human race
Most grievously hath erred, and lies in piteous case.
(Michael sends Uriel to drive the guilty pair out of Eden, and then thus
pronounces the doom of the rebel angels. ]
Ozias, to whose fist the very Godhead gave
The heavy hammer framed of diamond beaten out,
And chains of ruby, clamps, and teeth of metal stout, -
Go hence, and take and bind the hellish host that rage,
Lion and dragon fell, whose banners dared to wage
War with us thus. Speed swift on their accursèd flight,
And bind them neck and claw, and fetter them with might.
## p. 15498 (#448) ##########################################
15498
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
The key which to the gates of their foul pit was fitted
Is, Azarias, now into thy care committed;
Go hence, and thrust therein all that our power defied.
Maceda, take this torch I to your zeal confide,
And Aame the sulphur-pool in the centre of the world:
There torture Lucifer, and leave his body curled
In everlasting fire, with many a prince accursed;
Where Sorrow, wretched Pain, numb Horror, Hunger, Thirst,
Despair without a hope, and Conscience with her sting,
May measure out their ineed of endless suffering.
Translation from the Cornbill Magazine.
## p. 15498 (#449) ##########################################
## p. 15498 (#450) ##########################################
Pop
RICHARD WAGNER.
## p. 15498 (#451) ##########################################
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## p. 15498 (#452) ##########################################
WAGNER
## p. 15499 (#453) ##########################################
15499
RICHARD WAGNER
(1813–1883)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
O NAME in the history of music occupies at the same time in
the annals of literature so high a place, and with so secure
a title, as that of Richard Wagner. He was a philosopher,
who, with a nervous incisive prose which almost rivaled that of his
master Schopenhauer, was able to set forth the theories by which his
creative genius was guided; and he was a poet of supreme eminence
in a field quite his own, reconstructing in form and spirit the splen-
did conceptions of the legendary ages, and infusing into the charac-
ters of that heroic time the more complicated emotions of our modern
days. He displayed a power of dramatic construction, and a depth
of poetic imagination, that rank him among the great romantic poets
of the nineteenth century. When Schopenhauer read the text of
the Nibelungen' trilogy he exclaimed, «The fellow is a poet, not a
musician;) and again, «He ought to hang music on the nail: he has
more genius for poetry. ” But the might of Wagner's musical genius
long obscured the poet's fame. Critics continued to sneer at the
lines long after they had conceded the merit of the scores; but it is
a crowning tribute to the greatness of the poet-composer that now
a whole literature has arisen around his operas as poems, and the
process
still
goes on. It is a remarkable coincidence that in the
very town of Bayreuth, where since 1876 the Wagner festivals have
been held, Jean Paul Richter in a preface to a book of E. T. W. Hoff-
mann's wrote the half-prophetic words: «Hitherto Apollo has always
distributed the poetic gift with his right hand, the musical with his
left, to two persons so widely apart that up to this hour we are still
waiting for the man who will create a genuine opera by writing both
its text and its music. ”
In the very year in which these words were written, Richard
Wagner was born in Leipsic on May 22d, 1813. It is not to the pres-
ent purpose to follow his career in biographical detail. The fatuous
prophecies of criticism which followed him through life began when
his music-teacher announced in disgust that he would never amount
to anything. The creative impulse in him was early manifested
when he wrote an ambitious tragedy, in which, having killed off all
but one of forty-one characters, he was obliged to have some of them
>>
## p. 15500 (#454) ##########################################
RICHARD WAGNER
15500
return as ghosts in order to save the last act from being a mono-
logue. When he was sixteen he turned to music, and after a week's
study he found its difficulties so great that he resolved to become a
musician. Difficulties stimulated his energy. The germ of the ideas
by which Wagner subsequently revolutionized the operatic stage lay
already in the mind of Carl Maria von Weber, who, as early as 1817,
had begun a campaign against the empty forms of the Italian-French
opera. In Weber's Euryanthe) Wagner found suggestion and inspi-
ration; and in 1843 he succeeded to the position that Weber had
held in Dresden, of court capellmeister. The commonplaceness of his
early operas, and the Meyerbeer-like blatancy of (Rienzi,' was less a
concession to public taste than the result of an irresistible creative
impulse with artistic aims as yet undefined. But when these aims
became definite, never did an artist pursue his purpose with a more
relentless energy in the face of gigantic obstacles. He defied the
public taste in the midst of poverty and ridicule; the more discour-
aging his reception, the more absolute became his adherence to his
ideals. There was something victorious in his resolute nature, which,
quite apart from the originality and intrinsic beauty of his works,
made him one of the formative forces of his age.
During the days of poverty in Paris, Wagner began his series
of essays with a short story entitled A Pilgrimage to Beethoven. '
Already a new world was dawning upon him; but it was at the
time of the general revolutionary movement in Europe that he began
to publish the works which proclaimed the revolution in art. The
first was entitled Art and Revolution (1849); the much-discussed
(Art Work of the Future' appeared in the following year; and in
1851 the Communication to my Friends, and Opera and Drama. '
In these works Wagner had not yet developed the powerful prose
style of his later period: the metaphysician in him led him into what
Mr. Finck has called “sophomoric bombast," and sometimes into un-
intelligibility. To the public of that day it all appeared unintelligi-
ble. In the Communication to my Friends,' first published as a
preface to the poems of "The Flying Dutchman,' «Tannhäuser,' and
(Lohengrin,' the plan of a Nibelung festival was announced. Opera
and Drama,' the most important of these revolutionary treatises, is
in three parts: of the Opera, of the Drama, and of the Music Drama.
Of these the third part has permanent value: it is the statement of
his ideals and the programme of his life. All the arts are to be
merged into one composite but unified art work. Architecture and
painting contribute the scenery, the actor is the sculptured figure,
while poetry and music unite in drama, orchestra, and voice. .
With such ideas as these, it was obvious at once that the theatre
as then constituted must be revolutionized. Wagner fought against
(
## p. 15501 (#455) ##########################################
RICHARD WAGNER
15501
the degradation of the theatre to a mere place of entertainment. The
relations of art to public life were the burden of his argument. The
great Wagner strife was thus of much wider scope than the musical
questions involved. The national drama, or as Wagner called it, true
German art, was to be the highest expression of the culture and art-
istic capabilities of the German people; and this art work, Wagner,
by his own unaided genius, stood ready to create. A self-confidence
so colossal moved to astonishment and scornful laughter; but the
battle has been won, and the only echoes of the days of strife are
the self-apologetic phrases of the former scoffers, who have slowly
become conscious that the lack lay in them, while the works of the
master exist by their own right and might. They received their con-
secration in the pilgrimage temple of Bayreuth in 1876 and 1882.
That the extravagant theories of Wagner, with their contraven-
tion of artistic limitations and their socialistic coloring, have not been
carried out in their entirety, is perfectly true. The genius of the
artist was superior to the reasoning of the theorizer.
What Wagner
did, viewed from the standpoint of literature, was to create a national
music-drama, based upon ancient Germanic traditions and legends,
about which he threw the gorgeous mantle of his harmonies. In
addition to the beauty of the poetic conceptions, the literary artist
appears in the perfect adaptation of each phrase and word and vowel,
not only to the dramatic expression of the thought but to the needs
of the human voice as well. His method of treating themes asso-
ciates them inseparably with certain thoughts, so that the words
come involuntarily to the mind: and in the midst of all the action,
the orchestra speaks an articulate language; suggests, warns, alarms,
melts, threatens, or moves to tears of sympathy or joy,- produces in
short that “demonic) emotion, the effect beyond all for which the
reason can account, the effect which Goethe considered the highest
achievement of all art. Indeed, the music will not yield the whole
secret of its charm until the words, the poetic thought, and the entire
dramatic conception, have become completely a part of the hearer's
mental equipment. To this quality of Wagner's works the art of the
poet contributed as much as the genius of the composer.
For the material through which to give national expression to the
culture of the German people, Wagner turned, like a true poet of
Romanticism, to the heroic traditions of his race. In the Flying
Dutchman' it is a sombre legend of the sea; in "Tannhäuser' it is
the famous contest of the thirteenth century when the Minnesingers
strove together in song in the hall of the Wartburg; in Lohengrin'
and (Parsifal' it is the mediaval tradition of the Holy Grail; in
(Tristan und Isolde it is the most popular love tale of the Middle
Ages; and finally in Der Ring des Nibelungen' (The Nibelungs'
## p. 15502 (#456) ##########################################
15502
RICHARD WAGNER
Ring), Wagner has combined in a colossal work of wonderful unity
and beauty the most ancient poetic legends of the Germanic peoples,
the legends out of which seven centuries before Wagner's time some
unnamed poet created Germany's most national epic,- the Nibe-
lungenlied. To have created anew these splendid conceptions of
the poetic past, is not the least of Wagner's merit. His works, in
addition to their æsthetic value, have a value of the moral sort as
well: in them speaks the deep soul of a historic people, with its moral
earnestness, its childlike love of song and legend, its martial strength
and its manly tenderness.
The central theme of all these poems is love. It is through Sen-
ta's love, faithful unto death, that the curse is removed from the Fly-
ing Dutchman. Through the power of Elizabeth's pure passion and
incessant prayers, Tannhäuser is at last delivered from the bondage
of the Venusberg. In Lohengrin,' love is the manifestation of the
Divine mercy; and a knight of the Holy Grail comes, swan-drawn,
from his inaccessible temple to rescue
a maiden in distress. He
becomes her husband and protector, but Elsa, tempted of evil, puts
the fatal question: her faith was insufficient, and her lord returns to
the service of the Grail.
Tristan und Isolde' is the apotheosis of earthly passion. Into this
Celtic legend, of which Gottfried von Strassburg in the thirteenth
century had made a German epic, Wagner has introduced a modern
psychology; and he has given the poem a new significance. He
has retained the love potion, but he has not made it the cause of
the lover's passion. They loved before, but Tristan is resolutely
faithful to King Mark; and Isolde is wounded to the quick that
Tristan should have wooed her in another's ame.
The potion sym-
bolizes the irresistible power of a love that bears down all obstacles
and stifles all considerations. The triumph, the reconcilement, the
nirvana of their passion, is attained only in death. This work must
be numbered among the greatest love poems of literature.
And so too in the Nibelungen' trilogy, love is not only the theme,
but in the end the force that conquers even in death. In (Rhein-
gold' the power of love is contrasted with the lust for gold; and
here the keynote is struck, and the tragedy set in motion. The love
and faithfulness of Siegmund and Sieglinde in the Walküre' show
Brünnhilde for the first time what love can do; and when Siegfried,
in the idyllic fairy tale that bears his name, awakens her from her
long sleep, she throws aside her Walküren nature for the joy of
human love. Siegfried is the free fate-defying man, triumphing
over the powers of darkness and destiny; to him Wotan, ever seek-
ing guidance from the mother of wisdom, is forced to yield. In the
'Götterdämmerung' the god awaits the fullness of time, while the
## p. 15503 (#457) ##########################################
RICHARD WAGNER
15503
guileless Siegfried falls a victim to the wiles of man. But the end
towards which Wotan blindly strove is attained by Siegfried's death.
Brünnhilde, to whom the counsels of the gods are known, restores
the symbolic ring to the daughters of the Rhine, and in twilight the
ancient reign of the gods comes to an end. The reign of love is
proclaimed as Brünnhilde immolates herself upon Siegfried's funeral
pyre.
Canada subsists and attains old age, not less than the English
landlord with fifty thousand guineas a year. But who would ever
compare the country of the Iroquois to England ?
Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug enact
sumptuary laws: they are quite right. The poor must not exceed
their means; but I have somewhere read that, with some harm,
luxury on the whole does great good.
If by luxury you mean excess, let us at once admit that ex-
cess is pernicious,- in abstinence as well as in gluttony, in parsi.
mony as in profusion. In my own village, where the soil is
meagre, the imposts heavy, and the prohibition against a man's
exporting the corn he has himself sown and reaped, intolerable,
there is hardly a cultivator who is not well clothed, and who has
not sufficient warmth and food. Should this cultivator plow in
his best clothes, and with his hair dressed and powdered, he
would display the most absurd luxury; but were a rich citizen of
Paris or London to appear at the play in the dress of this peas-
ant, he would exhibit the grossest, the most ridiculous parsimony.
«Some certain mean in all things may be found,
To mark our virtues' and our vices' bound. ”
On the invention of scissors, what was not said of those who
pared their nails, and cut off the hair that was hanging down
over their eyes? They were doubtless regarded as prodigals and
## p. 15480 (#430) ##########################################
15480
VOLTAIRE
coxcombs, buying an extravagant instrument fit only to spoil the
work of the Creator. What a sin to pare the horn which God
himself made to grow at our finger-ends! It was an insult to
Divinity! With shirts and socks it was far worse. With what
wrath and indignation did the old counselors, who had never
worn socks, exclaim against the young magistrates who encour-
aged so fatal a luxury!
PASSAGES FROM THE PAMPHLETS
LO
OVE truth, but pardon error. The mortal who goes astray
is still a man and thy brother. Be wise for thyself alone;
compassionate for him. Achieve thine own welfare by bless-
ing others.
TAKE revenge upon a rival by surpassing him.
To DESIRE all is the mark of a fool. Excess is his portion.
Moderation is the treasure of the wise: he knows how to control
his tastes, his labors, his pleasures.
Work is often the father of pleasure. I pity the man over-
whelmed with the weight of his own leisure. Happiness is a
good that nature sells us.
ONE day some mice said to one another, How charming
"
is this world! What an empire is ours! This palace so superb
was built for us; from all eternity God made for us these large
holes. Do you see those fat hams under that dim ceiling? they
were created there for us by Nature's hands; those mountains
of lard, inexhaustible aliment, will be ours till the end of time.
Yes, we are, great God, if our sages tell us the truth, the master-
piece, the end, the aim, of all thy works! Cats are dangerous
and prompt to devour, but it is to instruct and correct us! ”
MIRACLES are good; but to relieve a brother, to draw a
friend from the depths of misery, to pardon the virtues of our
enemies – these are greater miracles.
The secret of wearying your reader is to tell him everything.
## p. 15481 (#431) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15481
The true virtue then is beneficence”; a new word in the
French language, but the whole universe ought to cherish the
idea.
Souls communicate with souls, and can measure one another
without need of an intermediate body. It is only the greatness
or the worth of a soul that ought to frighten or intimidate
a
us. To fear or to respect the body and its accessories - force,
beauty, royalty, rank, office-- is pure imbecility. Men are born
equal and die equal. Let us respect the virtue, the merit of
their souls, and pity the imperfections of these souls.
DOUBTLESS we should by prudence avoid the evil which that
physical force [of rulers] can do us, as we should guard ourselves
against a crowned bull, an enthroned monkey, a savage dog, let
loose upon us.
Let us beware of such. Let us even endeavor,
if possible, to moderate them, to soften them; but this sentiment
is very different from the esteem and respect which we owe to
souls.
Having it clearly in your heart that all men are equal, and
in your head that the exterior distinguishes them, you can get
on very well in the world.
BELIEVE that in his eternal wisdom the Most High has, with
his own hand, engraved at the bottom of thy heart natural reli-
gion. Believe that the native candor of thy soul will not be the
object of God's eternal hate. Believe that before his throne, in
all times and in all places, the heart of the just person is pre-
cious. Believe that a modest bonze, a charitable dervish, finds
favor in his eyes sooner than a pitiless Jansenist or an ambitious
pontiff. God judges us according to our virtues, not our sacri-
fices.
AFTER all, it is right to give every possible form to our soul.
It is a flame that God has intrusted to us: we are bound to feed
it with all that we find most precious. We should introduce into
our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door of the
soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings: so long
as it does not all go in pell-mell, there is plenty of room for
everything
## p. 15482 (#432) ##########################################
15482
VOLTAIRE
One who has many witnesses of his death can die with cour-
age.
I ENVY the beasts two things,-their ignorance of evil to come,
and their ignorance of what is said about them.
Does not experience prove that influence over men's minds
is gained only by offering them the difficult, nay, the impossible,
to perform or believe? Offer only things that are reasonable,
and all the world will answer, “We knew as much as that. ” But
enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the Deity as ever
armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars: and
you will win the multitude's ear, and everybody will say of you,
“He must be right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so
marvelous. »
A sure means of not yielding to the desire to kill yourself is
to have always something to do.
OPINION rules the world, and wise men rule opinion.
All nature is nothing but mathematics.
TO MAKE a good book, one must have a prodigious length of
time and the patience of a saint.
The human race would be too unhappy if it vere as common
to commit atrocious things as it is to believe them.
Most men die without having lived.
Who ought to be the king's favorite? The people.
I Know no great men except those who have rendered great
services to the human race.
Yes, without doubt, peace is of more value than truth; that is
to say, we must not vex our neighbor by arguments: but it is
necessary to seek the soul's peace in truth, and to tread under
foot the monstrous errors which would perturb it, and render it
the prey of knaves.
CONTROVERSY never convinced any man; men can be influenced
by making them think for themselves, by seeming to doubt with
## p. 15483 (#433) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15483
them, by leading them as if by the hand, without their perceiving
it. A good book lent to them, which they read at leisure, pro-
duces upon them surer effects, because they do not then blush to
be subjugated by the superior reason of an antagonist.
WE ARE in this world only to do good in it.
The more you know, the less sure you are.
COUNTRY LIFE
From the Correspondence)
TO MADAME DU DEFFAND
I
OWE life and health to the course I have taken. If I dared
I would believe myself wise, so happy am I. I have lived
only since the day I chose my retreat; every other kind of
life would now be insupportable to me. Paris is necessary to
you; to me it would be deadly: every one must remain in his
element. I am very sorry that mine is incompatible with yours,
and it is assuredly my only affliction. You wished also to try the
country: it is not suitable to you. The taste for proprietorship
and labor is absolutely necessary when you live in the country.
I have very extensive possessions, which I cultivate. I make
more account of your drawing-room than of my grain-fields and
my pastures; but it was my destiny to end my career between
drills, cows, and Genevese.
To DUPONT
VAST rustic house, with wagons loaded with the spoils of the
A
lars of oak which sustain the whole frame are placed at
equal distances upon pedestals of stone; long stables are seen on
the right and on the left. Fifty cows, properly fastened, occupy
one side, with their calves; the horses and oxen are on the other
side: their fodder falls into their racks from immense mows above.
The floors where the grain is threshed are in the middle; and
you know that all the animals lodged in their several places in
this great edifice have a lively sense that the forage, the hay, the
## p. 15484 (#434) ##########################################
15484
VOLTAIRE
oats, which it contains, belong to them of right. To the south
of these beautiful monuments of agriculture are the poultry-yards
and sheepfolds; to the north are the presses, store-rooms, fruit-
houses; to the east are the abodes of the manager and thirty
servants; toward the west extend large meadows, pastured and
fertilized by all the animals, companions of the labor of man.
The trees of the orchard, loaded with fruits, small and great, are
still another source of wealth. Four or five hundred beehives
are set up near a little stream which waters this orchard. The
bees give to the possessor a considerable harvest of honey and
wax, without his troubling himself with all the fables which are
told of that industrious creature; without endeavoring in vain to
learn whether that nation lives under the rule of a pretended
queen who presents her subjects with sixty to eighty thousand
children. There are some avenues of mulberry-trees as far as
the eye can reach, the leaves of which nourish those precious
worms which are not less useful than the bees. A part of this
vast inclosure is formed by an impenetrable rampart of haw-
thorn, neatly clipped, which rejoices the senses of smell and
sight.
VOLTAIRE TO ROUSSEAU
From the “Correspondence)
I
HAVE received, monsieur, your new book against the human
race; I thank you for it. You will please men
to whom
you tell truths which concern them, but you will not correct
them. One could not paint in stronger colors the horrors of
human society, from which our ignorance and our weakness ex-
pect so many consolations, No one has ever employed so much
intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to
walk on four paws, when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it
is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortu-
nately, that it is impossible for me to resume it; and I leave that
natural mode of walking to those who are more worthy of it than
Nor can I embark to go among the savages of Can-
ada: first because the maladies with which I am afflicted detain
me near the greatest physician in Europe, and I should not find
the same succor among the Missouris; secondly because war has
you and I.
## p. 15485 (#435) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15485
broken out in that country, and the example of our nation has
rendered the savages almost as wicked as we are. I limit myself
to be a peaceful savage in the solitude which I have chosen in
your country, where you ought to be.
I agree with you that literature and the sciences have some.
times been the cause of much evil. The enemies of Tasso ren-
dered his life a tissue of misfortunes; those of Galileo made him
groan in prison at the age of seventy years for having known
the motion of the earth, and what was more shameful, they com-
pelled him to retract. No sooner had your friends begun the
Dictionnaire Encyclopédique than those who presumed to be
their rivals called them deists, atheists, and even Jansenists.
If I dared to reckon myself among those whose labors have
been recompensed by persecution alone, I should show you men
in a rage to destroy me, from the day that I gave the tragedy of
'Edipe”; I should show you a library of ridiculous calumnies
printed against me; an ex-Jesuit priest, whom I saved from capi-
tal punishment, paying me by defamatory libels for the service
which I had rendered him; I should show you a man still more
culpable, printing my own work upon the Age of Louis XIV. ,'
with notes, in which the most brutal ignorance poured forth the
most infamous impostures;
I should show you society in-
fested with this kind of men, unknown to all antiquity, who, not
being able to embrace an honest calling, whether that of workman
or of lackey, and knowing unfortunately how to read and write,
become courtiers of literature, live upon our works, steal manu-
scripts, disfigure them, and sell them;
I should paint you
ingratitude, imposture, and rapine pursuing me for forty years,
even to the foot of the Alps, even to the brink of my tomb.
But what shall I conclude from all these tribulations ? That I
ought not to complain; that Pope, Descartes, Bayle, Camoens,
and a hundred others, have experienced the same injustice and
greater; that this destiny is that of almost all those whom the
love of letters has too powerfully influenced.
Confess, monsieur, that these are trifling private misfortunes,
which the community scarcely perceives. What does it matter
to the human race that some hornets pillage the honey of some
bees? Men of letters make a great noise about all these little
quarrels; the rest of the world does not know them, or laughs at
them.
.
.
## p. 15486 (#436) ##########################################
15486
VOLTAIRE
Of all the bitternesses spread over human life, these are the
least fatal. The thorns attached to literature and to the reputa-
tion which it gives are flowers compared with other evils, which
in all times have overwhelmed the earth. Admit that neither
Cicero, nor Varro, nor Lucretius, nor Virgil, nor Horace, had the
least share in the proscriptions. Marius was an ignorant man;
the barbarous Sylla, the debauched Antony, the imbecile Lepidus,
read little of Plato and Socrates; and as to that tyrant without
courage, Octavius Cepias, surnamed so unworthily Augustus, he
was merely a detestable assassin while he was deprived of the
society of men of letters.
Confess that Petrarch and Boccaccio did not cause the intes-
tine troubles of Italy; confess that the badinage of Marot did not
cause the massacre of St. Bartholomew, nor the tragedy of The
Cid the troubles of the Fronde. Great crimes have seldom been
committed except by celebrated ignoramuses. That which makes,
and will always make, of this world a vale of tears, is the insa-
tiable cupidity and the indomitable pride of men, from Thomas
Kouli-kan who did not know how to read, to a clerk of the tax
office who knows only how to cipher. Literature nourishes the
soul, rectifies it, consoles it: it was of service to you, monsieur,
at the time when you wrote against it. You are like Achilles
who inveighed against glory, and like Father Malebranche whose
brilliant imagination wrote against imagination.
If any one ought to complain of literature, it is myself, since
at all times and in all places it has served to persecute me: but
we must love it, despite the abuse which is made of it, as we
must love society, the agreeableness of which is corrupted by so
many wicked men; as we must love our country, whatever injust-
ice we suffer in it; as we must love and serve the Supreme
Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so
often dishonor his worship.
M. Chappuis informs me that your health is very bad: you
should come to re-establish it in your native air, to enjoy liberty,
to drink with me the milk of our cows, and browse our herbs.
I am very philosophically, and with the most tender esteem, etc.
## p. 15487 (#437) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15487
THE DRAMA
From a Letter to an Italian Nobleman
Thea
He theatre is the chef-d'oeuvre of society. Men in general
are compelled to labor at the mechanic arts, and their time
is happily occupied; while men of rank and wealth have
the misfortune to be abandoned to themselves, to the ennui insep-
arable from idleness, to gaming more fatal than ennui, to petty
factions more dangerous than play and idleness.
What is the true drama ? It is the art of teaching virtue and
good manners by action and dialogue. How cold in comparison
is the eloquence of monologue! Have we retained a single phrase
of thirty or forty thousand moral discourses? And do we not
know by heart admirable sentences placed with art in interesting
dialogues ? «Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. ”
It is this which makes one of the great merits of Terence; it
is that of our own good tragedies, of our good comedies. They
have not excited a profitless admiration; they have often corrected
men. I have seen a prince pardon an injury after a representa-
tion of the clemency of Augustus. A princess, who had despised
her mother, went away to throw herself at her feet after wit-
nessing the scene in which Rhodope asks her mother's forgive-
ness. A man well known sought reconciliation with his wife
after seeing Préjudice à la Mode. ' I saw the proudest man in
the world become modest after the comedy of the Glorieux. '
And I could cite more than six sons of distinguished families
whom the comedy of the Prodigal Son reformed. If our bank-
ers are no longer coarse, if the people of the court are vain dan-
dies no longer, if doctors have abjured the robe, the cap, and
consultations in Latin, if some pedants have become men,- to
what are
we indebted for it ? To the theatre,- to the theatre
alone.
What pity ought we not, then, to have for those who wage
war upon this first of the literary arts; who imagine that we
ought to judge the theatre of to-day by the trestles of our ages
of ignorance; and who confound Sophocles, Menander, Varius, and
Terence, with Tabarin and Punch! But how much more to be
pitied are they who admit Punch and Tabarin, while rejecting
Polyeucte,' 'Athalie,' Zaïre,' and 'Alzire'! Such are the incon-
sistencies into which the human mind falls every day.
## p. 15488 (#438) ##########################################
15488
VOLTAIRE
Let us pardon the deaf who speak against music, the blind
who hate beauty: such persons are less enemies of society, less
conspirators to destroy its consolation and its charm, than the
unfortunate beings to whom nature has denied certain organs.
I have had the pleasure of seeing at my country-house
'Alzire performed,- that tragedy wherein Christianity and the
rights of man triumph equally. I have seen Mérope's maternal
love bringing tears without the aid of the love of gallantry.
Such subjects move the rudest soul, as they do the most refined;
and if the common people were in the habit of witnessing such
spectacles of human worth, there would be fewer souls gross
and obdurate. It was such exhibitions that made the Athenians
a superior nation. Their workmen did not spend upon indecent
farces the money which should have nourished their families; but
the magistrates, during their celebrated festivals, summoned the
whole nation to representations which taught virtue and the love
of country. The plays which are given among us are but a
feeble imitation of that magnificence; but after all, they do pre-
serve some idea of it. They are the most beautiful education
which we can give to youth, the noblest recreation after labor,
the best instruction for all orders of citizens; they furnish almost
the only mode of getting people together for the purpose of ren-
dering them social beings.
TO THEURIET
YES
ES, I will scold you till I have cured you of your indolence.
You live as if man had been created only to sup; and you
exist only between 10 P. M. and 2 A. M. When you are old
and deserted, will it be a consolation to you to say, “Formerly I
drank champagne in good company »?
GREATNESS AND UTILITY
From (Letters on the English)
W"
HOEVER arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote prov-
ince, with money to spend and a name in ac or ille, can
talk about “a man like me,” “a man of my quality," and
hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The merchant again so
## p. 15489 (#439) ##########################################
VOLTAIRE
15489
constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain that he is
fool enough to blush for it. Yet is there not a question which
is the more useful to a State,- a thickly bepowdered lord who
knows exactly at what time the King rises and what time he
goes to bed, and gives himself mighty airs of greatness while he
plays the part of a slave in a minister's ante-room; or the mer-
chant who enriches his country, gives orders from his counting-
house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of a
whole globe?
Not long ago a distinguished company were discussing the
trite and frivolous question who was the greatest man, Cæsar,
Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell. Somebody answered that it
was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. He was right; for if true great-
ness consists in having received from heaven a powerful under-
standing, and in using it to enlighten one's self and all others,
then such a one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with once
in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.
It is to him
who masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who
enslave men by violence; it is to him who understands the uni-
verse, not to those who disfigure it, - that we owe our reverence!
TO A LADY
wonder
Yº Though eighty
years have left their chill)
My superannuated Muse,
That hums a quavering measure still.
In wintry wolds a tuft of bloom
Will sometimes through the snowdrifts smile,
Consoling nature in her gloom,
But withering in a little while.
A bird will trill a chirping note,
Though summer's leaves and light be o'er,
But melody forsakes his throat -
He sings the song of love no more.
'Tis thus still my harp entune,
Whose strings no more my touch obey;
'Tis thus I lift my voice, though soon
That voice will silent be for aye.
XXVI–969
## p. 15490 (#440) ##########################################
15490
VOLTAIRE
Tibullus to his mistress said,
“I would thus breathe my last adieu,
My eyes still with your glances fed,
My dying hand caressing you. ”
But when this world grows all remote,
When with the life the soul must go,
Can yet the eye on Delia dote ?
The hand a lover's touch bestow ?
Death changes, as we pass his gate,
What in our days of strength we knew:
Who would with joy anticipate
At his last gasp love's rendezvous ?
And Delia, in her turn, no less
Must pass into eternal night,
Oblivious of her loveliness,
Oblivious of her youth's delight.
We enter life, we play our part,
We die - nor learn the reason here;
From out the unknown void we start,
And whither bound ? — God knows, my dear.
Translation of Edward Bruce Hamley.
## p. 15491 (#441) ##########################################
15491
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
(1587-1679)
. .
HE long life of Joost van der Vondel, Holland's greatest poet,
was contemporaneous with the most brilliant period of the
Gelo Dutch renaissance. As triumphant England in Elizabeth's
reign brought forth mighty children, so the new-born Republic of the
United Provinces in its turn gave birth to such men as Hooft and
Vondel, Brederoo and Huygens. The background of Vondel's life was
the city of Amsterdam, whose society, representative perhaps of the
most assertive forces in Holland's intellectual and spiritual develop-
ment, was expressing its intense vitality in
the pursuit of literature, of art, in the heats
of religious controversy, seeking in a thou-
sand ways to give metropolitan embodiment
to the new-born national consciousness. To
this city Vondel 'had come as a boy. He
had been born at Cologne, November 17th,
1587; his maternal grandfather, Peter Kran-
ken, had taken no mean rank among the
poets of Brabant. His parents were Ana-
baptists, who moved from city to city in the
pursuit of religious freedom, settling finally
at Amsterdam.
Vondel, being designed for a tradesman, Joost VAN DER VONDEL
received but an indifferent education; his
innate love of learning drawing him, however, to independent study,
he was throughout his long life a student, seeking his inspiration at
the fountain-heads of culture. In 1612 he produced his first drama,
(Het Pascha, the subject of which was the Exodus of the Children
of Israel. After the approved Dutch model, it was written in Alex-
andrines, in five acts, with choral interludes between. It gave little
evidence of the genius which was to produce (Lucifer.
For the next
eight years Vondel did no original work, being seemingly satisfied
with the leisurely development of his powers. The death of Brederoo,
Holland's greatest comic dramatist, left a high place vacant, which
Vondel was soon to fill. In 1620 he published a second tragedy,
Jerusalem Laid Desolate'; and in 1625 a third, which secured him his
## p. 15492 (#442) ##########################################
15492
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
fame. Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence,' owed its notoriety as
much perhaps to the nature of its subject as to its intrinsic merits;
appearing as it did at a time when all Holland was palpitating with
religious controversy. In the hero of the play, Palamedes, the people
of Amsterdam recognized Barneveldt; whose support of the Arminian
doctrine had led to his execution in 1618 through the powerful influ-
ence of the Calvinists, headed by Prince Maurice of Nassau. Von-
del at once became popular with the highest circles in Amsterdam
and Holland. The obscure tradesman obtained fame in a night.
Plunging into the controversy, he now began to wage war against the
Counter-Remonstrants, as the Calvinists were termed; launching at
them a great number of satirical pamphlets in verse, among the most
noted of which are (The Harpoon,' 'The Horse-Comb,' and 'The
Decretum Horrible. '
In 1638 an event occurred which diverted the genius of Vondel
into another channel. The Dutch Academy, founded in 1617 as in
the main a dramatic guild, had later coalesced with the two noted
chambers of rhetoric, the “Eglantine” and the White Lavender. ”
In 1638, on the strength of these reinforcements, it erected what it
had long needed, a large public theatre. On the opening night a
new tragedy by Vondel was presented, -'Gysbreght van Aemstel,'
founded upon incidents in early Dutch history. For many years fol-
lowing, Vondel wrote Scriptural pieces for the theatre in the heroic
style; among them, “Solomon' (Samson,' 'Adonijah,'' (Adam in Ban-
ishment, and Noah, or the Destruction of the Old World. In 1654
appeared his great masterpiece, Lucifer'; a tragedy of sublime con-
ception, to which a peculiar interest is attached as being supposedly
the work which suggested to Milton the subject of Paradise Lost. '
Milton is known to have studied the Dutch language about the time
of the production of "Lucifer'; there are verbal correspondences be-
tween the two plays. The theory of Milton's indebtedness to Vondel
has been considered by Thomas Lovell Beddoes, by Edmund Gosse,
and by Mr. George Edmundson in a monograph entitled Milton and
Vondel. ' Vondel's (Lucifer, however, is concerned with the fall of
Lucifer and not with the fall of Adam.
The years following the production of his mightiest tragedy were
full of labor and sorrow to Vondel. Reverses had come upon him;
from 1658 to 1668 he was obliged to work as a clerk in a bank, a
servant of hard taskmasters, who were incapable of appreciation of
or reverence for his genius. In his eightieth year he was liberated
from this slavery by the city of Amsterdam, from which he received
a pension. Until his death in 1679 Vondel continued to write, his.
literary energy being seemingly inexhaustible. Among his works
of this period is a rendition of the Metamorphoses) of Ovid into
## p. 15493 (#443) ##########################################
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
15493
Dutch verse. His entire writings fill nine quarto volumes, embracing
almost every conceivable subject and every well-known verse form.
Vondel remains the most powerful, and perhaps the most represent-
ative, poet of Holland, whose writings gave adequate embodiment to
the manifold forces of her golden age.
TO GEERAERT VOSSIUS
ON The Loss of His SON
Hy mourn'st thou, Vossius? why has pain
Its furrows to thy pale brow given ?
Seek not to hold thy son from heaven!
'Tis heaven that draws,-resign him, then!
WY
Yes, banish every futile tear;
And offer to its Source above,
In gratitude and humble love,
The choicest of thy treasures here.
We murmur if the bark should strand;
But not when richly laden she
Comes from the wild and raging sea,
Within a haven safe to land.
We murmur if the balm be shed:
Yes, murmur for the odor's sake;
But not whene'er the glass may break,
If that which filled it be not fled.
He strives in vain who seeks to stay
The bounding waters in their course,
When hurled from rocks with giant force,
Towards some calm and spacious bay.
Thus turns the earthly globe; – though o'er
His infant's corse a father mourn,
Or child bedew its parents' urn,
Death passes neither house nor door.
Death nor for gay and blooming youth,
Nor peevish age, his stroke defers;
He chains the lips of orators,
Nor cares for wisdom, worth, or truth.
## p. 15494 (#444) ##########################################
15494
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
Blest is the mind that, fixed and free,
To wanton pleasures scorns to yield,
And wards as with a pliant shield
The arrows of adversity.
Translation of Sir John Bowring.
FROM LUCIFER)
[The scene of the drama is laid throughout in heaven. The actors are the
angels. Lucifer has sent Apollyon to Eden to view the new-made man and
woman, and to inquire into their state. Apollyon thus describes Eve. )
EARCH all our angel bands, in beauty well arrayed,
Sof a
maid.
Beelzebub -
It seems you burn in love for this new womankind!
Apollyon —
My great wing-feather in that amorous flame, I find
I've singed! 'Twas hard indeed to soar up from below,
To sweep, and reach the verge of Angel-borough so;
I parted, but with pain, and three times looked around:
There shines no seraph form in all the ethereal bound
Like hers, whose hanging hair, in golden glory, seems
To rush down from her head in a torrent of sunbeams,
And flow along her back. So clad in light and grace,
Stately she treads, and charms the daylight with her face:
Let pearls and mother o’pearl their claims before her furl,
Her brightness passes far the beauty of a pearl!
Beelzebub -
But what can profit man this beauty that must fade,
And wither like a flower, and shortly be decayed ?
[Lucifer's jealousy of the new race being aroused, he thus addresses bis
attendant angels. ]
Swift spirits, let us stay the chariot of the dawn;
For high enough, in sooth, God's morning star is drawn, -
Yea, driven up high enough! 'tis time for my great car
To yield before the advent of this double star,
That rises from below, and seeks, in sudden birth,
To tarnish heaven's gold with splendor from the earth!
## p. 15495 (#445) ##########################################
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
15495
Embroider no more crowns on Lucifer's attire,
And gild his forehead not with eminent dawn-fire
Of the morning star enrayed, that rapt archangels prize;
For see another blaze in the light of God arise !
The stars grow faint before the eyes of men below;
'Tis night with angels, and the heavens forget to glow.
[The loyal angels, perceiving that a change has come over a number of
their order, inquire into its cause. )
Why seem the courteous angel-faces
So red? Why streams the holy light
So red upon our sight,
Through clouds and mists from mournful places ?
What vapor dares to blear
The pure, unspotted, clear
And luminous sapphire ?
The flame, the blaze, the fire
Of the bright Omnipotence ?
Why does the splendid light of God
Glow, deepened to the hue of blood,
That late, in flowing hence,
Gladdened all hearts ?
[The chorus answers. )
When we, enkindled and uplifted
By Gabriel's trumpet, in new ways
Began to chant God's praise,
The perfume of rose-gardens drifted
Through paths of Paradise,
And such a dew and such a spice
Distilled, that all the flowery grass
Rejoiced. But Envy soon, alas!
From the underworld came sneaking.
A mighty crowd of spirits, pale
And dumb and wan, came, tale on tale,
Displeased, some new thing seeking;
With brows that crushed each scowling eye,
And happy foreheads bent and wrinkled :
The doves of heaven, here on high,
Whose innocent pinions sweetly twinkled,
Are struck with mourning, one and all,
As though the heavens were far too small
## p. 15496 (#446) ##########################################
15496
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
For them, now Adam's been elected,
And such a crown for man selected.
This blemish blinds the light of grace,
And dulls the flaming of God's face.
[Beelzebub, feigning submission to Deity, thus addresses the rebel angels. )
Oh, cease from wailing; rend your badges and your robes
No longer without cause, but make your faces bright,
And let your foreheads flash, O children of the light!
The shrill sweet throats, that thank the Deity with song,
Behold, and be ashamed that ye have mixed so long
Discords and bastard tones with music so divine.
[They appeal from him to Lucifer. ]
Forbid it, Lucifer, nor suffer that our ranks
Be mortified so low and sink without a crime,
While man, above us raised, may flash and beam sublime
In the very core of light, from which we seraphim
Pass quivering, full of pain, and fade like shadows dim. . . .
We swear, by force, beneath thy glorious flag combined,
To set thee on the throne for Adam late designed !
We swear, with one accord, to stay thine arm forever:
Lift high thy battle-axe! our wounded rights deliver!
[Gabriel relates to Michael the effect which the knowledge of the rebellion
produced at the throne of God himself. ]
I saw God's very gladness with a cloud of woe
O’ershadowed; and there burst a flame out of the gloom
That pierced the eye of light, and hung, a brand of doom,
Ready to fall in rage. I heard the mighty cause
Where Mercy pleaded long with God's all-righteous laws;
Grace, soothly wise and meek, with Justice arguing well.
I saw the cherubim, who on their faces fell,
And cried out, “Mercy, mercy! God, let Justice rest!
But even as that shrill sound to his great footstool pressed,
And God seemed almost moved to pardon and to smile,
Up curled the odious smoke of incense harsh and vile,
Burned down below in praise of Lucifer, who rode
With censers and bassoons and many a choral ode:
The heaven withdrew its face from such impieties,
Cursèd of God and spirits and all the hierarchies.
## p. 15497 (#447) ##########################################
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
15497
[The rebel angels form themselves into an army. They fight against
Michael and his host, and are conquered. The victorious angels sing. )
Blest be the hero's hour,
Who smote the godless power,
And his might, and his light, and his standard,
Down toppling like a tower:
His crown was near God's own,
But from his lofty throne,
With his might, into night he hath vanished;
God's name must shine alone.
Outblazed the uproar fell,
When valorous Michaël
With the brand in his hand quenched the passion
Of spirits that dared rebel.
He holds God's banner now;
With laurels crown his brow!
Peace shall reign here again, and her forehead
Shall vanquished Discord bow. .
Amid the conquering throng
Praises to God belong;
Honor bring to the King of all kingdoms!
He gives us stuff for song.
(After this, Gabriel enters bearing the tidings of man's fall. ]
Gabriel —
Alas! alas! alas! to adverse fortune bow!
What do ye here? In vain are songs of triumph now;
In vain of spoil of arms and gonfalons ye boast!
Michael
What hear I, Gabriel ?
Gabriel -
Oh, Adam is fallen and lost!
The father and the stock of all the human race
Most grievously hath erred, and lies in piteous case.
(Michael sends Uriel to drive the guilty pair out of Eden, and then thus
pronounces the doom of the rebel angels. ]
Ozias, to whose fist the very Godhead gave
The heavy hammer framed of diamond beaten out,
And chains of ruby, clamps, and teeth of metal stout, -
Go hence, and take and bind the hellish host that rage,
Lion and dragon fell, whose banners dared to wage
War with us thus. Speed swift on their accursèd flight,
And bind them neck and claw, and fetter them with might.
## p. 15498 (#448) ##########################################
15498
JOOST VAN DER VONDEL
The key which to the gates of their foul pit was fitted
Is, Azarias, now into thy care committed;
Go hence, and thrust therein all that our power defied.
Maceda, take this torch I to your zeal confide,
And Aame the sulphur-pool in the centre of the world:
There torture Lucifer, and leave his body curled
In everlasting fire, with many a prince accursed;
Where Sorrow, wretched Pain, numb Horror, Hunger, Thirst,
Despair without a hope, and Conscience with her sting,
May measure out their ineed of endless suffering.
Translation from the Cornbill Magazine.
## p. 15498 (#449) ##########################################
## p. 15498 (#450) ##########################################
Pop
RICHARD WAGNER.
## p. 15498 (#451) ##########################################
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WAGNER
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RICHARD WAGNER
(1813–1883)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
O NAME in the history of music occupies at the same time in
the annals of literature so high a place, and with so secure
a title, as that of Richard Wagner. He was a philosopher,
who, with a nervous incisive prose which almost rivaled that of his
master Schopenhauer, was able to set forth the theories by which his
creative genius was guided; and he was a poet of supreme eminence
in a field quite his own, reconstructing in form and spirit the splen-
did conceptions of the legendary ages, and infusing into the charac-
ters of that heroic time the more complicated emotions of our modern
days. He displayed a power of dramatic construction, and a depth
of poetic imagination, that rank him among the great romantic poets
of the nineteenth century. When Schopenhauer read the text of
the Nibelungen' trilogy he exclaimed, «The fellow is a poet, not a
musician;) and again, «He ought to hang music on the nail: he has
more genius for poetry. ” But the might of Wagner's musical genius
long obscured the poet's fame. Critics continued to sneer at the
lines long after they had conceded the merit of the scores; but it is
a crowning tribute to the greatness of the poet-composer that now
a whole literature has arisen around his operas as poems, and the
process
still
goes on. It is a remarkable coincidence that in the
very town of Bayreuth, where since 1876 the Wagner festivals have
been held, Jean Paul Richter in a preface to a book of E. T. W. Hoff-
mann's wrote the half-prophetic words: «Hitherto Apollo has always
distributed the poetic gift with his right hand, the musical with his
left, to two persons so widely apart that up to this hour we are still
waiting for the man who will create a genuine opera by writing both
its text and its music. ”
In the very year in which these words were written, Richard
Wagner was born in Leipsic on May 22d, 1813. It is not to the pres-
ent purpose to follow his career in biographical detail. The fatuous
prophecies of criticism which followed him through life began when
his music-teacher announced in disgust that he would never amount
to anything. The creative impulse in him was early manifested
when he wrote an ambitious tragedy, in which, having killed off all
but one of forty-one characters, he was obliged to have some of them
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RICHARD WAGNER
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return as ghosts in order to save the last act from being a mono-
logue. When he was sixteen he turned to music, and after a week's
study he found its difficulties so great that he resolved to become a
musician. Difficulties stimulated his energy. The germ of the ideas
by which Wagner subsequently revolutionized the operatic stage lay
already in the mind of Carl Maria von Weber, who, as early as 1817,
had begun a campaign against the empty forms of the Italian-French
opera. In Weber's Euryanthe) Wagner found suggestion and inspi-
ration; and in 1843 he succeeded to the position that Weber had
held in Dresden, of court capellmeister. The commonplaceness of his
early operas, and the Meyerbeer-like blatancy of (Rienzi,' was less a
concession to public taste than the result of an irresistible creative
impulse with artistic aims as yet undefined. But when these aims
became definite, never did an artist pursue his purpose with a more
relentless energy in the face of gigantic obstacles. He defied the
public taste in the midst of poverty and ridicule; the more discour-
aging his reception, the more absolute became his adherence to his
ideals. There was something victorious in his resolute nature, which,
quite apart from the originality and intrinsic beauty of his works,
made him one of the formative forces of his age.
During the days of poverty in Paris, Wagner began his series
of essays with a short story entitled A Pilgrimage to Beethoven. '
Already a new world was dawning upon him; but it was at the
time of the general revolutionary movement in Europe that he began
to publish the works which proclaimed the revolution in art. The
first was entitled Art and Revolution (1849); the much-discussed
(Art Work of the Future' appeared in the following year; and in
1851 the Communication to my Friends, and Opera and Drama. '
In these works Wagner had not yet developed the powerful prose
style of his later period: the metaphysician in him led him into what
Mr. Finck has called “sophomoric bombast," and sometimes into un-
intelligibility. To the public of that day it all appeared unintelligi-
ble. In the Communication to my Friends,' first published as a
preface to the poems of "The Flying Dutchman,' «Tannhäuser,' and
(Lohengrin,' the plan of a Nibelung festival was announced. Opera
and Drama,' the most important of these revolutionary treatises, is
in three parts: of the Opera, of the Drama, and of the Music Drama.
Of these the third part has permanent value: it is the statement of
his ideals and the programme of his life. All the arts are to be
merged into one composite but unified art work. Architecture and
painting contribute the scenery, the actor is the sculptured figure,
while poetry and music unite in drama, orchestra, and voice. .
With such ideas as these, it was obvious at once that the theatre
as then constituted must be revolutionized. Wagner fought against
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the degradation of the theatre to a mere place of entertainment. The
relations of art to public life were the burden of his argument. The
great Wagner strife was thus of much wider scope than the musical
questions involved. The national drama, or as Wagner called it, true
German art, was to be the highest expression of the culture and art-
istic capabilities of the German people; and this art work, Wagner,
by his own unaided genius, stood ready to create. A self-confidence
so colossal moved to astonishment and scornful laughter; but the
battle has been won, and the only echoes of the days of strife are
the self-apologetic phrases of the former scoffers, who have slowly
become conscious that the lack lay in them, while the works of the
master exist by their own right and might. They received their con-
secration in the pilgrimage temple of Bayreuth in 1876 and 1882.
That the extravagant theories of Wagner, with their contraven-
tion of artistic limitations and their socialistic coloring, have not been
carried out in their entirety, is perfectly true. The genius of the
artist was superior to the reasoning of the theorizer.
What Wagner
did, viewed from the standpoint of literature, was to create a national
music-drama, based upon ancient Germanic traditions and legends,
about which he threw the gorgeous mantle of his harmonies. In
addition to the beauty of the poetic conceptions, the literary artist
appears in the perfect adaptation of each phrase and word and vowel,
not only to the dramatic expression of the thought but to the needs
of the human voice as well. His method of treating themes asso-
ciates them inseparably with certain thoughts, so that the words
come involuntarily to the mind: and in the midst of all the action,
the orchestra speaks an articulate language; suggests, warns, alarms,
melts, threatens, or moves to tears of sympathy or joy,- produces in
short that “demonic) emotion, the effect beyond all for which the
reason can account, the effect which Goethe considered the highest
achievement of all art. Indeed, the music will not yield the whole
secret of its charm until the words, the poetic thought, and the entire
dramatic conception, have become completely a part of the hearer's
mental equipment. To this quality of Wagner's works the art of the
poet contributed as much as the genius of the composer.
For the material through which to give national expression to the
culture of the German people, Wagner turned, like a true poet of
Romanticism, to the heroic traditions of his race. In the Flying
Dutchman' it is a sombre legend of the sea; in "Tannhäuser' it is
the famous contest of the thirteenth century when the Minnesingers
strove together in song in the hall of the Wartburg; in Lohengrin'
and (Parsifal' it is the mediaval tradition of the Holy Grail; in
(Tristan und Isolde it is the most popular love tale of the Middle
Ages; and finally in Der Ring des Nibelungen' (The Nibelungs'
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RICHARD WAGNER
Ring), Wagner has combined in a colossal work of wonderful unity
and beauty the most ancient poetic legends of the Germanic peoples,
the legends out of which seven centuries before Wagner's time some
unnamed poet created Germany's most national epic,- the Nibe-
lungenlied. To have created anew these splendid conceptions of
the poetic past, is not the least of Wagner's merit. His works, in
addition to their æsthetic value, have a value of the moral sort as
well: in them speaks the deep soul of a historic people, with its moral
earnestness, its childlike love of song and legend, its martial strength
and its manly tenderness.
The central theme of all these poems is love. It is through Sen-
ta's love, faithful unto death, that the curse is removed from the Fly-
ing Dutchman. Through the power of Elizabeth's pure passion and
incessant prayers, Tannhäuser is at last delivered from the bondage
of the Venusberg. In Lohengrin,' love is the manifestation of the
Divine mercy; and a knight of the Holy Grail comes, swan-drawn,
from his inaccessible temple to rescue
a maiden in distress. He
becomes her husband and protector, but Elsa, tempted of evil, puts
the fatal question: her faith was insufficient, and her lord returns to
the service of the Grail.
Tristan und Isolde' is the apotheosis of earthly passion. Into this
Celtic legend, of which Gottfried von Strassburg in the thirteenth
century had made a German epic, Wagner has introduced a modern
psychology; and he has given the poem a new significance. He
has retained the love potion, but he has not made it the cause of
the lover's passion. They loved before, but Tristan is resolutely
faithful to King Mark; and Isolde is wounded to the quick that
Tristan should have wooed her in another's ame.
The potion sym-
bolizes the irresistible power of a love that bears down all obstacles
and stifles all considerations. The triumph, the reconcilement, the
nirvana of their passion, is attained only in death. This work must
be numbered among the greatest love poems of literature.
And so too in the Nibelungen' trilogy, love is not only the theme,
but in the end the force that conquers even in death. In (Rhein-
gold' the power of love is contrasted with the lust for gold; and
here the keynote is struck, and the tragedy set in motion. The love
and faithfulness of Siegmund and Sieglinde in the Walküre' show
Brünnhilde for the first time what love can do; and when Siegfried,
in the idyllic fairy tale that bears his name, awakens her from her
long sleep, she throws aside her Walküren nature for the joy of
human love. Siegfried is the free fate-defying man, triumphing
over the powers of darkness and destiny; to him Wotan, ever seek-
ing guidance from the mother of wisdom, is forced to yield. In the
'Götterdämmerung' the god awaits the fullness of time, while the
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guileless Siegfried falls a victim to the wiles of man. But the end
towards which Wotan blindly strove is attained by Siegfried's death.
Brünnhilde, to whom the counsels of the gods are known, restores
the symbolic ring to the daughters of the Rhine, and in twilight the
ancient reign of the gods comes to an end. The reign of love is
proclaimed as Brünnhilde immolates herself upon Siegfried's funeral
pyre.
