No More Learning

In Italy, D'Annunzio's career has been watched with growing
interest. Until recently, however, he was scarcely known to the
--


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GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
575
world at large, when a few poems, translated into French, brought
his name into immediate prominence. Within a year three Paris
journals acquired rights of translation from him, and he has since
occupied the attention of such authoritative French critics as Henri
Rabusson, René Doumic, Edouard Rod, Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé,
and, most recently, Ferdinand Brunetière, all of whom seem to have
a clearer appreciation of his quality than even his critics at home.
At the same time there is a small but hostile minority among the
French novelists, whose literary feelings are voiced by Léon Daudet
in a vehement protest under the title Assez d'Étrangers' (Enough
of Foreigners).
It is too soon to pass final judgment on D'Annunzio's style, which
has been undergoing an obvious transition, not yet accomplished.
Realist and psychologist, symbolist and mystic by turns, and first
and always a poet, he has been compared successively to Bourget
and Maupassant, Tolstoi and Dostoievsky, Théophile Gautier and
Catulle Mendès, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Baudelaire. Such com-
plexity of style is the outcome of his cosmopolitan taste in literature,
and his tendency to assimilate for future use whatever pleases him
in each successive author. Shakespeare and Goethe, Keats and Heine,
Plato and Zoroaster, figure among the names which throng his pages;
while his unacknowledged and often unconscious indebtedness to
writers of lesser magnitude, - notably the self-styled (Sar' Joseph
Peladan — has lately raised an outcry of plagiarism. Yet whatever
leaves his pen, borrowed or original, has received the unmistakable
imprint of his powerful individuality.
It is easy to trace the influences under which, successively,
D'Annunzio has come. They are essentially French. He is a French
writer in an Italian medium. His early short sketches, noteworthy
chiefly for their morbid intensity, were modeled largely on Maupas-
sant, whose frank, unblushing realism left a permanent imprint upon
the style of his admirer, and whose later analytic tendency probably
had an important share in turning his attention to the psychological
school.
'Il Piacere,' though largely inspired by Paul Bourget, contains as
large an element of Notre Cæur) and (Bel-Ami' as of 'Le Disciple
and Cæur de Femme. In this novel, Andrea Sperelli affords us
the type of D'Annunzio's heroes, who, aside from differences due to
age and environment, are all essentially the same,- somewhat weak,
yet undeniably attractive; containing, all of them, "something of a
Don Juan and a Cherubini,” with the Don Juan element preponder-
ating. The plot of 'Il Piacere is not remarkable either for depth
or for novelty, being the needlessly detailed record of Sperelli's rela-
tions with two married women, of totally opposite types.


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576
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
Giovanni Episcopo' is a brief, painful tragedy of low life, written
under the influence of Russian evangelism, and full of reminiscences
of Dostoievsky's 'Crime and Punishment. ' Giovanni is a poor clerk,
of a weak, pusillanimous nature, completely dominated by a coarse,
brutal companion, Giulio Wanzer, who makes him an abject slave,
until a detected forgery compels Wanzer to flee the country. Epis-
copo then marries Ginevra, the pretty but unprincipled waitress at his
pension, who speedily drags him down to the lowest depths of degra-
dation, making him a mere nonentity in his own household, willing
to live on the proceeds of her infamy. They have one child, a boy,
Ciro, on whom Giovanni lavishes all his suppressed tenderness. After
ten years of this martyrdom, the hated Wanzer reappears and installs
himself as husband in the Episcopo household. Giovanni submits in
helpless fury, till one day Wanzer beats Ginevra, and little Ciro inter-
venes to protect his mother. Wanzer turns on the child, and a spark
of manhood is at last kindled in Giovanni's breast. He springs upon
Wanzer, and with the pent-up rage of years stabs him.
L'Innocente,' D'Annunzio's second long novel, also bears the
stamp of Russian influence. It is a gruesome, repulsive story of
domestic infidelity, in which he has handled the theory of pardon,
the motive of numerous recent French novels, like Daudet's La
Petite Paroisse) and Paul Marguerite's "La Tourmente. '
In another extended work, (Il Trionfo della Morte (The Triumph
of Death), D'Annunzio appears as a convert to Nietzsche's philoso-
phy and to Wagnerianism. Ferdinand Brunetière has pronounced it
unsurpassed by the naturalistic schools of England, France, or Russia.
In brief, the hero, Giorgio Aurispa, a morbid sensualist, with an in-
herited tendency to suicide, is led by fate through a series of circum-
stances which keep the thought of death continually before him.
They finally goad him on to Aing himself from a cliff into the sea,
dragging with him the woman he loves.
The Vergini della Rocca' (Maidens of the Crag), his last story, is
more an idyllic poem than a novel. Claudio Cantelmo, sickened with
the corruption of Rome, retires to his old home in the Abruzzi, where
he meets the three sisters Massimilla, Anatolia, Violante: «names
expressive as faces full of light and shade, and in which I seemed
already to discover an infinity of grace, of passion, and of sorrow. ”
It is inevitable that he should chose one of the three, but which ?
And in the dénouement the solution is only half implied.
D'Annunzio is now occupied with a new romance; and coming
years will doubtless present him all the more distinctively as a writer
of Italy on whom French inflences have been seed sowed in fertile
ground. The place in contemporary Italian of such work as his is
indisputably considerable.


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GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
577
THE DROWNED BOY
From "The Triumph of Death)
A“
LL of a sudden, Albadora, the septuagenarian Cybele, she who
had given life to twenty-two sons and daughters, came
toiling up the narrow lane into the court, and indicating
the neighboring shore, where it skirted the promontory on the
left, announced breathlessly :-
"Down yonder there has been a child drowned ! »
Candia made the sign of the cross. Giorgio arose and ascended
to the loggia, to observe the spot designated. Upon the sand,
below the promontory, in close vicinity to the chain of rocks
and the tunnel, he perceived a blotch of white, presumably the
sheet which hid the little body. A group of people had gathered
around it.
As Ippolita had gone to mass with Elena at the chapel of the
Port, he yielded to his curiosity and said to his entertainers:-
"I am going down to see. ”
“Why? ” asked Candia. "Why do you wish to put a pain in
your heart ? »
Hastening down the narrow lane, he descended by a short cut
to the beach, and continued along the water. Reaching the spot,
somewhat out of breath, he inquired:-
«What has happened? ”
The assembled peasants saluted him and made way for him.
One of them answered tranquilly:-
« The son of a mother has been drowned. ”
Another, clad in linen, who seemed to be standing guard over
the corpse, bent down and drew aside the sheet.
The inert little body was revealed, extended upon the unyield-
ing sand.
It was a lad, eight or nine years old, fair and frail,
with slender limbs. His head was supported on his few humble
garments, rolled up in place of pillow,- the shirt, the blue
trousers, the red sash, the cap of limp felt. His face was but
slightly livid, with flat nose, prominent forehead, and long, long
lashes; the mouth was half open, with thick lips which were
turning blue, between which the widely spaced teeth gleamed
white. His neck was slender, flaccid as a wilted stem, and
seamed with tiny creases. The jointure of the arms at the
shoulder looked feeble. The arms themselves were fragile, and
covered with a down similar to the fine plumage which clothes
11-37


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578
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
the bodies of newly hatched birds. The whole outline of the
ribs was distinctly visible; down the middle of the breast the
skin was divided by a darker line; the navel stood out, like a
knot. The feet, slightly bloated, had assumed the same sallow
color as the little hands, which were callous and strewn with
warts, with white nails beginning to turn livid. On the left arm,
on the thighs near the groin, and further down, on the knees and
along the legs, appeared reddish blotches of scurf. Every detail
of this wretched little body assumed, in the eyes of Giorgio, an
extraordinary significance, immobile as it was and fixed forever
in the rigidity of death.
“How was he drowned ? Where? ” he questioned, lowering
his voice.
The man dressed in linen gave, with some show of impatience,
the account which he had probably had to repeat too many times
already. He had a brutal countenance, square-cut, with bushy
brows, and a large mouth, harsh and savage. Only a little while
after leading the sheep back to their stalls, the lad, taking his
breakfast along with him, had gone down, together with a
comrade, to bathe. He had hardly set foot in the water, when
he had fallen and was drowned. At the cries of his comrade,
some
one from the house overhead on the bluff had hurried
down, and wading in up to the knees, had dragged him from
the water half dead; they had turned him upside down to make
him throw up the water, they had shaken him, but to no pur-
pose.
To indicate just how far the poor little fellow had gone
in, the man picked up a pebble and threw it into the sea.
“There, only to there; at three yards from the shore !
The sea lay at rest, breathing peacefully, close to the head of
the dead child. But the sun blazed fiercely down upon the sand;
and something pitiless, emanating from that sky of flame and
from those stolid witnesses, seemed to pass over the pallid corpse.
“Why,” asked Giorgio, do you not place him in the shade,
in one of the houses, on a bed ? »
“He is not to be moved,” declared the man on guard, “until
they hold the inquest. ”
“At least carry him into the shade, down there, below the
embankment! »
Stubbornly the man reiterated, “He is not to be moved. ”
There could be no sadder sight than that frail, lifeless little
being, extended on the stones, and watched over by the impassive


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GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
579
brute who repeated his account every time in the selfsame words,
and every time made the selfsame gesture, throwing a pebble
into the sea:
“There; only to there. ”
A woman joined the group, a hook-nosed termagant, with
gray eyes and sour lips, mother of the dead boy's comrade. She
manifested plainly a mistrustful restlessness, as if she anticipated
some accusation against her own son. She spoke with bitterness,
and seemed almost to bear a grudge against the victim.
“It was his destiny. God had said to him, “Go into the sea
and end yourself. »
She gesticulated with vehemence. «What did he go in for, if
he did not know how to swim ? ”
A young lad, a stranger in the district, the son of a mariner,
repeated contemptuously, “Yes, what did he go in for? We, yes,
who know how to swim - »
Other people joined the group, gazed with cold curiosity, then
lingered or passed on. A crowd occupied the railroad embank-
ment, another gathered on the crest of the promontory, as if at a
spectacle. Children, seated or kneeling, played with pebbles, toss-
ing them into the air and catching them, now on the back and
now in the hollow of their hands. They all showed the same
profound indifference to the presence of other people's troubles
and of death.
Another woman joined the group on her way home from mass,
wearing a dress of silk and all her gold ornaments. For her also
the harassed custodian repeated his account, for her also he indi-
cated the spot in the water. She was talkative.
"I am always saying to my children, Don't you go into the
water, or I will kill you! ' The sea is the sea. Who can save
himself ? »
She called to mind other instances of drowning; she called to
mind the case of the drowned man with the head cut off, driven
by the waves all the way to San Vito, and found among the rocks
by a child.
"Here, among these rocks. He came and told us, "There is
a dead man there. ' We thought he was joking. But we came
and we found. He had no head. They had an inquest; he was
buried in a ditch; then in the night he was dug up again. His
flesh was all mangled and like jelly, but he still had his boots on.
The judge said, "See, they are better than mine! ' So he must


## p. 580 (#618) ############################################

580
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
have been a rich man. And it turned out that he was a dealer
in cattle. They had killed him and chopped off his head, and ad
thrown him into the Tronto. ”
She continued to talk in her shrill voice, from time to time
sucking in the superfluous saliva with a slight hissing sound.
“And the mother? When is the mother coming ? ”
At that name there arose exclamations of compassion from all
the women who had gathered.
« The mother! There comes the mother, now! ”
And all of them turned around, fancying that they saw her in
the far distance, along the burning strand. Some of the women
could give particulars about her. Her name was Riccangela; she
was a widow with seven children. She had placed this one in a
farmer's family, so that he might tend the sheep, and gain a
morsel of bread,
One woman said, gazing down at the corpse, “Who knows how
much pains the mother has taken in raising him! ” Another said,
“To keep the children from going hungry she has even had to
ask charity. ”
Another told how, only a few months before, the unfortunate
child had come very near strangling to death in a courtyard in a
pool of water barely six inches deep. All the women repeated,
« It was his destiny. He was bound to die that way. ”
And the suspense of waiting rendered them restless, anxious.
The mother! There comes the mother now! )
Feeling himself grow sick at heart, Giorgio exclaimed, “Can't
you take him into the shade, or into a house, so that the mother
will not see him here naked on the stones, under a sun like this ? ”
Stubbornly the man on guard objected:—He is not to be
touched. He is not to be moved — until the inquest is held. ”
The bystanders gazed in surprise at the stranger,— Candia's
stranger. Their number was augmenting. A few occupied the
embankment shaded with acacias; others crowned the promon.
tory rising abruptly from the rocks. Here and there, on the
monstrous bowlders, a tiny boat lay sparkling like gold at the
foot of the detached crag, so lofty that it gave the effect of the
ruins of some Cyclopean tower, confronting the immensity of
the sea.
All at once, from above on the height, a voice announced,
« There she is. ”
Other voices followed:—“The mother! The mother! »


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GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
581
All turned. Some stepped down from the embankment.
Those on the promontory leaned far over. All became silent,
in expectation. The man on guard drew the sheet once more
over the corpse.
In the midst of the silence, the sea barely
seemed to draw its breath, the acacias barely rustled. And
then through the silence they could hear her cries as she drew
near.
The mother came along the strand, beneath the sun, crying
aloud. She was clad in widow's mourning. She tottered along
the sand, with bowed body, calling out, "O my son! My son! ”
She raised her palms to heaven, and then struck them upon
her knees, calling out, “My son! ”
One of her older sons, with a red handkerchief bound around
his neck, to hide some sore, followed her like one demented,
dashing aside his tears with the back of his hand. She ad.
vanced along the strand, beating her knees, directing her steps
toward the sheet. And as she called upon her dead, there
issued from her mouth sounds scarcely human, but rather like
the howling of some savage dog. As she drew near, she bent
over lower and lower, she placed herself almost on all fours; till,
reaching him, she threw herself with a howl upon the sheet.
She arose again. With hand rough and toil-stained, hand
toughened by every variety of labor, she uncovered the body.
She gazed upon it a few instants, motionless as though turned
to stone. Then time and time again, shrilly, with all the power
of her voice, she called as if trying to awaken him, “My son!
My son! My son! ”
Sobs suffocated her. Kneeling beside him, she beat her
sides furiously with her fists. She turned her despairing eyes
around upon the circle of strangers. During a pause in her
paroxysms she seemed to recollect herself. And then she began
to sing. She sang her sorrow in a rhythm which rose and
fell continually, like the palpitation of a heart. It was the
ancient monody which from time immemorial, in the land of
the Abruzzi, the women have sung over the remains of their
relatives. It was the melodious eloquence of sacred sorrow,
which renewed spontaneously, in the profundity of her being,
this hereditary rhythm in which the mothers of bygone ages
had modulated their lamentations.
She sang on and on:- "Open your eyes, arise and walk, my
son! How beautiful you are! How beautiful you are! ”


## p. 582 (#620) ############################################

582
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
She sang on:-“For a morsel of bread I have drowned you,
my son! For a morsel of bread I have borne you to the
slaughter! For that have I raised you! ”
But the irate woman with the hooked nose interrupted her:-
“It was not you who drowned him; it was Destiny. It was not
you who took him to the slaughter. You had placed him in the
midst of bread. ” And making a gesture toward the hill where
the house stood which had sheltered the lad, she added, “They
kept him there, like a pink at the ear. ”
The mother continued:—“O my son, who was it sent you;
who was it sent you here, to drown? ”
And the irate woman: «Who was it sent him ? It was our
Lord. He said to him, “Go into the water and end yourself. »
As Giorgio was affirming in a low tone to one of the by-
standers that if succored in time the child might have been
saved, and that they had killed him by turning him upside down
and holding him suspended by the feet, he felt the gaze of the
mother fixed upon him. "Can't you do something for him, sir? ”
she prayed. "Can't you do something for him ? »
And she prayed:—“O Madonna of the Miracles, work a mir-
acle for him! ”
Touching the head of the dead boy, she repeated:—“My
son! my son! my son! arise and walk ! »
On his knees in front of her was the brother of the dead
boy; he was sobbing, but without grief, and from time to time
he glanced around with a face that suddenly grew indifferent.
Another brother, the oldest one, remained at a little distance,
seated in the shade of a bowlder; and he was making a great
show of grief, hiding his face in his hands.
The women, striv-
ing to console the mother, were bending over her with gestures
of compassion, and accompanying her monody with an occasional
lament.
And she sang on:-“Why have I sent you forth from my
house? Why have I sent you to your death? I have done
everything to keep my children from hunger; everything, every-
thing, except to be a woman with a price. And for a morsel of
bread I have lost you! This was the way you were to die! ”
Thereupon the woman with the hawk nose raised her petti-
coats in an impetus of wrath, entered the water up to her knees,
and cried :-"Look! He came only to here. Look! The water
is like oil. It is a sign that he was bound to die that way. ”


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GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
583
With two strides she regained the shore. “Look! ” she re-
peated, pointing to the deep imprint in the sand made by the
man who recovered the body. "Look ! »
The mother looked in a dull way; but it seemed as if she
neither saw nor comprehended. After her first wild outbursts of
grief, there came over her brief pauses, amounting to an obscure-
ment of consciousness. She would remain silent, she would
touch her foot or her leg with a mechanical gesture. Then she
would wipe away her tears with the black apron. She seemed
to be quieting down. Then, all of a sudden, a fresh explosion
would shake her from head to foot, and prostrate her upon the
corpse.
“And I cannot take you away! I cannot take you in these
arms to the church! My son! My son! ”
She fondled him from head to foot, she caressed him softly.
Her savage anguish was softened to an infinite tenderness.
hand — the burnt and callous hand of a hard-working woman
became infinitely gentle as she touched the eyes, the mouth, the
forehead of her son.
“How beautiful you are! How beautiful you are! ”
She touched his lower lip, already turned blue; and as she
pressed it slightly, a whitish froth issued from the mouth. From
between his lashes she brushed away some speck, very carefully,
as though fearful of hurting him.
"How beautiful you are, heart of your mamma! ”
His lashes were long, very long, and fair. On his temples, on
his cheeks was a light bloom, pale as gold.
« Do you not hear me? Rise and walk. »
She took the little well-worn cap, limp as a rag. She gazed
at it and kissed it, saying: -
“I am going to make myself a charm out of this, and wear it
always on my breast. ”
She lifted the child; a quantity of water escaped from the
mouth and trickled down upon the breast.
"O Madonna of the Miracles, perform a miracle! ” she prayed,
raising her eyes to heaven in a supreme supplication. Then she
laid softly down again the little being who had been so dear to
her, and took up the worn shirt, the red sash, the cap. She
rolled them up together in a little bundle, and said: -
« This shall be my pillow; on these I shall rest my head,
always, at night; on these I wish to die. ”


## p. 584 (#622) ############################################

584
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
»
She placed these humble relics on the sand, beside the head
of her child, and rested her temple on them, stretching herself
out, as if on a bed.
Both of them, mother and son, now lay side by side, on the
hard rocks, beneath the flaming sky, close to the homicidal sea.
And now she began to croon the very lullaby which in the past
had diffused pure sleep over his infant cradle.
She took up the red sash and said, "I want to dress him. ”
The cross-grained woman, who still held her ground, assented.
“Let us dress him now. ”
And she herself took the garments from under the head of the
dead boy; she felt in the jacket pocket and found a slice of bread
and a fig
“Do you see? They had given him his food just before, -
just before. They cared for him like a pink at the ear. ”
The mother gazed upon the little shirt, all soiled and torn,
over which her tears fell rapidly, and said, “Must I put that
shirt on him?
The other woman promptly raised her voice to some one of
her family, above on the bluff:-"Quick, bring one of Nufrillo's
new shirts! »
The new shirt was brought. The mother flung
herself down beside him.
“Get up, Riccangela, get up! ” solicited the women around her.
She did not heed them. "Is my son to stay like that on the
stones, and I not stay there too ? — like that, on the stones, my
own son ? »
"Get up, Riccangela, come away. ”
She arose. She gazed once more with terrible intensity upon
the little livid face of the dead. Once again she called with all
the power of her voice, “My son! My son! My son! »
Then with her own hands she covered up with the sheet the
unheeding remains.
And the women gathered around her, drew her a little to one
side, under shadow of a bowlder; they forced her to sit down,
they lamented with her.
Little by little the spectators melted away. There remained
only a few of the women comforters; there remained the man
clad in linen, the impassive custodian, who was awaiting the
inquest.
The dog-day sun poured down upon the strand, and lent to
the funeral sheet a dazzling whiteness. Amidst the heat the


## p. 585 (#623) ############################################

GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
585
promontory raised its desolate aridity straight upward from the
tortuous chain of rocks. The sea, immense and green, pursued
its constant, even breathing. And it seemed as if the languid
hour was destined never to come to an end.
Under shadow of the bowlder, opposite the white sheet, which
was raised up by the rigid form of the corpse beneath, the
mother continued her monody in the rhythm rendered sacred by
all the sorrows, past and present, of her race. And it seemed as
if her lamentation was destined never to come to an end.
TO AN IMPROMPTU OF CHOPIN
WER
Hen thou upon my breast art sleeping,
I hear across the midnight gray —
I hear the muffled note of weeping,
So near-so sad — so far away!
All night I hear the teardrops falling -
Each drop by drop- my heart must weep;
I hear the falling blood-drops -- lonely,
Whilst thou dost sleep-whilst thou dost sleep.
From «The Triumph of Death. "
INDIA
IN
NDIA — whose enameled page unrolled
Like autumn's gilded pageant, 'neath a sun
That withers not for ancient kings undone
Or gods decaying in their shrines of gold -
Where were thy vaunted princes, that of old
Trod thee with thunder - of thy saints was none
To rouse thee when the onslaught was begun,
That shook the tinseled sceptre from thy hold?
Dead - though behind thy gloomy citadels
The fountains lave their baths of porphyry;
Dead - though the rose-trees of thy myriad dells
Breathe as of old their speechless ecstasy;
Dead - though within thy temples, courts, and cells,
Their countless lamps still supplicate for thee.
Translated by Thomas Walsh, for (A Library of the World's Best Literature. )


## p. 586 (#624) ############################################

586
ANTAR
(About 550–615)
BY EDWARD S. HOLDEN
RABIA was opened to English readers first by Sale's transla-
tion of the Kuran,' in 1734; and by English versions of
the Arabian Nights from 1712 onward. The latter were
derived from Galland's translation of the Thousand and One Nights,'
which began to appear, in French, in 1704. Next to nothing was
generally known of Oriental literature from that time until the end
of the eighteenth century. The East India Company fostered the
study of the classics of the extreme Orient; and the first Napoleon
opened Egypt, — his savans marched in the centre of the invading
squares.
The flagship of the English fleet which blockaded Napoleon's army
carried an Austro-German diplomatist and scholar, - Baron von Ham-
mer-Purgstall, — part of whose mission was to procure a complete
manuscript of the Arabian Nights. ' It was then supposed that these
tales were the daily food of all Turks, Arabians, and Syrians. To
the intense surprise of Von Hammer, he learned that they were
never recited in the coffee-houses of Constantinople, and that they
were not to be found at all outside of Egypt.
His dismay and disappointment were soon richly compensated,
however, by the discovery of the Arabian romance of Antar,' the
national classic, hitherto unknown in Europe, except for an enthu-
siastic notice which had fallen by chance into the hands of Sir
William Jones. The entire work was soon collected. It is of inter-
minable length in the original, being often found in thirty or forty
manuscript volumes in quarto, in seventy or eighty in octavo. Por-
tions of it have been translated into English, German, and French.
English readers can consult it best in Antar, a Bedouin romance,
translated from the Arabic by Terrick Hamilton, in four volumes
8vo (London, 1820). Hamilton's translation, now rare, covers only a
portion of the original; and a new translation, suitably abridged, is
much needed.
The book purports to have been written more than a thousand
years ago, - in the golden prime of the Caliph Harún-al-Rashid
(786-809) and of his sons and successors, Amin (809-813) and Mamun
(813-834), — by the famous As-Asmai (born 741, died about 830). It
is in fact a later compilation, probably of the twelth century. (Baron
--
-
-
-


## p. 587 (#625) ############################################

ANTAR
587
von Hammer's MS. was engrossed in the year 1466. ) Whatever the
exact date may have been, it was probably not much later than A. D.
1200, The main outlines of Antar's life are historical. Many partic-
ulars are derived from historic accounts of the lives of other Arabian
heroes (Duraid and others) and are transferred bodily to the biogra-
phy of Antar. They date back to the sixth century. Most of the
details must be imaginary, but they are skillfully contrived by a
writer who knew the life of the desert Arab at first hand. The
verses with which the volumes abound are in many cases undoubt-
edly Antar's. (They are printed in italics in what follows. ) In any
event, the book in its present form has been the delight of all
Arabians for many centuries. Every wild Bedouin of the desert
knew much of the tale by heart, and listened to its periods and to
its poems with quivering interest. His more cultivated brothers of
the cities possessed one or many of its volumes. Every coffee-house
in Aleppo, Bagdad, or Constantinople had a narrator who, night after
night, recited it to rapt audiences.
The unanimous opinion of the East has always placed the romance
of Antar' at the summit of such literature. As one of their authors
well says:— «The Thousand and One Nights) is for the amusement
of women and children; Antar' is a book for men. From it they
learn lessons of eloquence, of magnanimity, of generosity, and of
statecraft. ” Even the prophet Muhammad, well-known foe to poetry
and to poets, instructed his disciples to relate to their children the
traditions concerning Antar, «for these will steel their hearts harder
than stone. ”
The book belongs among the great national classics, like the
(Shah-nameh' and the Nibelungen-Lied. ' It has a direct relation to
Western culture and opinion also. Antar was the father of knight-
hood. He was the preux-chevalier, the champion of the weak and
oppressed, the protector of women, the impassioned lover-poet, the
irresistible and magnanimous knight. European chivalry in a marked
degree is the child of the chivalry of his time, which traveled along
the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and passed with the Moors into
Spain (710). Another current flowed from Arabia to meet and to
modify the Greeks of Constantinople and the early Crusaders; and
still another passed from Persia into Palestine and Europe. These
fertilized Provençal poetry, the French romance, the early Italian
epic. The “Shah-nameh' of Firdausi, that model of a heroic poem,
was written early in the eleventh century. "Antar' in its present
form probably preceded the romances of chivalry so common in the
twelfth century in Italy and France.
Antarah ben Shedad el Absi (Antar the Lion, the Son of She-
dad of the tribe of Abs), the historic Antar, was born about the


## p. 588 (#626) ############################################

588
ANTAR
A
middle of the sixth century of our era, and died about the year 615,
forty-five years after the birth of the prophet Muhammad, and seven
years before the Hijra — the Flight to Medina — with which the
Muhammadan era begins. His father was a noble Absian knight.
The romance makes him the son of an Abyssinian slave, who is
finally discovered to be a powerful princess. His skin was black.
He was despised by his father and family and set to tend their
camels. His extraordinary strength and valor and his remarkable
poetic faculty soon made him a marked man, in a community in
which personal valor failed of its full value if it were not celebrated
in brilliant verse. His love for the beautiful Ibla (Ablah in the
usual modern form), the daughter of his uncle, was proved in hun-
dreds of encounters and battles; by many adventurous excursions in
search of fame and booty; by thousands of verses in her honor.
The historic Antar is the author of one of the seven suspended
poems. ” The common explanation of this term is that these seven
poems were judged, by the assemblage of all the Arabs, worthy to
be written in golden letters (whence their name of the golden
odes'), and to be hung on high in the sacred Kaabah at Mecca.
Whether this be true, is not certain. They are at any rate accepted
models of Arabic style. Antar was one of the seven greatest poets
of his poetic race. These “suspended poems” can now be studied in
the original and in translation, by the help of a little book pub-
lished in London in 1894, (The Seven Poems,' by Captain F. E.
Johnson, R. A.
The Antar of the romance is constantly breaking into verse which
is passionately admired by his followers. None of its beauties of
form are preserved in the translation; and indeed, this is true of the
prose forms also. It speaks volumes for the manly vigor of the
original that it can be transferred to an alien tongue and yet preserve
great qualities. To the Arab the work is a masterpiece both in form
and content. Its prose is in balanced, rhythmic sentences ending in
full or partial rhymes. This “cadence of the cooing dove ” is pure
music to an Eastern ear. If any reader is interested in Arabic verse,
he can readily satisfy his curiosity. An introduction to the subject
is given in the Terminal Essay of Sir Richard Burton's (Arabian
Nights) (Lady Burton's edition, Vol. vi. , page 340). The same sub-
ject is treated briefly and very clearly in the introduction to Lyall's
(Ancient Arabian Poetry'- a book well worth consulting on other
accounts.
The story itself appeals to the Oriental's deepest feelings, pass-
ions, ideals:-
-
!
1
U


## p. 589 (#627) ############################################

ANTAR
589
«To realize the impetuous feelings of the Arab,” says Von Hammer, you
must have heard these tales narrated to a circle of Bedouins crowded about
the orator of the desert
. . . It is a veritable drama, in which the spec-
tators are the actors as well. If the hero is threatened with imminent
danger, they shudder and cry aloud, No, no, no; Allah forbid! that cannot
be! ) If he is in the midst of tumult and battle, mowing down rank after
rank of the enemy with his sword, they seize their own weapons and rise to
fly to his rescue. If he falls into the snares of treachery, their foreheads
contract with angry indignation and they exclaim, “The curse of Allah be on
the traitor! ) If the hero at last sinks under the superior forces of the enemy,
a long and ardent sigh escapes from their breasts, with the farewell blessing,
(Allah's compassion be with him — may he rest in peace. ) . . . Descriptions
of the beauties of nature, especially of the spring, are received with exclama-
tions. Nothing equals the delight which sparkles in every eye when the
narrator draws a picture of feminine beauty. ”
The question as to the exact relation of the chivalry of Europe to
the earlier chivalry of Arabia and of the East is a large one, and
one which must be left to scholars. It is certain that Spenser and
Sir Philip Sidney owe far more to Saladin than we commonly sup-
pose. The tales of Boccaccio (1350) show that the Italians of that
day still held the Arabs to be their teachers in chivalry, and at least
their equals in art, science, and civilization; and the Italy of 1300
was a century in advance of the rest of Europe. In 1268 two broth-
ers of the King of Castile, with 800 other Spanish gentlemen, were
serving under the banners of the Muslim in Tunis. The knightly
ideal of both Moors and Spaniards was to be
“Like steel among swords,
Like wax among ladies. ”
Hospitality, generosity, magnanimity, the protection of the weak,
punctilious observance of the plighted faith, pride of birth and
lineage, glory in personal valor — these were the knightly virtues
common to Arab and Christian warriors. Antar and his knights, Ibla
and her maidens, are the Oriental counterparts of Launcelot and
Arthur, of Guinevere and Iseult.
The primary duty of the early Arab was blood-revenge. An
insult to himself, or an injury to the tribe, must be wiped out with
the blood of the offender. Hence arose the multitude of tribal feuds.
It was Muhammad who first checked the private feud by fixing the
price of blood” to be paid by the aggressor or by his tribe. In the
time of Antar revenge was the foremost duty. Ideals of excellence
change as circumstances alter. Virtues go out of fashion (like the
magnificence of Aristotle), or acquire an entirely new importance
(as veracity, since England became a trading nation). Some day we
may possess a natural history of the virtues.


## p. 590 (#628) ############################################

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ANTAR
The service of the loved one by the early Arab was a passion
completely different from the vain gallantry of the mediæval knight
of Europe. He sought for the complete possession of his chosen
mistress, and was eager to earn it by multitudes of chivalric deeds;
but he could not have understood the sentimentalities of the Trou-
badours. The systematic fantasies of the «Courts of Love » would
have seemed cold follies to Arab chivalry — as indeed they are,
though they have led to something better. In generosity, in mag-
nanimity, the Arab knight far surpassed his European brother. Hos-
pitality was a point of honor to both. As to the noble Arabs of those
days, when any one demanded their protection, no one ever inquired
what was the matter; for if he asked any questions, it would be said
of him that he was afraid. The poets have thus described them in
verse:-
« They rise when any one calls out to them, and
they haste before asking any questions;
they aid him against his enemies
that seek his life, and they return
honored to their families. ”
The Arab was the knight of the tent and the desert. His deeds
were immediately known to his fellows; discussed and weighed in
every household of his tribe.