A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 33

Four times the Rabbi awoke, in renewed health and strength: and four times again he fell asleep: and at the close of each waking term Tsaddik revisited him as he sat in his garden--amidst the bloom or the languors, the threatenings or the chill, of the special period of the year--and questioned him of what he had learned. And each time the record was like that of the previous seventy-nine years, one of disappointment and failure. For the gift had been drawn in every case from a young life, and been neutralized by its contact with the old. As a lover, the Rabbi declares, he has dreamed young dreams, and his older self has seen through them. He has known beforehand that the special charms of his chosen one would prove transitory, and that the general attraction of her womanhood belonged to her s.e.x and not to her. As a warrior, he has experienced the same process of disenchantment. For the young believe that the surest way to the Right and Good, is that, always, which is cut by the sword: and that the exercise of the sword is the surest training for those self-devoting impulses which mark the moral nature of man. The old have learned that the most just war involves, in its penalties, the innocent no less than the guilty; that violence rights no wrong which time and patience would not right more fully; and that for the purposes of self devotion, una.s.sisted love is more effective than hate.

(Picturesque ill.u.s.trations are made to support this view.) As poet, he has recalled the glow of youthful fancy to feel it quenched by the experience of age: to see those soaring existences whose vital atmosphere is the future, frozen by their contact with a dead past. As statesman, he has looked out upon the forest of life, again seeing the n.o.ble trees by which the young trace their future path. And, seeing these, he has known, that the way leads, not by them, but among the brushwood and briars which fill the intervening s.p.a.ce; that the statist's work is among the mindless many who will obstruct him at every step, not among the intellectual few by whom his progress would be a.s.sisted.

As he completes his testimony another change comes over him; and Tsaddik, kissing the closing eyelids, leaves his master to die.

The rumour of a persecution scatters the Jewish inhabitants of the city.

Not till three months have expired do they venture to return to it; and when Tsaddik and the other disciples seek the cave where their master lies, they find him, to their astonishment, alive. Then Tsaddik remembers that even children urged their offering upon him, and concludes that some urchin or other contrived to make it "stick;" and he anxiously disclaims any share in the "foisting" this crude fragment of existence on the course of so great a life. Hereupon the Rabbi opens his eyes, and turns upon the bystanders a look of such absolute relief, such utter happiness, that, as Tsaddik declares, only a second miracle can explain it. It is a case of the three days' survival of the "Ruach" or spirit, conceded to those departed saints whose earthly life has antic.i.p.ated the heavenly; who have died, as it were, half in the better world.[118]

Tsaddik has, however, missed the right solution of the problem. Jochanan Hakkadosh can only define his state as one of _ignorance confirmed by knowledge_; but he makes it very clear that it is precisely the gift of the child's consciousness, which has produced this ecstatic calm. The child's soul in him has reconciled the differing testimony of youth and manhood: solving their contradictions in its unquestioning faith and hope. It has lifted him into that region of harmonized good and evil, where bliss is greater than the human brain can bear. And this is how he feels himself to be dying; bearing with him a secret of perfect happiness, which he vainly wishes he could impart.[119]

"NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE" is a fanciful expression of love and longing, provoked by the opposition of circ.u.mstances.

The name of "PAMBO" or "Pambus" is known to literature,[120] as that of a foolish person, who spent months--Mr. Browning says years--in pondering a simple pa.s.sage from Psalm x.x.xix.; and remained baffled by the difficulty of its application. The pa.s.sage is an injunction that man look to his ways, so that he do not offend with his tongue. And Pambo finds it easy to practise the first part of this precept, but not at all so the second. Mr. Browning declares himself in the same case. "He also looks to his ways, and is guided along them by the critic's torch. But he offends with his tongue, notwithstanding."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 104: Ethics, VII. vi. 2.]

[Footnote 105: The story is told in Pausanias. A painting of Echetlos was to be seen in the Poecile at Athens.]

[Footnote 106: Petrus Aponensis: author of a work quoted in the Idyl: Conciliator Differentiarum. Abano is a village near Padua.]

[Footnote 107: Some expressions in this Idyl may require explaining.

"Salomo si nosset" (novisset) (p. 136). "Had Solomon but known this."

"Teneo, vix" (p. 136). "I scarcely contain myself." "Hact[=e]nus" (p.

136). The "e" is purposely made long. "Hitherto." "Peason" (p. 138). The old English plural of "pea." "Pou sto" (p. 138). "Where I may stand:"

The alleged saying of Archimedes--"I could move the world had I a place for my _fulcrum_--'where I might stand' to move it." "t.i.thon" (p. 141).

t.i.thonus--Aurora's lover: for whom she procured the gift of eternal life. "Apage, Sathanas!" (p. 143). "Depart Satan." Customary adjuration.

The term "Venus," as employed in the postscript to the Idyl, signified in Roman phraseology, the highest throw of the dice. It signified, therefore the highest promise to him, who, in obedience to the oracle, had tested his fortunes at the fount at Abano, by throwing golden dice into it. The "crystal," to which Mr. Browning refers, is the water of the well or fount, at the bottom of which, as Suetonius declared, the dice thrown by Tiberius, and their numbers, were still visible. The little air which concludes the post-script reflects the careless or "lilting" mood in which Mr. Browning had thrown the "fancy dice" which cast themselves into the form of the poem.]

[Footnote 108: "If it is proper to be credited."]

[Footnote 109: This version is more crudely reproduced by the Persian poet Jami.]

[Footnote 110: The word "conster," which rhymes in the poem with "monster," is Old English for "construe."]

[Footnote 111: Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, and Queen of Sweden.]

[Footnote 112: Some confusion has here arisen between Francis I., whose emblem was the salamander, and Henry II., the historic lover of Diane de Poitiers. But Francis was also said to have been, for a short time, attached to her; and the poetic contrast of the frigid moon and the fiery salamander was perhaps worth the dramatic sacrifice of Cristina's accuracy.]

[Footnote 113: A village close to Fontainebleau, in the church of which Monaldeschi was buried.]

[Footnote 114: "Winged" or "fiery:" fiery from the rapidity of its motion.]

[Footnote 115: Juno.]

[Footnote 116: That is, to Moses Maimonides.]

[Footnote 117: The names and instances given are, as well as the main fact, historical.]

[Footnote 118: A Talmudic doctrine still held among the Jews. The "Halaphta," with whom Mr. Browning connects it, was a noted Rabbi.]

[Footnote 119: The "Bier" and the "three daughters" was a received Jewish name for the Constellation of the Great Bear. Hence the simile derived from this (vol. xv. pp. 217-244).

The "Salem," mentioned at p. 218, is the mystical New Jerusalem to be built of the spirits of the great and good.]

[Footnote 120: "Chetw. Hist. Collect.," cent. I., p. 17. Quoted by Nath.

Wanley, "Wonders of the Little World," p. 138.]

SUPPLEMENT.

"FERISHTAH'S FANCIES."

The idea of "FERISHTAH'S FANCIES" grew out of a fable by Pilpay, which Mr. Browning read when a boy. He lately put this into verse; and it then occurred to him to make the poem the beginning of a series, in which the Dervish, who is first introduced as a learner, should reappear in the character of a teacher. Ferishtah's "fancies" are the familiar ill.u.s.trations, by which his teachings are enforced. Each fancy or fable, with its accompanying dialogue, is followed by a Lyric, in which the same or cognate ideas are expressed in an emotional form; and the effect produced by this combination of moods is itself ill.u.s.trated in a Prologue by the blended flavours of a favourite Italian dish, which is fully described there. An introductory pa.s.sage from "King Lear" seems to tell us what we soon find out for ourselves, that Ferishtah's opinions are in the main Mr. Browning's own.

Fancy 1. "THE EAGLE," contains the lesson which determined Ferishtah, not yet a Dervish, to become one. He has learned from the experience which it describes, that it is man's mission to feed those hungry ones who are unable to feed themselves. "The soul often starves as well as the body. He will minister to the hunger of the soul. And to this end he will leave the solitude of the woods in which the lesson came to him, and seek the haunts of men."

The Lyric deprecates the solitude which united souls may enjoy, by a selfish or fastidious seclusion from the haunts of men.

2. "THE MELON-SELLER," records an incident referred to in a letter from the "Times'" correspondent, written many years ago. It ill.u.s.trates the text--given by Mr. Browning in Hebrew--"Shall we receive good at the hands of G.o.d, and shall we not receive evil?" and marks the second stage in Ferishtah's progress towards Dervish-hood.

The Lyric bids the loved one be unjust for once if she will. "The lover's heart preserves so many looks and words, in which she gave him more than justice."

3. "SHAH ABBAS" shows Ferishtah, now full Dervish, expounding the relative character of belief. "We wrongly give the name of belief to the easy acquiescence in those reported facts, to the truth of which we are indifferent; or the name of unbelief to that doubting att.i.tude towards reported facts, which is born of our anxious desire that they may be true. It is the a.s.sent of the heart, not that of the head, which is valued by the Creator."

Lyric. Love will guide us smoothly through the recesses of another's heart. Without it, as in a darkened room, we stumble at every step, wrongly fancying the objects misplaced, against which we are stumbling.

4. "THE FAMILY" again defends the heart against the head. It defends the impulse to pray for the health and safety of those we love, though such prayer may imply rebellion to the will of G.o.d. "He, in whom anxiety for those he loves cannot for the moment sweep all before it, will sometimes be more than man, but will much more often be less."

Lyric. "Let me love, as man may, content with such perfection as may fill a human heart; not looking beyond it for that which only an angel's sense can apprehend."

5. "THE SUN" justifies the tendency to think of G.o.d as in human form.

Life moves us to many feelings of love and praise. These embrace in an ascending scale all its beneficent agencies, unconscious and conscious, and cannot stop short of the first and greatest of all. This First Cause must be thought of as competent to appreciate our praise and love, and as moved by a beneficent purpose to the acts which have inspired them.

The sun is a symbol of this creative power--by many even imagined to be its reality. But that mighty orb is unconscious of the feelings it may inspire; and the Divine Omnipotence, which it symbolizes, must be no less incompetent to earn them. For purpose is the negation of power, implying something which power has not attained; and would imply deficiency in an existence which presents itself to our intelligence as complete. Reason therefore tells us that G.o.d can have no resemblance with man; but it tells us, as plainly, that, without a fiction of resemblance, the proper relation between Creator and creature, between G.o.d and man, is unattainable.[121] If one exists, for whom the fiction or fancy has been converted into fact--for whom the Unknowable has proved itself to contain the Knowable: the ball of fire to hold within it an earthly substance unconsumed; he deserves credit for the magnitude, not scorn for the extravagance, of his conception.

Lyric. "Fire has been cradled in the flint, though its Ethereal splendours may disclaim the a.s.sociation."

6. "MIHRAB SHAH" vindicates the existence of physical suffering as necessary to the consciousness of well-being; and also, and most especially, as neutralizing the differences, and thus creating the one complete bond of sympathy, between man and man.

Lyric. "Your soul is weighed down by a feeble body. In me a strong body is allied to a sluggish soul. You would fitly leave me behind. Impeded as you also are, I may yet overtake you."

7. "A CAMEL-DRIVER" declares the injustice of punishment, in regard to all cases in which the offence has been committed in ignorance; and shows also that, while a timely warning would always have obviated such an offence, it is often sufficiently punished by the culprit's too tardy recognition of it. "G.o.d's justice distinguishes itself from that of man in the acknowledgment of this fact."