On The Art of Reading Part 19

But where real wisdom is found can he shew?

Or the place understanding inhabiteth? No!

Men know not the value, the price of this gem; 'Tis not found in the land of the living with them.

It is not in me, saith the depth; and the sea With the voice of an echo, repeats, Not in me.

(I have a suspicion somehow that what the sea really answered, in its northern vernacular, was 'Me either.')

Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place Understanding hath chosen, since this is the case?...

Enough! This not only shows how that other rendering can be spoilt even to the point of burlesque by an attempt, on preconceived notions, to embellish it with metre and rhyme, but it also hints that parallel verse will actually resent and abhor such embellishment even by the most skilled hand. Yet, I repeat, our version of "Job" is poetry undeniable. What follows?

Why, it follows that in the course of studying it as literature we have found experimentally settled for us--and on the side of freedom--a dispute in which scores of eminent critics have taken sides: a dispute revived but yesterday (if we omit the blank and devastated days of this War) by the writers and apostles of _vers libres._ 'Can there be poetry without metre?' 'Is free verse a true poetic form?' Why, our "Book of Job" being poetry, unmistakable poetry, of course there can, to be sure it is. These apostles are b.u.t.ting at an open door. Nothing remains for them but to go and write _vers libres_ as fine as those of "Job" in our English translation. Or suppose even that they write as well as M. Paul Fort, they will yet be writing ancestrally, not as innovators but as renewers. Nothing is done in literature by arguing whether or not this or that be possible or permissible.

The only way to prove it possible or permissible is to go and do it: and then you are lucky indeed if some ancient writers have not forestalled you.

IV

Now for another question (much argued, you will remember, a few years ago) 'Is there--can there be--such a thing as a Static Theatre, a Static Drama?'

Most of you (I daresay) remember M. Maeterlinck's definition of this and his demand for it. To summarise him roughly, he contends that the old drama--the traditional, the conventional drama-- lives by action; that, in Aristotle's phrase, it represents men doing, [Greek: prattontas], and resolves itself into a struggle of human wills--whether against the G.o.ds, as in ancient tragedy, or against one another, as in modern. M. Maeterlinck tells us--

There is a tragic element in the life of every day that is far more real, far more penetrating, far more akin to the true self that is in us, than is the tragedy that lies in great adventure.... It goes beyond the determined struggle of man against man, and desire against desire; it goes beyond the eternal conflict of duty and pa.s.sion. Its province is rather to reveal to us how truly wonderful is the mere act of living, and to throw light upon the existence of the soul, self-contained in the midst of ever-restless immensities; to hush the discourse of reason and sentiment, so that above the tumult may be heard the solemn uninterrupted whisperings of man and his destiny.

To the tragic author [he goes on, later], as to the mediocre painter who still lingers over historical pictures, it is only the violence of the anecdote that appeals, and in his representation thereof does the entire interest of his work consist.... Indeed when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I were spending a few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life as though it were something that was primitive, arid and brutal.... I am shown a deceived husband killing his wife, a woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging his father, a father slaughtering his children, murdered kings, ravished virgins, imprisoned citizens--in a word all the sublimity of tradition, but alas how superficial and material! Blood, surface-tears and death! What can I learn from creatures who have but one fixed idea, who have no time to live, for that there is a rival, a mistress, whom it behoves them to put to death?

M. Maeterlinck does not (he says) know if the Static Drama of his craving be impossible. He inclines to think--instancing some Greek tragedies such as "Prometheus" and "Choephori"--that it already exists. But may we not, out of the East--the slow, the stationary East--fetch an instance more convincing?

V

The Drama of Job opens with a "Prologue" in the mouth of a Narrator.

There was a man in the land of Uz, named Job; upright, G.o.d-fearing, of great substance in sheep, cattle and oxen; blest also with seven sons and three daughters. After telling of their family life, how wholesome it is, and pious, and happy--

The Prologue pa.s.ses to a Council held in Heaven. The Lord sits there, and the sons of G.o.d present themselves each from his province. Enters Satan (whom we had better call the Adversary) from his sphere of inspection, the Earth, and reports. The Lord specially questions him concerning Job, pattern of men. The Adversary demurs. 'Doth Job fear G.o.d for nought? Hast thou not set a hedge about his prosperity? But put forth thy hand and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face.'

The Lord gives leave for this trial to be made (you will recall the opening of "Everyman"):

So, in the midst of his wealth, a messenger came to job and says--

The oxen were plowing, and the a.s.ses feeding beside them: and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of G.o.d is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have taken them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and wors.h.i.+pped; and he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

So the Adversary is foiled, and Job has not renounced G.o.d. A second Council is held in Heaven; and the Adversary, being questioned, has to admit Job's integrity, but proposes a severer test:

Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face.

Again leave is given: and the Adversary smites job with the most hideous and loathsome form of leprosy. His kinsfolk (as we learn later) have already begun to desert and hold aloof from him as a man marked out by G.o.d's displeasure. But now he pa.s.ses out from their midst, as one unclean from head to foot, and seats himself on the ash-mound--that is, upon the Mezbele or heap of refuse which acc.u.mulates outside Arab villages.

'The dung,' says Professor Moulton, 'which is heaped upon the Mezbele of the Hauran villages is not mixed with straw, which in that warm and dry land is not needed for litter, and it comes mostly from solid-hoofed animals, as the flocks and oxen are left over-night in the grazing places. It is carried in baskets in a dry state to this place ... and usually burnt once a month.... The ashes remain.... If the village has been inhabited for centuries the Mezbele reaches a height far overtopping it. The winter rains reduce it into a compact ma.s.s, and it becomes by and by a solid hill of earth.... The Mezbele serves the inhabitants for a watchtower, and in the sultry evenings for a place of concourse, because there is a current of air on the height.

There all day long the children play about it; and there the outcast, who has been stricken with some loathsome malady, and is not allowed to enter the dwellings of men, lays himself down begging an alms of the pa.s.sers-by by day, and by night sheltering himself among the ashes which the heat of the sun has warmed.'

Here, then, sits in his misery 'the forsaken grandee'; and here yet another temptation comes to him--this time not expressly allowed by the Lord. Much foolish condemnation (and, I may add, some foolish facetiousness) has been heaped on Job's wife. As a matter of fact she is _not_ a wicked woman--she has borne her part in the pious and happy family life, now taken away: she has uttered no word of complaint though all the substance be swallowed up and her children with it. But now the sight of her innocent husband thus helpless, thus incurably smitten, wrings, through love and anguish and indignation, this cry from her:

Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce G.o.d, and die.

But Job answered, soothing her:

Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What?

shall we receive good at the hand of G.o.d, and shall we not receive evil?

So the second trial ends, and Job has sinned not with his lips.

But now comes the third trial, which needs no Council in Heaven to decree it. Travellers by the mound saw this figure seated there, patient, uncomplaining, an object of awe even to the children who at first mocked him; asked this man's history; and hearing of it, smote on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and made a token of it and carried the news into far countries: until it reached the ears of Job's three friends, all great tribesmen like himself--Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.

These three made an appointment together to travel and visit Job.

'And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept.' Then they went up and sat down opposite him on the ground. But the majesty of suffering is silent:

Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it....

No, not a word.... And, with the grave courtesy of Eastern men, they too are silent:

So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.

The Prologue ends. The scene is set. After seven days of silence the real drama opens.

VI

Of the drama itself I shall attempt no a.n.a.lysis, referring you for this to the two books from which I have already quoted. My purpose being merely to persuade you that this surpa.s.sing poem can be studied, and ought to be studied, as literature, I shall content myself with turning it (so to speak) once or twice in my hand and glancing one or two facets at you.

To begin with, then, you will not have failed to notice, in the setting out of the drama, a curious resemblance between "Job" and the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus. The curtain in each play lifts on a figure solitary, tortured (for no reason that seems good to us) by a higher will which, we are told, is G.o.d's. The chorus of Sea-nymphs in the opening of the Greek play bears no small resemblance in att.i.tude of mind to job's three friends. When job at length breaks the intolerable silence with

Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man child conceived.

he uses just such an outburst as Prometheus: and, as he is answered by his friends, so the Nymphs at once exclaim to Prometheus

Seest thou not that thou hast sinned?

But at once, for anyone with a sense of comparative literature, is set up a comparison between the persistent West and the persistent East; between the fiery energising rebel and the patient victim. Of these two, both good, one will dare everything to release mankind from thrall; the other will submit, and justify himself--mankind too, if it may hap--by submission.

At once this difference is seen to give a difference of form to the drama. Our poem is purely static. Some critics can detect little individuality in Job's three friends, to distinguish them.

For my part I find Eliphaz more of a personage than the other two; grander in the volume of his mind, securer in wisdom; as I find Zophar rather noticeably a mean-minded greybeard, and Bildad a man of the stand-no-nonsense kind. But, to tell the truth, I prefer not to search for individuality in these men: I prefer to see them as three figures with eyes of stone almost expressionless.

For in truth they are the conventions, all through,--the orthodox men--addressing Job, the reality; and their words come to this:

Thou sufferest, therefore must have sinned.

All suffering is, must be a judgment upon sin.