The Poetry Of Robert Browning Part 9

This, then, is _Pauline_; I pa.s.s on to _Paracelsus_. _Paracelsus_, in order to give the poem a little local colour, opens at Wurzburg in a garden, and in the year 1512. But it is not a poem which has to do with any place or any time. It belongs only to the country of the human soul.

The young student Paracelsus is sitting with his friends Festus and Michal, on the eve of his departure to conquer the whole world by knowledge. They make a last effort to retain him, but even as he listens to their arguments his eyes are far away--

As if where'er he gazed there stood a star,

so strong, so deep is desire to attain his aim.

For Paracelsus aims to know the whole of knowledge. Quiet and its charms, this homelike garden of still work, make their appeal in vain.

"G.o.d has called me," he cries; "these burning desires to know all are his voice in me; and if I stay and plod on here, I reject his call who has marked me from mankind. I must reach pure knowledge. That is my only aim, my only reward."

Then Festus replies: "In this solitariness of aim, all other interests of humanity are left out. Will knowledge, alone, give you enough for life? You, a man!" And again: "You discern your purpose clearly; have you any security of attaining it? Is it not more than mortal power is capable of winning?" Or again: "Have you any knowledge of the path to knowledge?" Or, once more, "Is anything in your mind so clear as this, your own desire to be singly famous?"

"All this is nothing," Paracelsus answers; "the restless force within me will overcome all difficulties. G.o.d does not give that fierce energy without giving also that which it desires. And, I am chosen out of all the world to win this glory."

"Why not then," says Festus, "make use of knowledge already gained? Work here; what knowledge will you gain in deserts?"

"I have tried all the knowledge of the past," Paracelsus replies, "and found it a contemptible failure. Others were content with the sc.r.a.ps they won. Not I! I want the whole; the source and sum of divine and human knowledge, and though I craze as even one truth expands its infinitude before me, I go forth alone, rejecting all that others have done, to prove my own soul. I shall arrive at last. And as to mankind, in winning perfect knowledge I shall serve them; but then, all intercourse ends between them and me. I will not be served by those I serve."

"Oh," answers Festus, "is that cause safe which produces carelessness of human love? You have thrown aside all the helps of human knowledge; now you reject all sympathy. No man can thrive who dares to claim to serve the race, while he is bound by no single tie to the race. You would be a being knowing not what Love is--a monstrous spectacle!"

"That may be true," Paracelsus replies, "but for the time I will have nothing to do with feeling. My affections shall remain at rest, and then, _when_ I have attained my single aim, when knowledge is all mine, my affections will awaken purified and chastened by my knowledge. Let me, unhampered by sympathy, win my victory. And I go forth certain of victory."

Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal, Two points in the adventure of the diver: One--when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge; One--when, a prince, he rises with his pearl?

Festus, I plunge!

FESTUS. We wait you when you rise.

So ends the first part, and the second opens ten years afterwards in a Greek Conjurer's house in Constantinople, with Paracelsus writing down the result of his work. And the result is this:

"I have made a few discoveries, but I could not stay to use them. Nought remains but a ceaseless, hungry pressing forward, a vision now and then of truth; and I--I am old before my hour: the adage is true--

Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream;

and now I would give a world to rest, even in failure!

"This is all my gain. Was it for this," he cries, "I subdued my life, lost my youth, rooted out love; for the sake of this wolfish thirst of knowledge?" No dog, said Faust, in Goethe's poem, driven to the same point by the weariness of knowledge, no dog would longer live this life.

My tyrant aim has brought me into a desert; worse still, the purity of my aim is lost. Can I truly say that I have worked for man alone? Sadder still, if I had found that which I sought, should I have had power to use it? O G.o.d, Thou who art pure mind, spare my mind. Thus far, I have been a man. Let me conclude, a man! Give me back one hour of my young energy, that I may use and finish what I know.

"And G.o.d is good: I started sure of that; and he may still renew my heart.

True, I am worn; But who clothes summer, who is life itself?

G.o.d, that created all things, can renew!"

At this moment the voice of Aprile is heard singing the song of the poets, who, having great gifts, refused to use them, or abused them, or were too weak; and who therefore live apart from G.o.d, mourning for ever; who gaze on life, but live no more. He breaks in on Paracelsus, and, in a long pa.s.sage of overlapping thoughts, Aprile--who would love infinitely and be loved, aspiring to realise every form of love, as Paracelsus has aspired to realise the whole of knowledge--makes Paracelsus feel that love is what he wants. And then, when Paracelsus realises this, Aprile in turn realises that he wants knowledge. Each recognises that he is the complement of the other, that knowledge is worthless without love, and love incapable of realising its aspirations without knowledge--as if love did not contain the sum of knowledge necessary for fine being. Both have failed; and it seems, at first, that they failed because they did not combine their aims. But the chief reason of their failure--and this is, indeed, Browning's main point--is that each of them tried to do more than our limits on earth permit.

Paracelsus would have the whole sum of knowledge, Aprile nothing less than the whole of love, and, in this world. It is impossible; yet, were it possible, could they have attained the sum of knowledge and of love on earth and been satisfied therewith, they would have shut out the infinite of knowledge and love beyond them in the divine land, and been, in their satisfaction, more hopelessly lost than they are in their present wretchedness. Failure that leaves an unreached ideal before the soul is in reality a greater boon than success which thinks perfect satisfaction has been reached. Their aim at perfection is right: what is wrong is their view that failure is ruin, and not a prophecy of a greater glory to come. Could they have thought perfection were attained on earth--were they satisfied with anything this world can give, no longer stung with hunger for the infinite--all Paradise, with the illimitable glories, were closed to them!

Few pa.s.sages are more beautiful in English poetry than that in which Aprile narrates his youthful aspiration: how, loving all things infinitely, he wished to throw them into absolute beauty of form by means of all the arts, for the love of men, and receive from men love for having revealed beauty, and merge at last in G.o.d, the Eternal Love.

This was his huge aim, his full desire.

Few pa.s.sages are more pathetic than that in which he tells his failure and its cause. "Time is short; the means of life are limited; we have no means answering to our desires. Now I am wrecked; for the mult.i.tudinous images of beauty which filled my mind forbade my seizing upon one which I could have shaped. I often wished to give one to the world, but the others came round and baffled me; and, moreover, I could not leave the mult.i.tude of beauty for the sake of one beauty. Unless I could embody all I would embody none.

"And, afterwards, when a cry came from man, 'Give one ray even of your h.o.a.rded light to us,' and I tried for man's sake to select one, why, then, mists came--old memories of a thousand sweetnesses, a storm of images--till it was impossible to choose; and so I failed, and life is ended.

"But could I live I would do otherwise. I would give a trifle out of beauty, as an example by which men could guess the rest and love it all; one strain from an angel's song; one flower from the distant land, that men might know that such things were. Then, too, I would put common life into loveliness, so that the lowest hind would find me beside him to put his weakest hope and fear into n.o.ble language. And as I thus lived with men, and for them, I should win from them thoughts fitted for their progress, the very commonest of which would come forth in beauty, for they would have been born in a soul filled full of love. This should now be my aim: no longer that desire to embrace the whole of beauty which isolates a man from his fellows; but to realise enough of loveliness to give pleasure to men who desire to love. Therefore, I should live, still aspiring to the whole, still uncontent, but waiting for another life to gain the whole; but at the same time content, for man's sake, to work within the limitations of life; not grieving either for failure, because love given and received makes failure pleasure. In truth, the failure to grasp all on earth makes, if we love, the certainty of a success beyond the earth."

And Paracelsus listening and applying what Aprile says to his old desire to grasp, apart from men, the whole of knowledge as Aprile had desired to grasp the whole of love, learns the truth at last, and confesses it:

Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn To love; and, merciful G.o.d, forgive us both!

We wake at length from weary dreams; but both Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and drear Appears the world before us, we no less Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.

I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE-- Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.

We are halves of a dissevered world, and we must never part till the Knower love, and thou, the Lover, know, and both are saved.

"No, no; that is not all," Aprile answers, and dies. "Our perfection is not in ourselves but in G.o.d. Not our strength, but our weakness is our glory. Not in union with me, with earthly love alone, will you find the perfect life. I am not that you seek. It is G.o.d the King of Love, his world beyond, and the infinite creations Love makes in it."

But Paracelsus does not grasp that last conclusion. He only understands that he has left out love in his aim, and therefore failed. He does not give up the notion of attainment upon earth. He cannot lose the first imprint of his idea of himself--his lonely grasp of the whole of Knowledge.

The next two parts of the poem do not strengthen much the main thoughts. Paracelsus tries to work out the lesson learnt from Aprile--to add love to knowledge, to aspire to that fulness in G.o.d. But he does not love enough. He despises those who follow him for the sake of his miracles, yet he desires their wors.h.i.+p. Moreover, the pride of knowledge still clings to him; he cannot help thinking it higher than love; and the two together drive him into the thought that this world must give him satisfaction. So, he puts aside the ideal aim. But here also he is baffled. Those who follow him as the great teacher ask of him signs. He gives these; and he finds at Basel that he has sunk into the desire of vulgar fame, and prost.i.tuted his knowledge; and, sick of this, beaten back from his n.o.ble ambitions, he determines to have something at least out of earth, and chooses at Colmar the life of sensual pleasure. "I still aspire," he cries. "I will give the night to study, but I will keep the day for the enjoyment of the senses. Thus, intellect and sense woven together, I shall at least have attained something. If I do not gain knowledge I shall have gained sensual pleasure. Man I despise and hate, and G.o.d has deceived me. I take the world." But, even while he says this, his ancient aspiration lives so much in him that he scorns himself for his fall as much as he scorns the crowd.

Then comes the last scene, when, at Salzburg, he returns to find his friend Festus, and to die. In the hour of his death he reviews his whole life, his aims, their failure and the reason of it, and yet dies triumphant for he has found the truth.

I pa.s.s over the pathetic delirium in which Paracelsus thinks that Aprile is present, and cries for his hand and sympathy while Festus is watching by the couch. At last he wakes, and knows his friend, and that he is dying. "I am happy," he cries; "my foot is on the threshold of boundless life; I see the whole whirl and hurricane of life behind me; all my life pa.s.ses by, and I know its purpose, to what end it has brought me, and whither I am going. I will tell you all the meaning of life. Festus, my friend, tell it to the world.

"There was a time when I was happy; the secret of life was in that happiness." "When, when was that?" answers Festus, "all I hope that answer will decide."

PAR. When, but the time I vowed myself to man?

FEST. Great G.o.d, thy judgments are inscrutable!

Then he explains. "There are men, so majestical is our nature, who, hungry for joy and truth, win more and more of both, and know that life is infinite progress in G.o.d. This they win by long and slow battle. But there are those, of whom I was one"--and here Browning draws the man of genius--"who are born at the very point to which these others, the men of talent, have painfully attained. By intuition genius knows, and I knew at once, what G.o.d is, what we are, what life is. Alas! I could not use the knowledge aright. There is an answer to the pa.s.sionate longings of the heart for fulness, and I knew it. And the answer is this: Live in all things outside of yourself by love and you will have joy. That is the life of G.o.d; it ought to be our life. In him it is accomplished and perfect; but in all created things it is a lesson learned slowly against difficulty.

"Thus I knew the truth, but I was led away from it. I broke down from thinking of myself, my fame, and of this world. I had not love enough, and I lost the truth for a time. But whatever my failures were, I never lost sight of it altogether. I never was content with myself or with the earth. Out of my misery I cried for the joy G.o.d has in living outside of himself in love of all things."

Then, thrilled with this thought, he breaks forth into a most n.o.ble description--new in English poetry, new in feeling and in thought, enough of itself to lift Browning on to his lofty peak--first of the joy of G.o.d in the Universe he makes incessantly by pouring out of himself his life, and, secondly, of the joy of all things in G.o.d. "Where dwells enjoyment there is He." But every realised enjoyment looks forward, even in G.o.d, to a new and higher sphere of distant glory, and when that is reached, to another sphere beyond--

thus climbs Pleasure its heights for ever and for ever.

Creation is G.o.d's joyous self-giving. The building of the frame of earth was G.o.d's first joy in Earth. That made him conceive a greater joy--the joy of clothing the earth, of making life therein--of the love which in animals, and last in man, multiplies life for ever.

So there is progress of all things to man, and all created things before his coming have--in beauty, in power, in knowledge, in dim shapes of love and trust in the animals--had prophecies of him which man has realised, hints and previsions, dimly picturing the higher race, till man appeared at last, and one stage of being was complete. But the law of progress does not cease now man has come. None of his faculties are perfect. They also by their imperfection suggest a further life, in which as all that was unfinished in the animals suggested man, so also that which is unfinished in us suggests ourselves in higher place and form. Man's self is not yet Man.

We learn this not only from our own boundless desires for higher life, and from our sense of imperfection. We learn it also when we look back on the whole of nature that was before we were. We ill.u.s.trate and illuminate all that has been. Nature is humanised, spiritualised by us.

We have imprinted ourselves on all things; and this, as we realise it, as we give thought and pa.s.sion to lifeless nature, makes us understand how great we are, and how much greater we are bound to be. We are the end of nature but not the end of ourselves. We learn the same truth when among us the few men of genius appear; stars in the darkness. We do not say--These stand alone; we never can become as they. On the contrary, we cry: All are to be what these are, and more. They longed for more, and we and they shall have it. All shall be perfected; and then, and not till then, begins the new age and the new life, new progress and new joy. This is the ultimate truth.

"And as in inferior creatures there were prognostics of man--and here Browning repeats himself--so in man there are prognostics of the future and loftier humanity.

August antic.i.p.ations, symbols, types Of a dim splendour ever on before In that eternal cycle life pursues.

For men begin to pa.s.s their nature's bound--

ceaselessly outgrowing themselves in history, and in the individual life--and some, pa.s.sionately aspiring, run ahead of even the general tendency, and conceive the very highest, and live to reveal it, and in revealing it lift and save those who do not conceive it.