Browning's Heroines Part 12

"The glad prow westward, soon were out at sea, Pus.h.i.+ng, brave s.h.i.+p with the vermilion cheek, Proud for our heart's true harbour."

But they were pursued by pirates, and, fleeing from these, drove unawares into the harbour of that very Syracuse where Nikias and Demosthenes had perished, and in whose quarries their countrymen were slaves. The inhabitants refused them admission, for they had heard, as the s.h.i.+p came into harbour, Balaustion singing "that song of ours which saved at Salamis." She had sprung upon the altar by the mast, and carolled it forth to encourage the oarsmen; and now it was vain to tell the Sicilians that these were Rhodians who had cast in their lot with the Spartan League, for the Captain of Syracuse answered:

"Ay, but we heard all Athens in one ode . . .

You bring a boatful of Athenians here";

and Athenians they would not have at Syracuse, "with memories of Salamis" to stir up the slaves in the quarry.

No prayers, no blandishments, availed the Rhodians; they were just about to turn away and face the pirates in despair, when somebody raised a question, and

". . . 'Wait!'

Cried they (and wait we did, you may be sure).

'That song was veritable Aischulos, Familiar to the mouth of man and boy, Old glory: how about Euripides?

Might you know any of his verses too?'"

Browning here makes use of the historical fact that Euripides was reverenced far more by foreigners and the non-Athenian Greeks than by the Athenians--for Balaustion, "the Rhodian," had been brought up in his wors.h.i.+p, though she knew and loved the other great Greek poets also; and already it was known to our voyagers that the captives in the quarries had found that those who could "teach Euripides to Syracuse" gained indulgence far beyond what any of the others could obtain. Thus, when the question sounded, "Might you know any of his verses too?" the captain of the vessel cried:

"Out with our Sacred Anchor! Here she stands, Balaustion! Strangers, greet the lyric girl!

Why, fast as snow in Thrace, the voyage through, Has she been falling thick in flakes of him,

And so, although she has some other name, We only call her Wild-Pomegranate-Flower, Balaustion; since, where'er the red bloom burns

You shall find food, drink, odour all at once."

He called upon her to save their little band by singing a strophe. But she could do better than that--she could recite a whole play:

"That strangest, saddest, sweetest song of his, ALKESTIS!"

Only that very year had it reached "Our Isle o' the Rose"; she had seen it, at Kameiros, played just as it was played at Athens, and had learnt by heart "the perfect piece." Now, quick and subtle for all her enthusiasm, she remembers to tell the Sicilians how, besides "its beauty and the way it makes you weep," it does much honour to their own loved deity:

"Herakles, whom you house i' the city here n.o.bly, the Temple wide Greece talks about; I come a suppliant to your Herakles!

Take me and put me on his temple-steps To tell you his achievement as I may."

"Then," she continues, in a pa.s.sage which rings out again in the _Apology_:

"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts, And poetry is power--they all outbroke In a great joyous laughter with much love: 'Thank Herakles for the good holiday!

Make for the harbour! Row, and let voice ring: _In we row bringing in Euripides!_'"

So did the Rhodians land at Syracuse. And the whole city, hearing the cry "In we row," which was taken up by the crowd around the harbour-quays, came rus.h.i.+ng out to meet them, and Balaustion, standing on the topmost step of the Temple of Herakles, told the play:

"Told it, and, two days more, repeated it, Until they sent us on our way again With good words and great wishes."

That was her Adventure. Three things happened in it "for herself": a rich Syracusan brought her a whole talent as a gift, and she left it on the tripod as thank-offering to Herakles; a band of the captives--"whom their lords grew kinder to, Because they called the poet countryman"--sent her a crown of wild-pomegranate-flower; and the third thing . . . Petale, Phullis, Charope, Chrusion, hear of this also--of the youth who, all the three days that she spoke the play, was found in the gazing, listening audience; and who, when they sailed away, was found in the s.h.i.+p too, "having a hunger to see Athens"; and when they reached Piraeus, once again was found, as Balaustion landed, beside her.

February's moon is just a-bud when she tells her comrades of this youth; and when that moon rounds full:

"We are to marry. O Euripides!"

Everyone who speaks of _Balaustion's Adventure_ will quote to you that ringing line, for it sums up the high, ardent girl who, even in the exultation of her love, must call upon the wors.h.i.+pped Master. It is this pa.s.sion for intellectual beauty which sets Balaustion so apart, which makes her so complete and stimulating. She has a mind as well as a heart and soul; she is priestess as well as G.o.ddess--Euthukles will have a wife indeed! Every word she speaks is stamped with the Browning marks of gaiety, courage, trust, and with how many others also: those of high-heartedness, deep-heartedness, the true patriotism that cherishes most closely the soul of its country; and then generosity, pride, ardour--all enhanced by woman's more peculiar gifts of gentleness, modesty, tenderness, insight, gravity . . . for Balaustion is like many women in having, for all her gaiety, more sense of happiness than sense of humour. It often comes to me as debatable if this be not the most attractive of deficiencies! Certainly Balaustion persuades us of its power; for in the _Apology_, her refusal of the Aristophanic Comedy is firm-based upon that imputed lack in women. No man, thus poised, could have convinced us of his reality; while she convinces us not only of her reality, but of her rightness. Again, we must applaud our poet's wisdom in choosing woman for the Bald Bard's accuser; she is as potent in this part as in that of Euripides' interpreter.

But what a girl Balaustion is, as well as what a woman! Let us see her with the little band of friends about her, as in the exquisite revocation (in the _Apology_) of the first adventure's telling:

". . . O that Spring, That eve I told the earlier[101:1] to my friends!

Where are the four now, with each red-ripe mouth I wonder, does the streamlet ripple still, Outsmoothing galingale and watermint?

Under the grape-vines, by the streamlet-side, Close to Baccheion; till the cool increase, And other stars steal on the evening star, And so, we homeward flock i' the dusk, we five!"

Then, in the _Adventure_, comes the translation by Browning of the _Alkestis_ of Euripides, which Balaustion is feigned to have spoken upon the temple steps at Syracuse. With this we have here no business, though so entire is his "lyric girl," so fully and perfectly by him conceived, that not a word of the play but might have been Balaustion's own. This surely is a triumph of art--to imagine such a speaker for such a piece, and to blend them both so utterly that the supreme Greek dramatist and this girl are indivisible. What a woman was demanded for such a feat, and what a poet for both! May we not indeed say now that Browning was our singer? Whom but he would have done this--so crowned, so trusted, us, and so persuaded men that women can be great?

"Its beauty, and the way it makes you weep": yes--and the way it makes you thrill with love for Herakles, never before so G.o.d-like, because always before too much the apotheosis of mere physical power. But read of him in the _Alkestis_ of Euripides, and you shall feel him indeed divine--"this grand benevolence." . . . We can hear the voice of Balaustion deepen, quiver, and grow grave with gladdened love, as Herakles is fas.h.i.+oned for us by these two men's n.o.ble minds.

When she had told the "perfect piece" to her girl-friends, a sudden inspiration came to her:

"I think I see how . . .

You, I, or anyone might mould a new Admetos, new Alkestis";

and saying this, a flood of grat.i.tude for the great gift of poetry comes full tide across her soul:

". . . Ah, that brave Bounty of poets, the one royal race That ever was, or will be, in this world!

They give no gift that bounds itself and ends I' the giving and the taking: theirs so breeds I' the heart and soul o' the taker, so trans.m.u.tes The man who only was a man before, That he grows G.o.d-like in his turn, can give-- He also; share the poet's privilege, Bring forth new good, new beauty from the old.

. . . So with me: For I have drunk this poem, quenched my thirst, Satisfied heart and soul--yet more remains!

Could we too make a poem? Try at least, Inside the head, what shape the rose-mists take!"

And, trying thus, Balaustion, Feminist, portrays the perfect marriage.

Admetos, in Balaustion's and Browning's _Alkestis_, will not let his wife be sacrificed for him:

"Never, by that true word Apollon spoke!

All the unwise wish is unwished, oh wife!"

and he speaks, as in a vision, of the purpose of Zeus in himself.

"This purpose--that, throughout my earthly life, Mine should be mingled and made up with thine-- And we two prove one force and play one part And do one thing. Since death divides the pair, 'Tis well that I depart and thou remain Who wast to me as spirit is to flesh: Let the flesh perish, be perceived no more, So thou, the spirit that informed the flesh, Bend yet awhile, a very flame above The rift I drop into the darkness by-- And bid remember, flesh and spirit once Worked in the world, one body, for man's sake.

Never be that abominable show Of pa.s.sive death without a quickening life-- Admetos only, no Alkestis now!"

It is so that the man speaks to and of the woman, in Balaustion's and Browning's _Alkestis_.