Browning's Heroines Part 14

Now begins the long, close argument between them which const.i.tutes _Aristophanes' Apology_. It is (from him) the defence of comedy as he understands and practises it--broad and coa.r.s.e when necessary; violent and satiric against those who in any way condemn it. Euripides had been one of these, and Balaustion now stands for him. . . . In the long run, it is the defence of "realism" against "idealism," and, as such, involves a whole philosophy of life. We cannot follow it here; all we may do is to indicate the points at which it reveals, as she speaks in it, the character of Balaustion, and the growing charm which such revelation has for her opponent.

At every turn of his argument, Aristophanes is sure of her comprehension. He knows that he need not adapt himself to a feebler mind: "You understand," he says again and again. At length he comes, in his narration, to the end of their feast that night, and tells how, rising from the banquet interrupted by the entrance of Sophocles with tidings of Euripides dead, he had cried to his friends that they must go and see

"The Rhodian rosy with Euripides! . . .

And here you stand with those warm golden eyes!

Maybe, such eyes must strike conviction, turn One's nature bottom-upwards, show the base . . .

Anyhow, I have followed happily The impulse, pledged my genius with effect, Since, come to see you, I am shown--myself!"

She instantly bids him, as she has honoured him, that he do honour to Euripides. But, seized by perversity, he declares that if she will give him the _Herakles_ tablets (which he has discerned, lying with the other gifts of Euripides), he will prove to her, by this play alone, the "main mistake" of her wors.h.i.+pped Master.

She warmly interrupts, reproving him. Their house _is_ the shrine of that genius, and he has entered it, "fresh from his worst infamy"--yet she has withheld the words she longs to speak, she has inclined, nay yearned, to reverence him:

"So you but suffer that I see the blaze And not the bolt--the splendid fancy-fling, Not the cold iron malice, the launched lie."

If he does _this_, if he shows her

"A mere man's hand ign.o.bly clenched against Yon supreme calmness,"

she will interpose:

"Such as you see me! Silk breaks lightning's blow!"

But Aristophanes, at that word of "calmness," exclaims vehemently. Death is the great unfairness! Once a man dead, the survivors croak, "Respect him." And so one must--it is the formidable claim, "immunity of faultiness from fault's punishment." That is why _he_, Aristophanes, has always attacked the living; he knew how they would hide their heads, once dead! Euripides had chosen the other way; "men pelted him, but got no pellet back"; and it was not magnanimity but arrogance that prompted him to such silence. Those at whom Aristophanes or he should fling mud were by that alone immortalised--and Euripides, "that calm cold sagacity," knew better than to do them such service.

As he speaks thus, Balaustion's "heart burns up within her to her tongue." She exclaims that the baseness of Aristophanes' attack, of his "mud-volleying" at Euripides, consists in the fact that both men had, at bottom, the same ideals; they both extended the limitations of art, both were desirous from their hearts that truth should triumph--yet Aristophanes, thus desiring, poured out his supremacy of power against the very creature who loved all that _he_ loved! And she declares that such shame cuts through all his glory. Comedy is in the dust, laid low by him:

"Balaustion pities Aristophanes!"

Now she has gone too far--she has spoken too boldly.

"Blood burnt the cheek-bone, each black eye flashed fierce: 'But this exceeds our license!'"

--so he exclaims; but then, seizing his native weapon, stops ironically to search out an excuse for her. He finds it soon. She and her husband are but foreigners; they are "uninstructed"; the born and bred Athenian needs must smile at them, if he do not think a frown more fitting for such ignorance. But strangers are privileged: Aristophanes will condone.

They want to impose their squeamishness on st.u.r.dy health: that is at the bottom of it all. Their Euripides had cried "Death!"--deeming death the better life; he, Aristophanes, cries "Life!" If the Euripideans condescend to happiness at all, they merely "talk, talk, talk about the empty name," while the thing itself lies neglected beneath their noses; they

"think out thoroughly how youth should pa.s.s-- Just as if youth stops pa.s.sing, all the same!"

As he proceeds, in the superb defence of his own methods, he sees Balaustion grow ever more indignant. But he conjures her to wait a moment ere she "looses his doom" on him--and at last, drawing to an end, declares that after all the ground of difference between him and her is slight. In so far as it does exist, however, he claims to have won.

Euripides, for whom she stands, is beaten in this contest, yet he, Aristophanes, has not even put forth all his power! If she will not acknowledge final defeat:

"Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!"

--and he urges her to use it all, to "let the whole rage burst in brave attack."

It is evident how he has been moved, despite his boasting--how eagerly he awaits her use of the rosy strength. . . . But she begins meekly enough. She is a woman, she says, and claims no quality "beside the love of all things lovable"; in _that_, she does claim to stand pre-eminent.

But men may use, justifiably, different methods from those which women most admire, and so far and because she is a foreigner, as he reminds her, she may be mistaken in her blame of him. Yet foreigners, strangers, will in the ultimate issue be the judges of this matter, and shall they find Aristophanes any more impeccable than she does? (She now begins to put forth the rosy strength!) What is it that he has done? He did not invent comedy! Has he improved upon it? No, she declares. One of his aims is to discredit war. That was an aim of Euripides also; and has Aristophanes yet written anything like the glorious Song to Peace in the _Cresphontes_?

"Come, for the heart within me dies away, So long dost thou delay!"

She gives this forth, in the old "Syracusan" manner, and is well aware that he can have no answer for her. Again (she proceeds), Euripides discredited war by showing how it outrages the higher feelings: by what method has Aristophanes discredited it? By the obscene allurements of the _Lysistrata_! . . . Thus she takes him through his works, and finally declares that only in "more audaciously lying" has he improved upon the earlier writers of comedy. He has genius--she gladly grants it; but he has debased his genius. The mob indeed has awarded him the crowns: is such crowning the true guerdon?

"Tell him, my other poet--where thou walk'st Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed!"

But as to the immortality of either, who shall say? And is even _that_ the question? No: the question is--did both men wish to waft the white sail of good and beauty on its way? a.s.suredly. . . . And so she cries at the last: "Your nature too is kingly"; and this is for her the sole source of ardour--she "trusts truth's inherent kingliness"; and the poets are of all men most royal. She never would have dared approach this poet so:

"But that the other king stands suddenly, In all the grand invest.i.ture of death, Bowing your knee beside my lowly head --Equals one moment!

--Now arise and go.

Both have done homage to Euripides!"

But he insists that her defence has been oblique--it has been merely an attack on himself. She must defend her poet more directly, or Aristophanes will do no homage. At once she answers that she will, that she has the best, the only, defence at hand. She will read him the _Herakles_, read it as, at Syracuse, she spoke the _Alkestis_.

"Accordingly I read the perfect piece."

It ends with the lament of the Chorus for the departure of Herakles:

"The greatest of all our friends of yore We have lost for evermore!"

and when Balaustion has chanted forth that strophe, there falls a long silence, on this night of losing a friend.

Aristophanes breaks it musingly. "'Our best friend'--who has been the best friend to Athens, Euripides or I?" And he answers that it is himself, for he has done what he knew he _could_ do, and thus has charmed "the Violet-Crowned"; while Euripides had challenged failure, and had failed. Euripides, he cries, remembering an instance, has been like Thamyris of Thrace, who was blinded by the Muses for daring to contend with them in song; _he_, Aristophanes, "stands heart-whole, no Thamyris!" He seizes the psalterion--Balaustion must let him use it for once--and sings the song, from Sophocles, of Thamyris marching to his doom.

He gives some verses,[117:1] then breaks off in laughter, having, as he says, "sung content back to himself," since he is _not_ Thamyris, but Aristophanes. . . . They shall both be pleased with his next play; it shall be serious, "no word more of the old fun," for "death defends,"

and moreover, Balaustion has delivered her admonition so soundly! Thus he departs, in all friendliness:

"Farewell, brave couple! Next year, welcome me!"

It is "next year," and Balaustion and Euthukles are fleeing across the water to Rhodes from Athens. This year has seen the death of Sophocles; and the greatest of all the Aristophanic triumphs in the _Frogs_. It was all _him_, Balaustion says:

"There blazed the glory, there shot black the shame"

--it showed every facet of his genius, and in it Bacchos himself was "duly dragged through the mire," and Euripides, after all the promises, was more vilely treated than ever before.

"So, Aristophanes obtained the prize, And so Athenai felt she had a friend Far better than her 'best friend,' lost last year."

But then, what happened? The great battle of aegos Potamos was fought and lost, and Athens fell into the hands of the Spartans. The conqueror's first words were, "Down with the Piraeus! Peace needs no bulwarks." At first the stupefied Athenians had been ready to obey--but when the next decree came forth, "No more democratic government; _we_ shall appoint your oligarchs!" the dreamers were stung awake by horror; they started up a-stare, their hands refused their office.

"Three days they stood, stared--stonier than their walls."

Lysander, the Spartan general, angered by the dumb delay, called a conference, issued decree. Not the Piraeus only, but all Athens should be destroyed; every inch of the "mad marble arrogance" should go, and so at last should peace dwell there.

Balaustion stands, recalling this to Euthukles, who writes her words . . . and now, though she does not name it so, she tells the third "supreme adventure" of her life. When that decree had sounded, and the Spartans' shout of acquiescence had died away:

"Then did a man of Phokis rise--O heart! . . .

_Who_ was the man of Phokis rose and flung A flower i' the way of that fierce foot's advance"