by Unknown
Yet, in some ways, this earlier manner suggests the later manner. In Catilina three figures are projected against the background of a restless and moribund society — Catiline, Aurelia, his wife, and Fulvia, a vestal virgin. Ibsen is known to the general public as a man who writes a play about three people — usually one man and two women — and even critics, while they assert their admiration for Ibsen’s ‘unqualified objectivity’, find that all his women are the same woman renamed successively Nora, Rebecca, Hilda, Irene — find, that is to say, that Ibsen has no power of objectivity at all. The critics, speaking in the name of the audience, whose idol is common sense, and whose torment is to be confronted with a clearwork of art that reflects every obscurity like a mirror, have sometimes had the courage to say that they did not understand the system of three. They will be pleased to learn that some of the characters in Catilina are in as sorry a plight as themselves. Here is a passage in which Curius, a young relative of Catiline, professes his inability to understand Catiline’s relations with Fulvia and Aurelia:
Curius: Les aimerais-tu toutes deux à la fois?
Vraiment je n’y comprends plus rien.
Catilina: En effet c’est singulier et je n’y comprends rien moi-même.
But perhaps that he does not understand is part of the tragedy, and the play is certainly the struggle between Aurelia, who is happiness and the policy of non-interference, and Fulvia, who is at first the policy of interference and who, when she has escaped from the tomb to which her sin had brought her, becomes the figure of Catiline’s destiny. Very little use is made in this play of alarms and battles, and one can see that the writer is not interested in the usual property of romanticism. Already he is losing the romantic temper when it should be at its fiercest in him, and, as youth commonly brooks no prevention, he is content to hurl himself upon the world and establish himself there defiantly until his true weapons are ready to his hand. One must not take too seriously the solution of the drama in favour of Aurelia, for by the time the last act is reached the characters have begun to mean nothing to themselves and in the acted play would be related to life only by the bodies of the performers. And here is the most striking difference between Ibsen’s earlier manner and his later manner, between romantic work and classical work. The romantic temper, imperfect and impatient as it is, cannot express itself adequately unless it employs the monstrous or heroic. In Catilina the women are absolute types, and the end of such a play cannot but savour of dogma — a most proper thing in a priest but a most improper in a poet. Moreover, as the breaking-up of tradition, which is the work of the modern era, discountenances the absolute and as no writer can escape the spirit of his time, the writer of dramas must remember now more than ever a principle of all patient and perfect art which bids him express his fable in terms of his characters.
As a work of art Catilina has little merit, and yet one can see in it what the directors of the Christiania theatre and the publishers failed to see — an original and capable writer struggling with a form that is not his own. This manner continues, with occasional lapses into comedy, as far as Peer Gynt, in which, recognizing its own limitations and pushing lawlessness to its extreme limit, it achieves a masterpiece. After that it disappears and the second manner begins to take its place, advancing through play after play, uniting construction and speech and action more and more closely in a supple rhythm, until it achieves itself in Hedda Gabier. Very few recognize the astonishing courage of such work and it is characteristic of our age of transition to admire the later manner less than the earlier manner. For the imagination has the quality of a fluid, and it must be held firmly, lest it become vague, and delicately, that it may lose none of its magical powers. And Ibsen has united with his strong, ample, imaginative faculty a preoccupation with the things present to him. Perhaps in time even the professional critic, accepting the best of the social dramas for what they are — the most excellent examples of skill and intellectual self-possession — will make this union a truism of professional criticism. But meanwhile a young generation which has cast away belief and thrown precision after it, for which Balzac is a great intellect and every sampler who chooses to wander amid his own shapeless hells and heavens a Dante without the unfortunate prejudices of Dante, will be troubled by this pre-occupation, and out of very conscience will denounce a method so calm, so ironical. These cries of hysteria are confused with many others — the voices of war and statecraft and religion — in the fermenting vat. But Bootes, we may be sure, thinks nothing of such cries, eager as ever at that ancient business of leading his hunting-dogs across the zenith ‘in their leash of sidereal fire’.
The Soul of Ireland
1903
Aristotle finds at the beginning of all speculation the feeling of wonder, a feeling proper to childhood, and if speculation be proper to the middle period of life it is natural that one should look to the crowning period of life for the fruit of speculation, wisdom itself. But nowadays people have greatly confused childhood and middle life and old age; those who succeed in spite of civilization in reaching old age seem to have less and less wisdom, and children who are usually put to some business as soon as they can walk and talk, seem to have more and more ‘common sense’; and, perhaps, in the future little boys with long beards will stand aside and applaud, while old men in short trousers play handball against the side of a house.
This may even happen in Ireland, if Lady Gregory has truly set forth the old age of her country. In her new book she has left legends and heroic youth far behind, and has explored in a land almost fabulous in its sorrow and senility. Half of her book is an account of old men and old women in the West of Ireland. These old people are full of stories about giants and witches, and dogs and black-handled knives, and they tell their stories one after another at great length and with many repetitions (for they are people of leisure) by the fire or in the yard of a workhouse. It is difficult to judge well of their charms and herb-healing, for that is the province of those who are learned in these matters and can compare the customs of countries, and, indeed, it is well not to know these magical-sciences, for if the wind changes while you are cutting wild camomile you will lose your mind.
But one can judge more easily of their stories. These stories appeal to some feeling which is certainly not that feeling of wonder which is the beginning of all speculation. The story-tellers are old, and their imagination is not the imagination of childhood. The story-teller preserves the strange machinery of fairyland, but his mind is feeble and sleepy. He begins one story and wanders from it into another story, and none of the stories has any satisfying imaginative wholeness, none of them is like Sir John Daw’s poem that cried tink in the close. Lady Gregory is conscious of this, for she often tries to lead the speaker back to his story by questions, and when the story has become hopelessly involved, she tries to establish some wholeness by keeping only the less involved part; sometimes she listens ‘half interested and half impatient’. In fine, her book, wherever it treats of the ‘folk’, sets forth in the fulness of its senility a class of mind which Mr. Yeats has set forth with such delicate scepticism in his happiest book, ‘The Celtic Twilight’.
Something of health and naturalness, however, enters with Raftery, the poet. He had a terrible tongue, it seems, and would make a satirical poem for a very small offence. He could make love-poems, too (though Lady Gregory finds a certain falseness in the western love-poems), and repentant poems. Raftery, though he be the last of the great bardic procession, has much of the bardic tradition about him. He took shelter one day from the rain under a bush: at first the bush kept out the rain, and he made verses praising it, but after a while it let the rain through, and he made verses dispraising it.
Lady Gregory translates some of his verses, and she also translates some West Irish ballads and some poems by Dr. Douglas Hyde. She completes her book with translations of four one-act plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, three of which have for their central figure that legendary person, who is vagabond and poet,
and even saint at times, while the fourth play is called a ‘nativity’ play. The dwarf-drama (if one may use that term) is a form of art which is improper and ineffectual, but it is easy to understand why it finds favour with an age which has pictures that are ‘nocturnes’, and writers like Mallarmé and the composer of’Récapitulation’. The dwarf-drama is accordingly to be judged as an entertainment, and Dr. Douglas Hyde is certainly entertaining in the ‘Twisting of the Rope’, and Lady Gregory has succeeded better with her verse- translations here than elsewhere, as these four lines may show:
I have heard the melodious harp On the streets of Cork playing to us; More melodious by far I thought your voice, More melodious by far your mouth than that.
This book, like so many other books of our time, is in part picturesque and in part an indirect or direct utterance of the central belief of Ireland. Out of the material and spiritual battle which has gone so hardly with her Ireland has emerged with many memories of beliefs, and with one belief — a belief in the incurable ignobility of the forces that have overcome her — and Lady Gregory, whose old men and women seem to be almost their own judges when they tell their wandering stories, might add to the passage from Whitman which forms her dedication, Whitman’s ambiguous word for the vanquished—’Battles are lost in the spirit in which they are won.’
J. J.
The Motor Derby
1903
Paris, Sunday.
In the Rue d’Anjou, not far from the Church of the Madeleine, is M. Henri Fournier place of business. ‘Paris-Automobile’ — - a company of which M. Fournier is the manager — has its headquarters there. Inside the gateway is a big square court, roofed over, and on the floor of the court and on great shelves extending from the floor to the roof are ranged motor-cars of all sizes, shapes, and colours. In the afternoon this court is full of noises — the voices of workmen, the voices of buyers talking in half-a-dozen languages, the ringing of telephone bells, the horns sounded by the ‘chauffeurs’ as the cars come in and go out — - and it is almost impossible to see M. Fournier unless one is prepared to wait two or three hours for one turn. But the buyers of ‘autos’ are, in one sense, people of leisure. The morning, however, is more favourable, and yesterday morning, after two failures, I succeeded in seeing M. Fournier.
M. Fournier is a slim, active-looking young man, with dark reddish hair. Early as the hour was our interview was now and again broken in upon by the importunate telephone.
‘You are one of the competitors for the Gordon-Bennett Cup, M. Fournier?’
‘Yes, I am one of the three selected to represent France.’
‘Andyou are also a competitor, are you not, for the Madrid prize?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which of the races comes first — the Irish race or the Madrid race?”The Madrid race. It takes place early in May, while the race for the International Cup does not take place till July.”I suppose that you are preparing actively for your races?”Well, I have just returned from a tour to Monte Carlo and Nice.”On your racing machine?”No, on a machine of smaller power.’
‘Have you determined what machine you will ride in thelrishrace?”Practically.’
‘May I ask the name of it — is it a Mercedes?’
‘No, a Mors.’
‘And its horse-power?’
‘Eighty.’
‘And on this machine you can travel at a rate of ?’
‘You mean its highest speed?”Yes.’
‘Its highest speed would be a hundred and forty kilometres an hour.’
‘But you will not go at that rate all the time during the race?”Oh, no. Of course its average speed for the race would be lower than that.’
‘An average speed of how much?’
‘Its average speed would be a hundred kilometres an hour, perhaps a little more than that, something between a hundred and a hundred and ten kilometres an hour.’
‘A kilometre is about a half-mile, is it not?’
‘More than that, I should think. There are how many yards in your mile?’
‘Seventeen hundred and sixty, if I am right.’’
‘Then your half-mile has eight hundred and eighty yards. Our kilometre is just equal to eleven hundred yards.’
‘Let me see. Then your top speed is nearly eighty-six miles an hour, and your average speed is sixty-one miles an hour?’
‘I suppose so, if we calculate properly.’
‘It is an appalling pace! It is enough to burn our roads. I suppose you have seen the roads you are to travel?’
‘No.’
‘No? You don’t know the course, then?’
‘I know it slightly. I know it, that is, from some sketches that were given of it in the Paris newspapers.’
‘But, surely, you will want a better knowledge than that?’
‘Oh, certainly. In fact, before the month is over, I intend to go to Ireland to inspect the course. Perhaps I shall go in three weeks’ time.’
‘Will you remain any time in Ireland?’
‘After the race?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am afraid not. I should like to, but I don’t think I can.’
‘I suppose you would not like to be asked your opinion of the result?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Yet, which nation do you fear most?’
‘I fear them all — Germans, Americans, and English. They are all to be feared.’
‘And how about Mr. Edge?’
No answer.
‘He won the prize the last time, did he not?’
‘O, yes.’
‘Then he should be your most formidable opponent?’
‘O, yes .... But, you see, Mr. Edge won, of course, but... a man who was last of all, and had no chance of winning might win if the other machines broke.’
Whatever way one looks at this statement it appears difficult to challenge its truth.
Aristotle on Education
1903
This book is compiled from the first three books of the Ethics, and the tenth book, with some extracts from the Politics. Unfortunately, the compilation is not a complete treatise on education, nor is it even exhaustive so far as it goes. The Ethics is seized upon by admirers and opponents alike as the weak part of the peripatetic philosophy. The modern notion of Aristotle as a biologist — a notion popular among advocates of ‘science’ — is probably less true than the ancient notion of him as a metaphysician; and it is certainly in the higher applications of his severe method that he achieves himself. His theory of education is, however, not without interest, and is subordinate to his theory of the state. Individualism, it would seem, is not easily recommended to the Greek mind, and in giving his theory of education Aristotle has endeavoured to recruit for a Greek state rather than to give a final and absolute solution to questions of the greatest interest. Consequently this book can hardly be considered a valuable addition to philosophical literature, but it has a contemporary value in view of recent developments in France, and at the present time, when the scientific specialists and the whole cohort of Materialists are cheapening the good name of philosophy, it is very useful to give heed to one who has been wisely named ‘maestro di color che sanno.’
A Ne’er-Do-Well
1903
After all a pseudonym library has its advantages; to acknowledge bad literature by signature is, in a manner, to persevere in evil. ‘Valentine Caryl”s book is the story of a gypsy genius, whose monologues are eked out by accompaniments on the violin — a story told in undistinguished prose. The series in which this volume appears, the production of the book, and the scantiness of its matter have an air of pretentiousness which is ill justified by perusal.
Empire Building
1903
Empire building does not appear to be as successful in Northern, as it has been in Southern Africa. While his cousins are astonish- ing the Parisian public by excursions in the air M Jacques Lebaudy, the new Emperor of the Sahara, is preparing to venture into the heavier and more
hazardous atmosphere of the Palais. He has been summoned to appear before M André at the suit of two sailors, Jean Marie Bourdiec and Joseph Cambrai, formerly of the Frosquetta. They claim 100,000 francs damages on account of the hardships and diseases which they have contracted owing to M Lebaudy’s conduct. The new emperor, it would seem, is not over-careful of the bodily welfare of his subjects. He leaves them unprovided for in a desert, bidding them wait until he returns. They are made captive by a party of natives and suffer the agonies of hunger and thirst during their captivity. They remain prisoners for nearly two months and are finally rescued by a French man-o’- war under the command of M Jaurès. One of them is subsequently an inmate of a hospital at the Havre and after a month’s treatment there is still only convalescent. Their appeals for redress have been all disregarded and now they are having recourse to law. Such is the case of the sailors for the defence of which Maître Aubin and Maître Labori have been retained. The emperor, acting through a certain Benoit, one of his officers, has entered a plea for arbitration. He considers that the case is between the French Republic and the Saharan empire and that in consequence it should be tried before a tribunal of some other national. He petitions, therefore, that the case should be submitted for judgment to England, Belgium or Holland. However the case goes (and it is plain that the peculiar circumstances attending it render it an extremely difficult one to try) it cannot be that the new empire will gain either materially or in prestige by its trial. The dispute, in fact, tends to reduce what was, perhaps, a colonising scheme into a commercial concern but indeed, when one considers how little the colonising spirit appeals to the French people, it is not easy to defend M Lebaudy against the accusation of faddism. The new scheme does not seem to have the State behind it; the new empire does not seem to be entering on its career under any such capable management as reared up the Southern Empire out of the Bechuanaland Commission. But, however this may be, the enterprise is certainly sufficiently novel to excite an international interest in this new candidate for nationhood and the hearing of a case, in which such singular issues are involved, will doubtless divide the attention of the Parisians with such comparatively minor topics as Réjane and les petits oiseaux.