by Unknown
It is generally by intercourse with man, that animals have been tamed and it is noticeable that the domestic tabby and the despised pig rage in distant lands, with all their inbred fierceness and strength. These with others are subjugated by constant war, or driven from familiar haunts, and then their race dies out as the bison of America is dying. Gradually all common animals are subdued to man’s rule, becoming once again his servants and regaining something of former willingness, in the patient horse and faithful dog. In some instances the vain-glory and conscious victory of the three spears is observed. Thus, in the swampy marshes of South America, the venomous snakes are lulled into deadness, and lie useless and harmless, at the crooning of the charmer and in shows and circuses before large crowds, broken-spirited lions and in the streets the ungraceful bears are witnesses to the power of man.
It may be that the desire to overcome and get the mastery of things, which is expressed in man’s history of progress, is in a great measure responsible for his supremacy. Had it been that he possessed no such desire, the trees and vegetation would have choked the sunlight from him, barring all passage; the hills and seas would have been the bounds of his dwellings; the unstemmed mountain-stream would always snatch away his rude huts and the ravaging hungry beasts stamp on the ashes of his fire. But his superior mind overcame all obstacles, not however universally, for in those places where his visits were seldom, the lower creation has usurped his Kingdom, and his labour must be anew expended in hunting the savage tiger through the jungles and forests of India, and in felling the trees in Canadian woods.
The next important subjugation is that of race over race. Among human families the white man is the predestined conqueror. The negro has given way before him, and the red men have been driven by him out of their lands and homes. In far New Zealand the sluggish Maoris in conceded sloth, permit him to portion out and possess the land of their fathers. Everywhere that region and sky allow, he has gone. Nor any longer does he or may he practise the abuse of subjugation — slavery, at least in its most degrading forms or at all so generally. Yet slavery only seems to have appealed to the conscience of men when most utterly base and inhuman and minor offences never troubled them. Happily this could not continue and now any encroachment on the liberties of others whether by troublesome Turk or not, is met with resolute opposition and just anger. Rights when violated, institutions set at nought, privileges disregarded, all these, not as shibboleths and war-cries, but as deep-seated thorough realities, will happily always call forth, not in foolish romantic madness nor for passionate destruction, but with unyielding firmness of resistance, the energies and sympathies of men to protect them and to defend them.
Hitherto we have only treated of man’s sub-
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often when a person gets embarked on a topic which in its vastness almost completely swallows up his efforts, the subject dwarfs the writer; or when a logician has to treat of great subjects, with a view to deriving a fixed theory, he abandons the primal idea and digresses into elaborate disquisitions, on the more inviting portions of his argument. Again in works of fancy, a too prolific imagination literally flys [sic] away with the author, and lands him in regions of loveliness unutterable, which his faculties scarcely grasp, which dazzles his senses, and defies speech, and thus his compositions are beautiful indeed, but beautiful with the cloudiness and dream-beauty of a visionary. Such a thing as this often affects poets of high, fanciful temper, as Shelley, rendering their poetry vague and misty. When however the gift — great and wonderful — of a poetic sense, in sight and speech and feeling, has been subdued by vigilance and care and has been prevented from running to extremes, the true and superior spirit, penetrates more watchfully into sublime and noble places, treading them with greater fear and greater wonder and greater reverence, and in humbleness looks up into the dim regions, now full of light, and interprets, without mysticism, for men the great things that are hidden from their eyes, in the leaves of the trees and in the flowers, to console them, to add to their worship, and to elevate their awe. This result proceeds from the subjugation of a great gift, and indeed it is so in all our possessions. We improve in strength when we husband it, in health when we are careful of it, in power of mental endurance when we do not over-tax it. Otherwise in the arts, in sculpture and painting, the great incidents that engross the artist’s attention would find their expression, in huge shapelessness or wild daubs; and in the ear of the rapt musician, the loveliest melodies outpour themselves, madly, without time or movement, in chaotic mazes, ‘like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh’.
It has been pointed out what an influence this desire of man to overcome has exerted over the Kingdom of animals and vegetation, and how it not merely destroys and conquers the worse features but betters and improves what is good. There are spots on this earth, where licence of growth holds absolute sway, where leaves choke the light and rankness holds the soil, where there are dangerous reptiles and fierce beasts, all untamed, amid surroundings of great beauty, in colour and fertility, but overshadowed by the horror of savage unrule. But the coming of man in his onward way, shall alter the face of things, good himself rendering good his own dominions. As has been written—’when true servants of Heaven shall enter these Edens and the Spirit of God enter with them, another spirit will also be breathed into the physical air; and the stinging insect and venomous snake and poisonous tree, pass away before the power of the regenerate human soul’ — This is the wished subjugation that must come in good time. And meanwhile we have considered the power of overcoming man, against the lowest races of the world, and his influence in the subjugation of his own mental faculties, and there remains for us to consider the manifold influence of his desire to conquer, over his human instincts, over his work and business and over his reason.
In the sagas of Norway, in ancient epics in the tales of ‘Knights and barons bold’ and to-day in the stories of Hall Caine, we have abundant examples of the havoc that men’s passions make, when they are allowed to spend their force in Bersirk freedom. Of course in conventional life there are fewer instances of such characters as Thor, Ospakar, Jason, and Mylrea as in those savage places which were once their homes. Modern civilisation will not permit such wholesale licence, as the then state of affairs gave occasion to. The brood of men now, in towns and cities, is not of fierce passion, at least not to such an extent as to make men subserve their rages. The ordinary man has not so often to guard against fits of demon’s anger, though the Vendetta is still common in Southern Europe but mankind has quite as many opportunities of subjugating himself or herself as before. The fretful temper, the base interpretation, the fool’s conceitedness, the fin-de-siècle sneer, the gossiping, the refusal of aid, the hurting word and worthless taunt, together with ingratitude and the forgetting of friends — all these are daily waiting for us to subjugate. Above all, the much-maligned, greatest charity, so distinct from animal profusion and reckless liberality, that charitable deeds do not wholly constitute; but which springs from inner wells of gentleness and goodness; which is shy of attributing motives; ‘which interprets everything for the best’; which dictates, from emotions of Heaven’s giving, the sacrifice of all that is dear, in urgent need, which has its being and beauty from above; which lives and thrives in the atmosphere of thoughts, so upraised and so serene that they will not suffer themselves to be let down on earth among men, but in their own delicate air ‘intimate their presence and commune with themselves’ — this utter unselfishness in all things, how does it on the contrary, call for constant practice and worthy fulfilling!
Again in the case of man’s mission, marked out for him from the gate of Eden, labour and toil, has not subjugation a direct influence, with advantage both to the world and to the man himself. ‘Foul jungles’ says Carlyle ‘are cleared away, fair seedfields rise instead and stately cities, and withal the man
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greater difficul
ty for some to subjugate their reason, than their passions. For they pit the intellect and reason of men, with their vain theorisings, against the superhuman logic of belief. Indeed to a rightly constituted mind the bugbears of infidelity have no terrors and excite no feeling save contempt. Men have passions and reason, and the doctrine of licence is an exact counterpart of the doctrine of freethinking. Human reason has no part in wisdom, if it fulfils not the whole three attributes given by the inspired writer, if it is not ‘pudica, pacifica et desursum’ — chaste, peaceful and from above. How can it thrive if it comes not from the seat of Wisdom but has its source elsewhere? And how can earthly intellects, if they blind their eyes to wisdom’s epithets ‘pudica, pacifica et desursum’ hope to escape that which was the stumbling-block with Abelard and the cause of his fall.
The essence of subjugation lies in the conquest of the higher. Whatever is nobler and better, or reared upon foundations more solid, than the rest, in the appointed hour, comes to the appointed triumph. When right is perverted into might, or more properly speaking, when justice is changed to sheer strength, a subjugation ensues — but transient not lasting. When it is unlawful, as too frequently in the past it has been, the punishment invariably follows in strife through ages. Some things there are no subjugation can repress and if these preserve, as they do and will, the germs of nobility, in good men and saintly lives, they preserve also for those who follow and obey, the promise of after victory and the solace and comfort of active expectation. Subjugation is ‘almost of the essence of an empire and when it ceases to conquer, it ceases to be’. It is an innate part of human nature, responsible, in a great way, for man’s place. Politically it is a dominant factor and a potent power in the issues of nations. Among the faculties of men it is a great influence, and forms part of the world’s laws, unalterable and for ever — subjugation with the existence also of freedom, and even, within its sight, that there may be constant manifestation of power over all, bringing all things under sway, with fixed limits and laws and in equal regulation, permitting the prowl
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power for force and of persuasion for red conquest, has brought about the enduring rule foretold, of Kindness over all the good, for ever, in a new subjugation.
THE END
written by Jas. A. Joyce 27/9/98
Note —
the insertions in pencil are chiefly omissions in writing out.
The Irish Literary Renaissance
physical, either open or masked. Since the great rebellion in the last years of the eighteenth century, we find no less than three decisive clashes between the two nationalist tendencies. The first was in 1848 when the Young Ireland Party disdainfully detached itself from O’Connell’s ranks. The second came in 1867, when Fenianism reached its apogee, and the ‘Republic’ was proclaimed in Dublin. The third belongs to the present day, as the youth of Ireland, disillusioned by the ineffectiveness of parliamentary tactics after the moral assassination of Parnell, aligns itself increasingly with a nationalism that is broader and, at the same time, more severe; a nationalism that involves a daily economic battle, a moral and material boycott, the creation and development of independent industries, the propagation of the Irish language, a ban on English culture and a revival in another guise of the ancient civilization of the Celt. Each of these uncompromising political movements has been accompanied by a literary one: sometimes it is the oratory that prevails, sometimes
The Battle Between Bernard Shaw and the Censor: ‘The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet’
Dublin, 31 August
There is a proud week in the Dublin calendar. In the last week of August the famous Horse Show attracts a multi-coloured and polyglot crowd to the Irish capital from the sister island, from the continent and even from as far away as Japan. For a few days the tired and cynical city dresses itself up like a newly wed bride and its senile sleep is broken by an unaccustomed uproar.
This year, however, an artistic event has almost eclipsed the importance of the show, and everywhere the only thing being spoken about is the dispute between Bernard Shaw and the Viceroy. As is already known, Shaw’s latest play, The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, has been stamped with the mark of notoriety by the English Lord Chamberlain who has banned its performance in the United Kingdom. This decision probably did not surprise Shaw, as the same censor did as much for two other of his theatrical works, Mrs Warren ‘s Profession and the very recent Press Cuttings. If anything, he felt honoured by the arbitrary ban imposed upon his comedies as upon Ibsen’s Ghosts, Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness and Wilde’s Salome.
He did not admit defeat, however, and he found a way of avoiding the censor’s timid vigilance. For some strange reason, the city of Dublin is the only place in the United Kingdom where censorship does not apply, and indeed, the ancient law contains the following words: ‘except the city of Dublin’. So Shaw offered his work to the Irish national theatre company which accepted it, simply announcing its performance as if it were nothing extraordinary. The censor was seen to be reduced to helplessness and the Viceroy of Ireland then intervened to save the prestige of the Law. There was a lively exchange of letters between the king’s representative and the comic playwright: severe and threatening on one side, insolent and contemptuous on the other. Meanwhile Dubliners, who couldn’t care less for art but have an immoderate love of arguments, were rubbing their hands in glee. Shaw held out, insisting on his rights, and the theatre booking office was literally besieged to such an extent that the seats were sold out a full seven times over for the first performance.
A dense crowd thronged around the Abbey Theatre that evening and a platoon of hefty guards kept order, but it was evident from the start that there would be no hostile demonstration by the elect public that packed every corner of the small revolutionary theatre. In fact, the newspaper accounts of the evening reported not the slightest murmur of protest. When the curtain fell an uproarious applause called the performers back on stage for encore after encore.
The comedy, which Shaw describes as a sermon in a plain melodrama, is, as you know, only one act long. The action takes place in an uncouth and barbaric town in the Far West. The hero is a horse-thief, and the play deals only with his trial. He has stolen a horse that he thought belonged to his brother in order to retrieve what his brother had unjustly taken from him. While fleeing the town, however, he meets a woman and a sick child. She wants to reach the nearest large town to save her child’s life, and he, moved by her appeal, gives her the horse. He is captured and brought back to the town to be hanged. The trial is summary and violent. The sheriff acts as an aggressive judge, shouting at the accused man, thumping the table and threatening the witnesses with revolver in hand. Posnet, the thief, offers a bit of primitive theology. The moment of sentimental weakness when he gave in to the pleas of the unfortunate mother has been the crisis point of his life. The finger of God has touched his brain. He no longer has the strength to continue the cruel and bestial life which he had led before that meeting. He breaks out into long, disconnected speeches (and it is here that the pious English censor blocked his ears). The speeches were theological in that God was the subject, but not very ecclesiastic in their terminology. In the sincerity of his conviction, Posnet has recourse to miners’ slang; among other reflections, and in an attempt to explain how God works in mysterious ways in the hearts of men, he even calls God a horse-thief.