Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 177
Still, sensuality was grown a rite.
What I had disbelieved most proved most true.
There was a mind here, mind a-wantoning
At ease of undisputed mastery
Over the body’s brood, those appetites.
Oh but he grasped them grandly, as the god
His either struggling handful, — hurtless snakes
Held deep down, strained hard off from side and side!
Mastery his, theirs simply servitude,
So well could firm fist help intrepid eye.
Fawning and fulsome, had they licked and hissed?
At mandate of one muscle, order reigned.
They had been wreathing much familiar now
About him on his entry; but a squeeze
Choked down the pests to place: their lord stood free.
Forward he stepped: I rose and fronted him.
“Hail, house, the friendly to Euripides!”
(So he began) “Hail, each inhabitant!
You, lady? What, the Rhodian? Form and face,
Victory’s self upsoaring to receive
The poet? Right they named you . . some rich name,
Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants,
Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched
By the Isle’s unguent: some diminished end
In ion , Kallistion? delicater still,
Kubelion or Melittion, — or, suppose
(Less vulgar love than bee or violet)
Phibalion, for the mouth split red-fig-wise,
Korakinidion for the coal-black hair,
Nettarion, Phabion for the darlingness?
But no, it was some fruit-flower, Rhoidion . . . ha,
We near the balsam-bloom — Balaustion! Thanks,
Rhodes! Folk have called me Rhodian, do you know?
Not fools so far! Because, if Helios wived,
As Pindaros sings somewhere prettily,
Here blooms his offspring, earth-flesh with sun-fire,
Rhodes’ blood and Helios’ gold. My phorminx, boy!
Why does the boy hang back and baulk an ode
Tiptoe at spread of wing? But like enough,
Sunshine frays torchlight. Witness whom you scare,
Superb Balaustion! Look outside the house!
Pho , you have quenched my Komos by first frown
Struck dead all joyance: not a fluting puffs
From idle cheekband! Ah, my Choros too?
You’ve eaten cuckoo-apple? Dumb, you dogs?
So much good Thasian wasted on your throats
And out of them not one Threttanelo ?
Neblaretai ! Because this earth-and-sun
Product looks wormwood and all bitter herbs?
Well, do I blench, though me she hates the most
Of mortals? By the cabbage, off they slink!
You, too, my Chrusomelolonthion-Phaps,
Girl-goldling-beetle-beauty? You, abashed,
Who late, supremely unabashable,
Propped up my play at that important point
When Artamouxia tricks the Toxotes?
Ha, ha, — thank Hermes for the lucky throw, —
We came last comedy of the whole seven,
So went all fresh to judgment well-disposed
For who should fatly feast them, eye and ear,
We two between us! What, you fail your friend?
Away then, free me of your cowardice!
Go, get you the goat’s breakfast! Fare afield,
Ye circumcised of Egypt, pigs to sow,
Back to the Priest’s or forward to the crows,
So you but rid me of such company!
Once left alone, I can protect myself
From statuesque Balaustion pedestalled
On much disapprobation and mistake!
She dares not beat the sacred brow, beside!
Bacchos’ equipment, ivy safeguards well
As Phoibos’ bay.
“They take me at my word!
One comfort is, I shall not want them long,
The Archon’s cry creaks, creaks, ‘Curtail expense!’
The war wants money, year the twenty-sixth!
Cut down our Choros number, clip costume,
Save birds’ wings, beetles’ armour, spend the cash
In three-crest skull-caps, three days’ salt-fish-slice,
Three-banked-ships for these sham-ambassadors,
And what not: any cost but Comedy’s!
‘No Choros’ — soon will follow; what care I?
Archinos and Agurrhios, scrape your flint,
Flay your dead dog, and curry favour so!
Choros in rags, with loss of leather next,
We lose the boys’ vote, lose the song and dance,
Lose my Elaphion! Still, the actor stays.
Save but my acting, and the baldhead bard
Kudathenaian and Pandionid,
Son of Philippos, Aristophanes
Surmounts his rivals now as heretofore,
Though stinted to mere sober prosy verse —
‘Manners and men,’ so squeamish gets the world!
No more ‘Step forward, strip for anapæsts!’
No calling naughty people by their names,
No tickling audience into gratitude
With chickpease, barley groats and nuts and plums,
No setting Salabaccho . . .”
As I turned —
“True, lady, I am tolerably drunk:
The proper inspiration! Otherwise, —
Phrunichos, Choirilos! — had Aischulos
So foiled you at the goat-song? Drink’s a god.
How else did that old doating driveller
Kratinos foil me, match my masterpiece
The ‘Clouds’? I swallowed cloud-distilment — dew
Undimmed by any grape-blush, knit my brow
And gnawed my style and laughed my learnedest;
While he worked at his ‘Willow-wicker-flask,’
Swigging at that same flask by which he swore,
Till, sing and empty, sing and fill again,
Somehow result was — what it should not be
Next time, I promised him and kept my word!
Hence, brimful now of Thasian . . . I’ll be bound,
Mendesian, merely: triumph-night, you know,
The High Priest entertains the conqueror,
And, since war worsens all things, stingily
The rascal starves whom he is bound to stuff,
Choros and actors and their lord and king
The poet; supper, still he needs must spread —
And this time all was conscientious fare:
He knew his man, his match, his master — made
Amends, spared neither fish, flesh, fowl nor wine:
So merriment increased, I promise you,
Till — something happened.”
Here he strangely paused.
“After that, — well, it either was the cup
To the Good Genius, our concluding pledge,
That wrought me mischief, decently unmixed, —
Or, what if, when that happened, need arose
Of new libation? Did you only know
What happened! Little wonder I am drunk.”
Euthukles, o’er the boat-side, quick, what change,
Watch, in the water! But a second since,
It laughed a ripply spread of sun and sea,
Ray fused with wave, to never disunite.
Now, sudden all the surface, hard and black,
Lies a quenched light, dead motion: what the cause?
Look up and lo, the menace of a cloud
Has solemnized the sparkling, spoiled the sport!
Just so, some overshadow, some new care
Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face
And left there only such a dark surmise
— No wonder if the revel disappeared,
So did his face shed silence every side!
I recognized a new man fronting me.
“So!” he smiled, piercing to my thought at once,
“You see myself? Balaustion’s fixed regard
Can strip the proper Aristophanes
Of what our sophists, in their jargon, style
His accidents? My soul sped forth but now
To meet your hostile survey, — soul unseen,
Yet veritably cinct for soul-defence
With satyr sportive quips, cranks, boss and spike,
Just as my visible body paced the street,
Environed by a boon companionship
Your apparition also puts to flight.
Well, what care I if, unaccoutred twice,
I front my foe — no comicality
Round soul, and body-guard in banishment?
Thank your eyes’ searching, undisguised I stand:
The merest female child may question me.
Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion!”
I did speak:
“Bold speech be — welcome to this honoured hearth,
Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow
O’ the humourist who castigates his kind,
Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays
On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew,
Then vanishes with unvindictive smile
After a moment’s laying black earth bare.
Splendour of wit that springs a thunderball —
Satire — to burn and purify the world,
True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes
Injustice, — right, as rightly quells the wrong,
Finds out in knaves’, fools’, cowards’ armoury
The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through,
No damage else, sagacious of true ore;
Wit, learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath
O’er lyric shell or tragic barbiton, —
Though alien gauds be singed, — undesecrate,
The genuine solace of the sacred brow.
Ay, and how pulses flame a patriot-star
Steadfast athwart our country’s night of things,
To beacon, would she trust no meteor-blaze,
Athenai from the rock she steers for straight!
O light, light, light, I hail light everywhere,
No matter for the murk that was, — perchance,
That will be, — certes, never should have been
Such orb’s associate!
“Aristophanes!
‘The merest female child may question you?’
Once, in my Rhodes, a portent of the wave
Appalled our coast: for many a darkened day,
Intolerable mystery and fear.
Who snatched a furtive glance through crannied peak,
Could but report of snake-scale, lizard-limb, —
So swam what, making whirlpools as it went,
Madded the brine with wrath or monstrous sport.
‘‘T is Tuphon, loose, unmanacled from mount,’
Declared the priests, ‘no way appeasable
Unless perchance by virgin-sacrifice!’
Thus grew the terror and o’erhung the doom —
Until one eve a certain female-child
Strayed in safe ignorance to seacoast edge,
And there sat down and sang to please herself.
When all at once, large-looming from his wave,
Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge,
A sea-worn face, sad as mortality,
Divine with yearning after fellowship.
He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw;
So much she sees now, and does reverence!”
Ah, but there followed tail-splash, frisk of fin!
Let cloud pass, the sea’s ready laugh outbreaks.
No very godlike trace retained the mouth
Which mocked with —
“So, He taught you tragedy!
I always asked ‘Why may not women act?’
Nay, wear the comic visor just as well;
Or, better, quite cast off the face-disguise
And voice-distortion, simply look and speak,
Real women playing women as men — men!
I shall not wonder if things come to that,
Some day when I am distant far enough.
Do you conceive the quite new Comedy
When laws allow? laws only let girls dance,
Pipe, posture, — above all, Elaphionize,
Provided they keep decent — that is, dumb.
Ay, and, conceiving, I would execute,
Had I but two lives: one were overworked!
How penetrate encrusted prejudice,
Pierce ignorance three generations thick
Since first Sousarion crossed our boundary?
He battered with a big Megaric stone;
Chionides felled oak and rough-hewed thence
This club I wield now, having spent my life
In planing knobs and sticking studs to shine;
Somebody else must try mere polished steel!”
Emboldened by the sober mood’s return,
“Meanwhile,” said I, “since planed and studded club
Once more has pashed competitors to dust,
And poet proves triumphant with that play
Euthukles found last year unfortunate, —
Does triumph spring from smoothness still more smoothed,
Fresh studs sown thick and threefold? In plain words,
Have you exchanged brute-blows, — which teach the brute
Man may surpass him in brutality, —
For human fighting, or true god-like force
Which breathes persuasion nor needs fight at all?
Have you essayed attacking ignorance,
Convicting folly, by their opposites,
Knowledge and wisdom? not by yours for ours,
Fresh ignorance and folly, new for old,
Greater for less, your crime for our mistake!
If so success at last have crowned desert,
Bringing surprise (dashed haply by concern
At your discovery such wild waste of strength
— And what strength! — went so long to keep in vogue
Such warfare — and what warfare! — shamed so fast,
So soon made obsolete, as fell their foe
By the first arrow native to the orb,
First onslaught worthy Aristophanes) —
Was this conviction’s entry that same strange
‘Something that happened’ to confound your feast?”
“Ah, did he witness then my play that failed,
First ‘Thesmophoriazousai’? Well and good!
But did he also see, — your Euthukles, —
My ‘Grasshoppers’ which followed and failed too,
Three months since, at the ‘Little-in-the-Fields’?”
“To say that he did see that First — should say
He never cared to see its following.”
“There happens to be reason why I wrote
First play and second also. Ask the cause!
I warrant you receive ere talk be done,
Fit answer, authorizing either act.
But here’s the point: as Euthukles made vow
Never again to taste my quality,
So I was minded next experiment
Should tickle palate — yea, of Euthukles!
Not by such utter change, such absolute
A topsyturvy of stage-habitude
As you and he want, — Comedy built fresh,
By novel brick and mortar, base to roof, —
No, for I stand too near and look too close!
Pleasure and pastime yours, spectators brave,
Should I turn art’s fixed fabric upside down!
Little you guess how such tough work tasks soul!
Not overtasks, though: give fit strength fair play,
And strength’s a demiourgos! Art renewed?
<
br /> Ay, in some closet where strength shuts out — first
The friendly faces, sympathetic cheer:
‘More of the old provision none supplies
So bounteously as thou, — our love, our pride,
Our author of the many a perfect piece!
Stick to that standard, change were decadence!’
Next, the unfriendly: ‘This time, strain will tire,
He’s fresh, Ameipsias thy antagonist!’
— Or better, in some Salaminian cave
Where sky and sea and solitude make earth
And man and noise one insignificance,
Let strength propose itself, — behind the world, —
Sole prize worth winning, work that satisfies
Strength it has dared and done strength’s uttermost!
After which, — clap-to closet and quit cave, —
Strength may conclude in Archelaos’ court,
And yet esteem the silken company
So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown,
For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve.
Strength amid crowds as late in solitude
May lead the still life, ply the wordless task:
Then only, when seems need to move or speak,
Moving — for due respect, when statesmen pass,
(Strength, in the closet, watched how spiders spin)
Speaking — when fashion shows intelligence,
(Strength, in the cave, oft whistled to the gulls)
In short, has learnt first, practised afterwards!
Despise the world and reverence yourself, —
Why, you may unmake things and remake things,
And throw behind you, unconcerned enough,
What’s made or marred: ‘you teach men, are not taught!’
So marches off the stage Euripides!
“No such thin fare feeds flesh and blood like mine
No such faint fume of fancy sates my soul,
No such seclusion, closet, cave or court,
Suits either: give me Iostephanos
Worth making happy what coarse way she will —
O happy-maker, when her cries increase
About the favourite! ‘Aristophanes!
More grist to mill, here’s Kleophon to grind!
He’s for refusing peace, though Sparté cede
Even Dekeleia! Here’s Kleonumos
Declaring — though he threw away his shield,
He’ll thrash you till you lay your lyre aside!
Orestes bids mind where you walk of nights —
He wants your cloak as you his cudgelling:
Here’s, finally, Melanthios fat with fish,
The gormandizer-spendthrift-dramatist!
So, bustle! Pounce on opportunity!
Let fun a-screaming in Parabasis,
Find food for folk agape at either end,
Mad for amusement! Times grow better too,