And fall to magnifying misery!
Or, if you condescend to happiness,
Why, talk, talk, talk about the empty name
While thing’s self lies neglected ‘neath your nose!
I need particular discourtesy
And private insult from Euripides
To render contest with him credible?
Say, all of me is outraged! one stretched sense,
I represent the whole Republic, — gods,
Heroes, priests, legislators, poets, — prone,
And pummelled into insignificance,
If will in him were matched with power of stroke.
For see what he has changed or hoped to change!
How few years since, when he began the fight,
Did there beat life indeed Athenai through!
Plenty and peace, then! Hellas thundersmote
The Persian. He himself had birth, you say,
That morn salvation broke at Salamis,
And heroes still walked earth. Themistokles —
Surely his mere back-stretch of hand could still
Find, not so lost in dark, Odusseus? — he
Holding as surely on to Herakles, —
Who touched Zeus, link by link, the unruptured chain!
Were poets absent? Aischulos might hail —
With Pindaros, Theognis, — whom for sire?
Homeros’ self, departed yesterday!
While Hellas, saved and sung to, then and thus, —
Ah, people, — ah, lost antique liberty!
We lived, ourselves, undoubted lords of earth:
Wherever olives flourish, corn yields crop
To constitute our title — ours such land!
Outside of oil and breadstuff, — barbarism!
What need of conquest? Let barbarians starve!
Devote our whole strength to our sole defence,
Content with peerless native products, home,
Beauty profuse in earth’s mere sights and sounds,
Such men, such women, and such gods their guard!
The gods? he worshipped best who feared them most,
And left their nature uninquired into,
— Nature? their very names! pay reverence,
Do sacrifice for our part, theirs would be
To prove benignantest of playfellows.
With kindly humanism they countenanced
Our emulation of divine escapes
Through sense and soul: soul, sense are made to use;
Use each, acknowledging its god the while!
Crush grape, dance, drink, indulge, for Bacchos’ sake!
‘T is Aphrodité’s feast-day — frisk and fling,
Provided we observe our oaths, and house
Duly the stranger: Zeus takes umbrage else!
Ah, the great time — had I been there to taste!
Perikles, right Olumpian, — occupied
As yet with getting an Olumpos reared
Marble and gold above Akropolis, —
Wisely so spends what thrifty fools amassed
For cut-throat projects. Who carves Promachos?
Who writes the Oresteia?
“Ah, the time!
For, all at once, a cloud has blanched the blue,
A cold wind creeps through the close vineyard-rank,
The olive-leaves curl, violets crisp and close
Like a nymph’s wrinkling at the bath’s first splash
On breast. (Your pardon!) There’s a restless change,
Deterioration. Larks and nightingales
Are silenced, here and there a gor-crow grim
Flaps past, as scenting opportunity.
Where Kimon passaged to the Boulé once,
A starveling crew, unkempt, unshorn, unwashed,
Occupy altar-base and temple-step,
Are minded to indoctrinate our youth!
How call these carrion kill-joys that intrude?
‘Wise men,’ their nomenclature! Prodikos —
Who scarce could, unassisted, pick his steps
From way Theseia to the Tripods’ way, —
This empty noddle comprehends the sun, —
How he’s Aigina’s bigness, wheels no whit
His way from east to west, nor wants a steed!
And here’s Protagoras sets wrongheads right,
Explains what virtue, vice, truth, falsehood mean,
Makes all we seemed to know prove ignorance
Yet knowledge also, since, on either side
Of any question, something is to say,
Nothing to ‘stablish, all things to disturb!
And shall youth go and play at kottabos,
Leaving unsettled whether moon-spots breed?
Or dare keep Choes ere the problem’s solved —
Why should I like my wife who dislikes me?
‘But sure the gods permit this, censure that?’
So tell them! straight the answer’s in your teeth:
‘You relegate these points, then, to the gods?
What and where are they?’ What my sire supposed,
And where yon cloud conceals them! ‘Till they ‘scape
And scramble down to Leda, as a swan,
Europa, as a bull! why not as — ass
To somebody? Your sire was Zeus perhaps!
Either — away with such ineptitude!
Or, wanting energy to break your bonds,
Stick to the good old stories, think the rain
Is — Zeus distilling pickle through a sieve!
Think thunder’s thrown to break Theoros’ head
For breaking oaths first! Meanwhile let ourselves
Instruct your progeny you prate like fools
Of father Zeus, who’s but the atmosphere,
Brother Poseidon, otherwise called — sea,
And son Hephaistos — fire and nothing else!
Over which nothings there’s a something still,
“Necessity,” that rules the universe
And cares as much about your Choes-feast
Performed or intermitted, as you care
Whether gnats sound their trump from head or tail!’
When, stupefied at such philosophy,
We cry — Arrest the madmen, governor!
Pound hemlock and pour bull’s-blood, Perikles! —
Would you believe? The Olumpian bends his brow,
Scarce pauses from his building! ‘Say they thus?
Then, they say wisely. Anaxagoras,
I had not known how simple proves eclipse
But for thy teaching! Go, fools, learn like me!’
“Well, Zeus nods: man must reconcile himself,
So, let the Charon’s-company harangue,
And Anaxagoras be — as we wish!
A comfort is in nature: while grass grows
And water runs, and sesame pricks tongue,
And honey from Brilesian hollow melts
On mouth, and Bacchis’ flavorous lip beats both,
You will not be untaught life’s use, young man?
Pho ! My young man just proves that panniered ass
Said to have borne Youth strapped on his stout back,
With whom a serpent bargained, bade him swap
The priceless boon for — water to quench thirst!
What’s youth to my young man? In love with age,
He Spartanizes, argues, fasts and frowns,
Denies the plainest rules of life, long since
Proved sound; sets all authority aside,
Must simply recommence things, learn ere act,
And think out thoroughly how youth should pass —
Just as if youth stops passing, all the same!
“One last resource is left us — poetry!
Vindicate nature, prove Plataian help,
Turn out, a thousand strong, all right and tight,
To save Sense, poet! Bang the sophist-brood
Would cheat man out of wholesome sustenance<
br />
By swearing wine is water, honey — gall,
Saperdion — the Empousa! Panic-smit,
Our juveniles abstain from Sense and starve:
Be yours to disenchant them! Change things back!
Or better, strain a point the other way
And handsomely exaggerate wronged truth!
Lend wine a glory never gained from grape,
Help honey with a snatch of him we style
The Muses’ Bee, bay-bloom-fed Sophokles,
And give Saperdion a Kimberic robe!
“‘I, his successor,’ gruff the answer grunts,
‘Incline to poetize philosophy,
Extend it rather than restrain; as thus —
Are heroes men? No more, and scarce as much,
Shall mine be represented. Are men poor?
Behold them ragged, sick, lame, halt and blind!
Do they use speech? Ay, street-terms, market-phrase!
Having thus drawn sky earthwards, what comes next
But dare the opposite, lift earth to sky?
Mere puppets once, I now make womankind,
For thinking, saying, doing, match the male.
Lift earth? I drop to, dally with, earth’s dung!
— Recognize in the very slave — man’s mate,
Declare him brave and honest, kind and true,
And reasonable as his lord, in brief.
I paint men as they are — so runs my boast —
Not as they should be: paint — what’s part of man
— Women and slaves — not as, to please your pride,
They should be, but your equals, as they are.
O and the Gods! Instead of abject mien,
Submissive whisper, while my Choros cants
‘Zeus, — with thy cubit’s length of attributes, —
May I, the ephemeral, ne’er scrutinize
Who made the heaven and earth and all things there!’
Myself shall say’ . . . Ay, Herakles may help!
Give me, — I want the very words, — attend!”
He read. Then “Murder’s out, — ’There are no Gods,’
Man has no master, owns, by consequence,
No right, no wrong, except to please or plague
His nature: what man likes be man’s sole law!
Still, since he likes Saperdion, honey, figs,
Man may reach freedom by your roundabout.
‘Never believe yourselves the freer thence!
There are no gods, but there’s “Necessity,” —
Duty enjoined you, fact in figment’s place,
Throned on no mountain, native to the mind!
Therefore deny yourselves Saperdion, figs
And honey, for the sake of — what I dream,
A-sitting with my legs up!’
“Infamy!
The poet casts in calm his lot with these
Assailants of Apollon! Sworn to serve
Each Grace, the Furies call him minister —
He, who was born for just that roseate world
Renounced so madly, where what’s false is fact,
Where he makes beauty out of ugliness,
Where he lives, life itself disguised for him
As immortality — so works the spell,
The enthusiastic mood which marks a man
Muse-mad, dream-drunken, wrapt around by verse,
Encircled with poetic atmosphere,
As lark emballed by its own crystal song,
Or rose enmisted by that scent it makes!
No, this were unreality! the real
He wants, not falsehood, — truth alone he seeks,
Truth, for all beauty! Beauty, in all truth —
That’s certain somehow! Must the eagle lilt
Lark-like, needs fir-tree blossom rose-like? No!
Strength and utility charm more than grace,
And what’s most ugly proves most beautiful.
So much assistance from Euripides!
“Whereupon I betake me, since needs must,
To a concluding — ’Go and feed the crows!
Do! Spoil your art as you renounce your life,
Poetize your so precious system, do,
Degrade the hero, nullify the god,
Exhibit women, slaves and men as peers, —
Your castigation follows prompt enough!
When all’s concocted upstairs, heels o’er head,
Down must submissive drop the masterpiece
For public praise or blame: so, praise away,
Friend Socrates, wife’s-friend Kephisophon!
Boast innovations, cramp phrase, uncouth song,
Hard matter and harsh manner, gods, men, slaves
And women jumbled to a laughing-stock
Which Hellas shall hold sides at lest she split!
Hellas, on these, shall have her word to say!
“She has it and she says it — there’s the curse! —
She finds he makes the shag-rag hero-race,
The noble slaves, wise women, move as much
Pity and terror as true tragic types:
Applauds inventiveness — the plot so new,
The turn and trick subsidiary so strange!
She relishes that homely phrase of life,
That common town-talk, more than trumpet-blasts:
Accords him right to chop and change a myth:
What better right had he, who told the tale
In the first instance, to embellish fact?
This last may disembellish yet improve!
Both find a block: this man carves back to bull
What first his predecessor cut to sphynx:
Such genuine actual roarer, nature’s brute,
Intelligible to our time, was sure
The old-world artist’s purpose, had he worked
To mind; this both means and makes the thing!
If, past dispute, the verse slips oily-bathed
In unctuous music — say, effeminate —
We also say, like Kuthereia’s self,
A lulling effluence which enswathes some isle
Where hides a nymph, not seen but felt the more.
That’s Hellas’ verdict!
“Does Euripides
Even so far absolved, remain content?
Nowise! His task is to refine, refine,
Divide, distinguish, subtilize away
Whatever seemed a solid planting-place
For foot-fall, — not in that phantasmal sphere
Proper to poet, but on vulgar earth
Where people used to tread with confidence.
There’s left no longer one plain positive
Enunciation incontestable
Of what is good, right, decent here on earth.
Nobody now can say ‘this plot is mine,
Though but a plethron square, — my duty!’ — ’Yours?
Mine, or at least not yours,’ snaps somebody!
And, whether the dispute be parent-right
Or children’s service, husband’s privilege
Or wife’s submission, there’s a snarling straight,
Smart passage of opposing ‘yea’ and ‘nay,’
‘Should,’ ‘should not,’ till, howe’er the contest end,
Spectators go off sighing — Clever thrust!
Why was I so much hurried to pay debt,
Attend my mother, sacrifice an ox,
And set my name down ‘for a trireme, good’?
Something I might have urged on t’ other side!
No doubt, Chresphontes or Bellerophon
We don’t meet every day; but Stab-and-stitch
The tailor — ere I turn the drachmas o’er
I owe him for a chiton, as he thinks,
I’ll pose the blockhead with an argument!
“So has he triumphed, your Euripides!
Oh, I concede, he rarely gained a prize:
That’s quite another matter! cause for that!
/> Still, when ‘t was got by Ions, Iophons,
Off he would pace confoundedly superb,
Supreme, no smile at movement on his mouth
Till Sokrates winked, whispered: out it broke!
And Aristullos jotted down the jest,
While Iophons or Ions, bay on brow,
Looked queerly, and the foreigners — like you —
Asked o’er the border with a puzzled smile
— ’And so, you value Ions, Iophons,
Euphorions! How about Euripides?’
(Eh, brave bard’s-champion? Does the anger boil?
Keep within bounds a moment, — eye and lip
Shall loose their doom on me, their fiery worst!)
What strangers? Archelaos heads the file!
He sympathizes, he concerns himself,
He pens epistle, each successless play:
‘Athenai sinks effete; there’s younger blood
In Makedonia. Visit where I rule!
Do honour to me and take gratitude!
Live the guest’s life, or work the poet’s way,
Which also means the statesman’s: he who wrote
Erechtheus may seem rawly politic
At home where Kleophon is ripe; but here
My council-board permits him choice of seats.’
“Now this was operating, — what should prove
A poison-tree, had flowered far on to fruit
For many a year, — when I was moved, first man,
To dare the adventure, down with root and branch.
So, from its sheath I drew my Comic steel,
And dared what I am now to justify.
A serious question first, though!
“Once again!
Do you believe, when I aspired in youth,
I made no estimate of power at all,
Nor paused long, nor considered much, what class
Of fighters I might claim to join, beside
That class wherewith I cast in company?
Say, you — profuse of praise no less than blame —
Could not I have competed — franker phrase
Might trulier correspond to meaning — still,
Competed with your Tragic paragon?
Suppose me minded simply to make verse,
To fabricate, parade resplendent arms,
Flourish and sparkle out a Trilogy, —
Where was the hindrance? But my soul bade ‘Fight!
Leave flourishing for mock-foe, pleasure-time;
Prove arms efficient on real heads and hearts!’
How? With degeneracy sapping fast
The Marathonian muscle, nerved of old
To maul the Mede, now strung at best to help
— How did I fable? — War and Hubbub mash
To mincemeat Fatherland and Brotherhood,
Pound in their mortar Hellas, State by State,
That greed might gorge, the while frivolity
Rubbed hands and smacked lips o’er the dainty dish!
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 181