Authority, experience — pushed aside
By any upstart who pleads throng and press
O’ the people! ‘Think, say, do thus!’ Wherefore, pray?
‘We are the people: who impugns our right
Of choosing Kleon that tans hide so well,
Huperbolos that turns out lamps so trim,
Hemp-seller Eukrates or Lusikles
Sheep-dealer, Kephalos the potter’s son,
Diitriphes who weaves the willow-work
To go round bottles, and Nausikudes
The meal-man? Such we choose and more, their mates,
To think and say and do in our behalf!’
While sophistry wagged tongue, emboldened still,
Found matter to propose, contest, defend,
‘Stablish, turn topsyturvy, — all the same,
No matter what, provided the result
Were something new in place of something old, —
Set wagging by pure insolence of soul
Which needs must pry into, have warrant for
Each right, each privilege good policy
Protects from curious eye and prating mouth!
Everywhere lust to shape the world anew,
Spurn this Athenai as we find her, build
A new impossible Cloudcuckooburg
For feather-headed birds, once solid men,
Where rules, discarding jolly habitude,
Nourished on myrtle-berries and stray ants,
King Tereus who, turned Hoopoe Triple-Crest,
Shall terrify and bring the gods to terms!
“Where was I? Oh! Things ailing thus — I ask,
What cure? Cut, thrust, hack, hew at heap-on-heaped
Abomination with the exquisite
Palaistra-tool of polished Tragedy?
Erechtheus shall harangue Amphiktuon,
And incidentally drop word of weight
On justice, righteousness, so turn aside
The audience from attacking Sicily! —
The more that Choros, after he recounts
How Phrixos rode the ram, the far-famed Fleece,
Shall add — at last fall of grave dancing-foot —
‘Aggression never yet was helped by Zeus!’
That helps or hinders Alkibiades?
As well expect, should Pheidias carve Zeus’ self
And set him up, some half a mile away,
His frown would frighten sparrows from your field!
Eagles may recognize their lord, belike,
But as for vulgar sparrows, — change the god,
And plant some big Priapos with a pole!
I wield the Comic weapon rather — hate!
Hate! honest, earnest and directest hate —
Warfare wherein I close with enemy,
Call him one name and fifty epithets,
Remind you his great-grandfather sold bran,
Describe the new exomion, sleeveless coat
He knocked me down last night and robbed me of,
Protest he voted for a tax on air!
And all this hate — if I write Comedy —
Finds tolerance, most like — applause, perhaps
True veneration; for I praise the god
Present in person of his minister,
And pay — the wilder my extravagance —
The more appropriate worship to the Power
Adulterous, night-roaming, and the rest:
Otherwise, — that originative force
Of nature, impulse stirring death to life,
Which, underlying law, seems lawlessness,
Yet is the outbreak which, ere order be,
Must thrill creation through, warm stocks and stones,
Phales Iacchos.
“Comedy for me!
Why not for you, my Tragic masters? Sneaks
Whose art is mere desertion of a trust!
Such weapons lay to hand, the ready club,
The clay-ball, on the ground a stone to snatch, —
Arms fit to bruise the boar’s neck, break the chine
O’ the wolf, — and you must impiously — despise?
No, I’ll say, furtively let fall that trust
Consigned you! ‘T was not ‘take or leave alone,’
But ‘take and, wielding, recognize your god
In his prime attributes!’ And though full soon
You sneaked, subsided into poetry,
Nor met your due reward, still, — heroize
And speechify and sing-song and forego
Far as you may your function, — still its pact
Endures, one piece of early homage still
Exacted of you; after your three bouts
At hoitytoity, great men with long words,
And so forth, — at the end, must tack itself
The genuine sample, the Satyric Play,
Concession, with its wood-boys’ fun and freak,
To the true taste of the mere multitude.
Yet, there again! What does your Still-at-itch,
Always-the-innovator? Shrugs and shirks!
Out of his fifty Trilogies, some five
Are somehow suited: Satyrs dance and sing,
Try merriment, a grimly prank or two,
Sour joke squeezed through pursed lips and teeth on edge,
Then quick on top of toe to pastoral sport,
Goat-tending and sheep-herding, cheese and cream,
Soft grass and silver rillets, country-fare —
When throats were promised Thasian! Five such feats, —
Then frankly off he threw the yoke: next Droll,
Next festive drama, covenanted fun,
Decent reversion to indecency,
Proved — your ‘Alkestis’! There’s quite fun enough,
Herakles drunk! From out fate’s blackening wave
Calamitous, just zigzags some shot star,
Poor promise of faint joy, and turns the laugh
On dupes whose fears and tears were all in waste!
“For which sufficient reasons, in truth’s name,
I closed with whom you count the Meaner Muse,
Classed me with Comic Poets who should weld
Dark with bright metal, show their blade may keep
Its adamantine birthright though a-blaze
With poetry, the gold, and wit, the gem,
And strike mere gold, unstiffened out by steel,
Or gem, no iron joints its strength around,
From hand of — posturer, not combatant!
“Such was my purpose: it succeeds, I say!
Have not we beaten Kallikratidas,
Not humbled Sparté? Peace awaits our word,
Spite of Theramenes, and fools his like.
Since my previsions, — warranted too well
By the long war now waged and worn to end —
Had spared such heritage of misery,
My after-counsels scarce need fear repulse.
Athenai, taught prosperity has wings,
Cages the glad recapture. Demos, see,
From folly’s premature decrepitude
Boiled young again, emerges from the stew
Of twenty-five years’ trouble, sits and sways,
One brilliance and one balsam, — sways and sits
Monarch of Hellas! ay and, sage again,
No longer jeopardizes chieftainship,
No longer loves the brutish demagogue
Appointed by a bestial multitude
But seeks out sound advisers. Who are they?
Ourselves, of parentage proved wise and good!
To such may hap strains thwarting quality,
(As where shall want its flaw mere human stuff?)
Still, the right grain is proper to right race;
What’s contrary, call curious accident!
Hold by the usual! Orchard-grafted tree,
Not wilding, race-horse-sired, not rouncey-born,
Aristocrat, no sausage-selling snob!
>
Nay, why not Alkibiades, come back
Filled by the Genius, freed of petulance,
Frailty, — mere youthfulness that’s all at fault, —
Advanced to Perikles and something more?
— Being at least our duly born and bred, —
Curse on what chaunoprockt first gained his ear
And got his . . . well, once true man in right place,
Our commonalty soon content themselves
With doing just what they are born to do,
Eat, drink, make merry, mind their own affairs
And leave state-business to the larger brain.
I do not stickle for their punishment;
But certain culprits have a cloak to twitch,
A purse to pay the piper: flog, say I,
Your fine fantastics, paragons of parts,
Who choose to play the important! Far from side
With us, their natural supports, allies, —
And, best by brain, help who are best by birth
To fortify each weak point in the wall
Built broad and wide and deep for permanence
Between what’s high and low, what’s rare and vile, —
They cast their lot perversely in with low
And vile, lay flat the barrier, lift the mob
To dizzy heights where Privilege stood firm.
And then, simplicity become conceit, —
Woman, slave, common soldier, artisan,
Crazy with new-found worth, new-fangled claims, —
These must be taught next how to use their heads
And hands in driving man’s right to mob’s rule!
What fellows thus inflame the multitude?
Your Sokrates, still crying ‘Understand!’
Your Aristullos, — ’Argue!’ Last and worst,
Should, by good fortune, mob still hesitate,
Remember there’s degree in heaven and earth,
Cry ‘Aischulos enjoined us fear the gods,
And Sophokles advised respect the kings!’
Why, your Euripides informs them — ’Gods?
They are not! Kings? They are, but . . . do not I,
In Suppliants, make my Theseus, — yours, no more, —
Fire up at insult of who styles him King?
Play off that Herald, I despise the most,
As patronizing kings’ prerogative
Against a Theseus proud to dare no step
Till he consult the people?’
“Such as these —
Ah, you expect I am for strangling straight?
Nowise, Balaustion! All my roundabout
Ends at beginning, with my own defence.
I dose each culprit just with — Comedy.
Let each be doctored in exact the mode
Himself prescribes: by words, the word-monger —
My words to his words, — my lies, if you like,
To his lies. Sokrates I nickname thief,
Quack, necromancer; Aristullos, — say,
Male Kirké who bewitches and bewrays
And changes folk to swine; Euripides, —
Well, I acknowledge! Every word is false,
Looked close at; but stand distant and stare through,
All’s absolute indubitable truth
Behind lies, truth which only lies declare!
For come, concede me truth’s in thing not word,
Meaning not manner! Love smiles ‘rogue’ and ‘wretch’
When ‘sweet’ and ‘dear’ seem vapid: Hate adopts
Love’s ‘sweet’ and ‘dear’ when ‘rogue’ and ‘wretch’ fall flat:
Love, Hate — are truths, then, each, in sense not sound.
Further: if Love, remaining Love, fell back
On ‘sweet’ and ‘dear,’ — if Hate, though Hate the same,
Dropped down to ‘rogue’ and ‘wretch,’ — each phrase were false.
Good! and now grant I hate no matter whom
With reason: I must therefore fight my foe,
Finish the mischief which made enmity.
How? By employing means to most hurt him
Who much harmed me. What way did he do harm?
Through word or deed? Through word? with word, wage war!
Word with myself directly? As direct
Reply shall follow: word to you, the wise,
Whence indirectly came the harm to me?
What wisdom I can muster waits on such.
Word to the populace which, misconceived
By ignorance and incapacity,
Ends in no such effect as follows cause
When I, or you the wise, are reasoned with,
So damages what I and you hold dear?
In that event, I ply the populace
With just such word as leavens their whole lump
To the right ferment for my purpose. They
Arbitrate properly between us both?
They weigh my answer with his argument,
Match quip with quibble, wit with eloquence?
All they attain to understand is — blank!
Two adversaries differ: which is right
And which is wrong, none takes on him to say,
Since both are unintelligible. Pooh!
Swear my foe’s mother vended herbs she stole,
They fall a-laughing! Add, — his household drudge
Of all-work justifies that office well,
Kisses the wife, composing him the play, —
They grin at whom they gaped in wonderment,
And go off — ’Was he such a sorry scrub?
This other seems to know! we praised too fast!’
Why then, my lies have done the work of truth,
Since ‘scrub,’ improper designation, means
Exactly what the proper argument
— Had such been comprehensible — proposed
To proper audience — were I graced with such —
Would properly result in; so your friend
Gets an impartial verdict on his verse
‘The tongue swears, but the soul remains unsworn!
“There, my Balaustion! All is summed and said.
No other cause of quarrel with yourself!
Euripides and Aristophanes
Differ: he needs must round our difference
Into the mob’s ear; with the mob I plead.
You angrily start forward ‘This to me?’
No speck of this on you the thrice refined!
Could parley be restricted to us two,
My first of duties were to clear up doubt
As to our true divergence each from each.
Does my opinion so diverge from yours?
Probably less than little — not at all!
To know a matter, for my very self
And intimates — that’s one thing; to imply
By ‘knowledge’ — loosing whatsoe’er I know
Among the vulgar who, by mere mistake,
May brain themselves and me in consequence, —
That’s quite another. ‘O the daring flight!
This only bard maintains the exalted brow,
Nor grovels in the slime nor fears the gods!’
Did I fear — I play superstitious fool,
Who, with the due proviso, introduced,
Active and passive, their whole company
As creatures too absurd for scorn itself?
Zeus? I have styled him — ’slave, mere thrashing-block!’
I’ll tell you: in my very next of plays,
At Bacchos’ feast, in Bacchos’ honour, full
In front of Bacchos’ representative,
I mean to make main-actor — Bacchos’ self!
Forth shall he strut, apparent, first to last,
A blockkead, coward, braggart, liar, thief,
Demonstrated all these by his own mere
Xanthias the man-slave: such man shows such god
Shamed to brute-beastship by compariso
n!
And when ears have their fill of his abuse,
And eyes are sated with his pummelling, —
My Choros taking care, by, all the while,
Singing his glory, that men recognize
A god in the abused and pummelled beast, —
Then, should one ear be stopped of auditor,
Should one spectator shut revolted eye, —
Why, the Priest’s self will first raise outraged voice
‘Back, thou barbarian, thou ineptitude!
Does not most license hallow best our day,
And least decorum prove its strictest rite?
Since Bacchos bids his followers play the fool,
And there’s no fooling like a majesty
Mocked at, — who mocks the god, obeys the law —
Law which, impute but indiscretion to,
And . . . why, the spirit of Euripides
Is evidently active in the world!’
Do I stop here? No! feat of flightier force!
See Hermes! what commotion raged, — reflect! —
When imaged god alone got injury
By drunkards’ frolic! How Athenai stared
Aghast, then fell to frenzy, fit on fit, —
Ever the last the longest! At this hour,
The craze abates a little; so, my Play
Shall have up Hermes: and a Karion, slave,
(Since there’s no getting lower) calls our friend
The profitable god, we honour so,
Whatever contumely fouls the mouth —
Bids him go earn more honest livelihood
By washing tripe in well-trough — wash he does,
Duly obedient! Have I dared my best?
Asklepios, answer! — deity in vogue,
Who visits Sophokles familiarly,
If you believe the old man, — at his age,
Living is dreaming, and strange guests haunt door
Of house, belike, peep through and tap at times
When a friend yawns there, waiting to be fetched, —
At any rate, to memorize the fact,
He has spent money, set an altar up
In the god’s temple, now in much repute.
That temple-service trust me to describe —
Cheaters and choused, the god, his brace of girls,
Their snake, and how they manage to snap gifts
‘And consecrate the same into a bag,’
For whimsies done away with in the dark!
As if, a stone’s throw from that theatre
Whereon I thus unmask their dupery,
The thing were not religious and august!
“Of Sophokles himself — nor word nor sign
Beyond a harmless parody or so!
He founds no anti-school, upsets no faith,
But, living, lets live, the good easy soul
Who, — if he saves his cash, unpoetlike,
Loves wine and — never mind what other sport,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 182