Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 183
Boasts for his father just a sword-blade-smith,
Proves but queer captain when the people claim,
For one who conquered with ‘Antigone,’
The right to undertake a squadron’s charge, —
And needs the son’s help now to finish plays,
Seeing his dotage calls for governance
And Iophon to share his property, —
Why, of all this, reported true, I breathe
Not one word — true or false, I like the man.
Sophokles lives and lets live: long live he!
Otherwise, — sharp the scourge and hard the blow!
“And what’s my teaching but — accept the old,
Contest the strange! acknowledge work that’s done,
Misdoubt men who have still their work to do!
Religions, laws and customs, poetries,
Are old? So much achieved victorious truth!
Each work was product of a life-time, wrung
From each man by an adverse world: for why?
He worked, destroying other older work
Which the world loved and so was loth to lose.
Whom the world beat in battle — dust and ash!
Who beat the world, left work in evidence,
And wears its crown till new men live new lives,
And fight new fights, and triumph in their turn.
I mean to show you on the stage: you’ll see
My Just Judge only venture to decide
Between two suitors, which is god, which man,
By thrashing both of them as flesh can bear.
You shall agree, — whichever bellows first,
He’s human; who holds longest out, divine:
That is the only equitable test.
Cruelty? Pray, who pricked them on to court
My thong’s award? Must they needs dominate?
Then I — rebel. Their instinct grasps the new?
Mine bids retain the old: a fight must be,
And which is stronger the event will show.
O but the pain! Your proved divinity
Still smarts all reddened? And the rightlier served!
Was not some man’s-flesh in him, after all?
Do let us lack no frank acknowledgment
There’s nature common to both gods and men!
All of them — spirit? What so winced was clay.
Away pretence to some exclusive sphere
Cloud-nourishing a sole selected few
Fume-fed with self-superiority!
I stand up for the common coarse-as-clay
Existence, — stamp and ramp with heel and hoof
On solid vulgar life, you fools disown.
Make haste from your unreal eminence,
And measure lengths with me upon that ground
Whence this mud-pellet sings and summons you!
I know the soul, too, how the spark ascends
And how it drops apace and dies away.
I am your poet-peer, man thrice your match.
I too can lead an airy life when dead,
Fly like Kinesias when I’m cloudward bound;
But here, no death shall mix with life it mars.
“So, my old enemy who caused the fight,
Own I have beaten you, Euripides!
Or, — if your advocate would contravene, —
Help him, Balaustion! Use the rosy strength!
I have not done my utmost, — treated you
As I might Aristullos, mint-perfumed, —
Still, let the whole rage burst in brave attack!
Don’t pay the poor ambiguous compliment
Of fearing any pearl-white knuckled fist
Will damage this broad buttress of a brow!
Fancy yourself my Aristonumos,
Ameipsias or Sannurion: punch and pound!
Three cuckoos who cry ‘cuckoo’! much I care!
They boil a stone! Neblaretai! Rattei !”
Cannot your task have end here, Euthukles?
Day by day glides our galley on its path:
Still sunrise and still sunset, Rhodes half-reached,
And still, my patient scribe! no sunset’s peace
Descends more punctual than that brow’s incline
O’er tablets which your serviceable hand
Prepares to trace. Why treasure up, forsooth,
These relics of a night that make me rich,
But, half-remembered merely, leave so poor
Each stranger to Athenai and her past?
For — how remembered! As some greedy hind
Persuades a honeycomb, beyond the due,
To yield its hoarding, — heedless what alloy
Of the poor bee’s own substance taints the gold
Which, unforced, yields few drops, but purity, —
So would you fain relieve of load this brain,
Though the hived thoughts must bring away, with strength,
What words and weakness, strength’s receptacle —
Wax from the store! Yet, — aching soothed away, —
Accept the compound! No suspected scent
But proves some rose was rifled, though its ghost
Scarce lingers with what promised musk and myrrh.
No need of farther squeezing. What remains
Can only be Balaustion, just her speech.
Ah, but — because speech serves a purpose still! —
He ended with that flourish. I replied,
Fancy myself your Aristonumos?
Advise me, rather, to remain myself,
Balaustion, — mindful what mere mouse confronts
The forest-monarch Aristophanes!
I who, a woman, claim no quality
Beside the love of all things loveable
Created by a power pre-eminent
In knowledge, as in love I stand perchance,
— You, the consummately-creative! How
Should I, then, dare deny submissive trust
To any process aiming at result
Such as you say your songs are pregnant with?
Result, all judge: means, let none scrutinize
Save those aware how glory best is gained
By daring means to end, ashamed of shame,
Constant in faith that only good works good,
While evil yields no fruit but impotence!
Graced with such plain good, I accept the means.
Nay, if result itself in turn become
Means, — who shall say? — to ends still loftier yet, —
Though still the good prove hard to understand,
The bad still seemingly predominate, —
Never may I forget which order bears
The burden, toils to win the great reward,
And finds, in failure, the grave punishment,
So, meantime, claims of me a faith I yield!
Moreover, a mere woman, I recoil
From what may prove man’s-work permissible,
Imperative. Rough strokes surprise: what then?
Some lusty armsweep needs must cause the crash
Of thorn and bramble, ere those shrubs, those flowers,
We fain would have earth yield exclusively,
Are sown, matured and garlanded for boys
And girls, who know not how the growth was gained.
Finally, am I not a foreigner?
No born and bred Athenian, — isled about,
I scarce can drink, like you, at every breath,
Just some particular doctrine which may best
Explain the strange thing I revolt against —
How — by involvement, who may extricate? —
Religion perks up through impiety,
Law leers with licence, folly wise-like frowns,
The seemly lurks inside the abominable.
But opposites, — each neutralizes each
Haply by mixture: what should promise death,
May haply give the good ingredient force,
Disperse in fume the antagonistic ill.
This institution, therefore, — Comedy, —
By origin, a rite, — by exercise,
Proved an achievement tasking poet’s power
To utmost, eking legislation out
Beyond the legislator’s faculty,
Playing the censor where the moralist
Declines his function, far too dignified
For dealing with minute absurdities:
By efficacy, — virtue’s guard, the scourge
Of vice, each folly’s fly-flap, arm in aid
Of all that’s righteous, customary, sound
And wholesome; sanctioned therefore, — better say,
Prescribed for fit acceptance of this age
By, not alone the long recorded roll
Of earlier triumphs but, success to-day —
(The multitude as prompt recipient still
Of good gay teaching from that monitor
They crowned this morning — Aristophanes —
As when Sousarion’s car first traversed street)
This product of Athenai — I dispute,
Impugn? There’s just one only circumstance
Explains that! I, poor critic, see, hear, feel;
But eyes, ears, senses prove me — foreigner!
Who shall gainsay that the raw new-come guest
Blames oft, too sensitive? On every side
Of — larger than your stage — life’s spectacle,
Convention here permits and there forbids
Impulse and action, nor alleges more
Than some mysterious “So do all, and so
Does no one:” which the hasty stranger blames
Because, who bends the head unquestioning,
Transgresses, turns to wrong what else were right,
By failure of a reference to law
Beyond convention; blames unjustly, too —
As if, through that defect, all gained were lost
And slave-brand set on brow indelibly; —
Blames unobservant or experienceless
That men, like trees, if stout and sound and sane,
Show stem no more affected at the root
By bough’s exceptional submissive dip
Of leaf and bell, light danced at end of spray
To windy fitfulness in wayward sport —
No more lie prostrate — than low files of flower
Which, when the blast goes by, unruffled raise
Each head again o’er ruder meadow-wreck
Of thorn and thistle that refractory
Demurred to cower at passing wind’s caprice.
Why shall not guest extend like charity,
Conceive how, — even when astounded most
That natives seem to acquiesce in muck
Changed by prescription, they affirm, to gold, —
Such may still bring to test, still bear away
Safely and surely much of good and true
Though latent ore, themselves unspecked, unspoiled?
Fresh bathed i’ the icebrook, any hand may pass
A placid moment through the lamp’s fierce flame:
And who has read your Lemnians seen The Hours,
Heard Female-Playhouse-seat-Preoccupants,
May feel no worse effect than, once a year,
Those who leave decent vesture, dress in rags
And play the mendicant, conform thereby
To country’s rite, and then, no beggar-taint
Retained, don vesture due next morrow-day.
What if I share the stranger’s weakness then?
Well, could I also show his strength, his sense
Untutored, ay! — but then untampered with!
I fancy, though the world seems old enough,
Though Hellas be the sole unbarbarous land,
Years may conduct to such extreme of age,
And outside Hellas so isles new may lurk,
That haply, — when and where remain a dream! —
In fresh days when no Hellas fills the world,
In novel lands as strange where, all the same,
Their men and women yet behold, as we,
Blue heaven, black earth, and love, hate, hope and fear,
Over again, unhelped by Attiké —
Haply some philanthropic god steers bark,
Gift-laden, to the lonely ignorance
Islanded, say, where mist and snow mass hard
To metal — ay, those Kassiterides!
Then asks: “Ye apprehend the human form.
What of this statue, made to Pheidias’ mind,
This picture, as it pleased our Zeuxis paint?
Ye too feel truth, love beauty: judge of these!”
Such strangers may judge feebly, stranger-like:
“Each hair too indistinct — for, see our own!
Hands, not skin-coloured as these hands we have,
And lo, the want of due decorum here!
A citizen, arrayed in civic garb,
Just as he walked your streets apparently,
Yet wears no sword by side, adventures thus,
In thronged Athenai! foolish painter’s-freak!
While here’s his brother-sculptor found at fault
Still more egregiously, who shames the world,
Shows wrestler, wrestling at the public games,
Atrociously exposed from head to foot!”
Sure, the Immortal would impart at once
Our slow-stored knowledge, how small truths suppressed
Conduce to the far greater truth’s display, —
Would replace simple by instructed sense,
And teach them how Athenai first so tamed
The natural fierceness that her progeny
Discarded arms nor feared the beast in man:
Wherefore at games, where earth’s wise gratitude,
Proved by responsive culture, claimed the prize
For man’s mind, body, each in excellence, —
When mind had bared itself, came body’s turn,
And only irreligion grudged the gods
One naked glory of their master-work
Where all is glorious rightly understood, —
The human frame; enough that man mistakes:
Let him not think the gods mistaken too!
But, peradventure, if the stranger’s eye
Detected . . . Ah, too high my fancy-flight!
Pheidias, forgive, and Zeuxis bear with me —
How on your faultless should I fasten fault
Of my own framing, even? Only say, —
Suppose the impossible were realized,
And some as patent incongruity,
Unseemliness, — of no more warrant, there
And then, than now and here, whate’er the time
And place, — I say, the Immortal — who can doubt? —
Would never shrink, but own “The blot escaped
Our artist: thus he shows humanity.”
May stranger tax one peccant part in thee,
Poet, three-parts divine? May I proceed?
“Comedy is prescription and a rite.”
Since when? No growth of the blind antique time,
“It rose in Attiké with liberty;
When freedom falls, it too will fall.” Scarce so!
Your games, — the Olympian, Zeus gave birth to these;
Your Pythian, — these were Phoibos’ institute.
Isthmian, Nemeian, — Theseus, Herakles
Appointed each, the boys and barbers say!
Earth’s day is growing late: where’s Comedy?
“Oh, that commenced an age since, — two, belike, —
In Megara, whence here they brought the thing!
Or I misunderstand, or here’s the fact —
Your grandsire could recall that rustic song,
How suchanone was thief, and miser such
And how, — immunity from chastisement
On
ce promised to bold singers of the same
By daylight on the drunkard’s holiday, —
The clever fellow of the joyous troop
Tried acting what before he sang about,
Acted and stole, or hoarded, acting too:
While his companions ranged a-row, closed up
For Choros, — bade the general rabblement
Sit, see, hear, laugh, — not join the dance themselves.
Soon, the same clever fellow found a mate,
And these two did the whole stage-mimicking,
Still closer in approach to Tragedy, —
So led the way to Aristophanes,
Whose grandsire saw Sousarion, and whose sire —
Chionides; yourself wrote “Banqueters”
When Aischulos had made “Prometheus,” nay,
All of the marvels; Sophokles, — I’ll cite,
“Oidipous” — and Euripides — I bend
The head — ”Medeia” henceforth awed the world!
“Banqueters,” “Babylonians” — next come you!
Surely the great days that left Hellas free
Happened before such advent of huge help,
Eighty-years-late assistance? Marathon,
Plataia, Salamis were fought, I think,
Before new educators stood reproved,
Or foreign legates blushed, excepted to!
Where did the helpful rite pretend its rise?
Did it break forth, as gifts divine are wont,
Plainly authentic, incontestably
Adequate to the helpful ordinance?
Founts, dowered with virtue, pulse out pure from source;
‘T is there we taste the god’s benign intent:
Not when, — fatigued away by journey, foul
With brutish trampling, — crystal sinks to slime,
And lymph forgets the first salubriousness.
Sprang Comedy to light thus crystal-pure?
“Nowise!” yourself protest with vehemence;
“Gross, bestial, did the clowns’ diversion break;
Every successor paddled in the slush;
Nay, my contemporaries one and all
Gay played the mudlark till I joined their game;
Then was I first to change buffoonery
For wit, and stupid filth for cleanly sense,
Transforming pointless joke to purpose fine,
Transfusing rude enforcement of home-law —
‘Drop knave’s-tricks, deal more neighbour-like, ye boors!’ —
With such new glory of poetic breath
As, lifting application far past use
O’ the present, launched it o’er men’s lowly heads
To future time, when high and low alike
Are dead and done with, while my airy power
Flies disengaged, as vapour from what stuff
It — say not, dwelt in — fitlier, dallied with
To forward work, which done, — deliverance brave, —