'There goes the nightingale!' you say to yourself: and it is as if the stars were darting up from the little thicket and leaping away into the vast vagueness of the sky, to be hidden and gone. And every single time you hear the nightingale afresh, your second thought is: 'Now why do they say he is a sad bird?'
He is the noisiest, most inconsiderate, most obstreperous and jaunty bird in the whole kingdom of birds. How John Keats managed to begin his 'Ode to a Nightingale' with 'My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my senses IL.' — well, I for one don't know. You can hear the nightingale silverily shouting: 'What? What? What, John? Heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains? — tra-la-la!-tri-li-lilly-lilyly!'
And why the Greeks said he - or she — was sobbing in a bush for a lost lover, again I don't know. Jug-jug-jug! say the medieval writers, to represent the rolling of the little balls of lightning in the nightingale's throat. A wild rich sound, richer than the eyes in a peacock's tail. 'And the bright brown nightingale, amorous, Is half assuaged for Itylus - ' They say, with that jug! jug! jug! that she is sobbing. It really is mysterious, what people hear. You'd think they had their ears on upside down. Anyone who ever heard the nightingale 'sobbing' must have quite a different hearing-faculty from the one I've got.
Anyhow, it's a male sound, a most intensely and undilutedly male sound. And pure assertion. There is not a hint nor shadow of echo and hollow recall. Nothing at all like a hollow low bell. Nothing in the world so unforlorn.
Perhaps that is what made Keats straightway feel forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Perhaps that is the reason of it: why they all hear sobs in the bush, where any really normal listening mortal hears the silver ringing shouts of cherubim. Perhaps because of the discrepancy.
Because, as a matter of fact, the nightingale sings with a ringing, punching vividness and a pristine assertiveness that makes a mere man sit down and consider. It is the kind of brilliant calling and interweaving of glittering exclamation which must have been heard on the first day of creation, when the angels suddenly found themselves created in brightness, and found themselves able to shout aloud. Then there must have been a nightingaleish to-do! Hello! Hello! Behold! Behold! Behold! It is I! It is I! What a mar-mar-marvellous occurrence! What?
For the pure splendid splendidness of vocal assertion: Lo! It is I! you have to listen to the nightingale. Perhaps for the visual perfection of the same assertion, you have to look at a peacock shaking all his eyes. Among all creatures created in positive splendour, these two are perhaps the most perfect: the one in invisible, triumphing sound, the other in voiceless visibility. The nightingale is a quite undistinguished grey-brown bird, if you do see him: although he's got that tender hopping mystery about him, of a thing that is rich alive inside. Just as the peacock, when he does make himself heard, is awful, but still impressive: such a fearful shout from out of the menacing jungle. You can actually see him, in Ceylon, yell from a high bough, then stream away past the monkeys, into the impenetrable jungle that seethes and is dark.
And, perhaps, for this reason - the reason, that is, of pure angel-keen self-assertion - the nightingale makes a man feel sad, and the peacock so often makes him feel angry. Because they are so triumphantly positive in their created selves, eternally new from the hand of the rich bright God, and perfect. The nightingale simply ripples with his own perfection. And the peacock arches all his bronze and purple eyes with assuredness.
This, this rippling assertion of perfection, this emerald shimmer of a perfect self, makes men angry or melancholy, according as it assails the eye or the ear. The ear is much less cunning than the eye. You can say to somebody: I like you awfully: you look so beautiful this morning! and they'll believe it utterly, though your voice may really be vibrating with mortal hatred. The ear is so stupid, it will accept any amount of false money in words. But let one tiny gleam of the mortal hatred come into your eye, or across your face, and it will be detected instantly. The eye is so shrewd and rapid.
For this reason, we see the peacock at once, in his showy Hale self-assertion: and we say, rather sneeringly: Fine feathers make fine birds! But when we hear the nightingale, we don't know what we hear, we only know we feel sad-forlorn! And so we say it is the nightingale that is sad.
The nightingale, let us repeat, is the most unsad thing in the world: even more unsad than the peacock full of gleam. The nightingale has nothing to be sad about. He feels perfect with life. It isn't conceit. He just feels life perfect, and he trills it out, shouts, jugs, gurgles, calls, declares, asserts, and triumphs, but never reflects. It is pure music, in so far as you could never put words to it. But there are words for the feelings aroused in us by the song. No! even that is not true. There are no words to tell what one really feels, hearing the nightingale. It is something so much more pure than words. But it is some sort of feeling of triumph in one's own life perfection. Keats feels this all, through his ode.
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thy happiness, - That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease...
It is beautiful poetry, of a truthful poet. And Keats keeps it up, in the next stanza, wanting to drink the blushful Hippocrene and fade away with the nightingale into the forest dim.
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret...
It is such lovely poetry! But the next line is a bit ridiculous, so I won't quote it. Yes, I will:
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs... etc.
This is Keats, not the nightingale. - But Keats still tries to break away, and get over into the nightingale world.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy...
He doesn't succeed, however. The viewless wings of Poesy carry him only into the bushes, not into the nightingale world. He is still outside.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death...
I am sure the sound of the nightingale never made any man in love with easeful death - except by contrast. The contrast between the bright flame of positive pure self-perfection, in the bird, and the uneasy flame of waning selflessness, for ever reaching out to be something not himself, in the poet!
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.
How astonished the nightingale would be if he could be made to realize what sort of answer the poet was answering to his song! He would fall off the bough with amazement.
Because a nightingale, when you answer him back, only shouts and sings louder. Suppose a few other nightingales pipe up in the neighbouring bushes - as they always do - then the blue-white sparks of sound go dazzling up to heaven. And suppose you, mere mortal, happen to be sitting on the shady bank having an altercation with the mistress of your heart, hammer and tongs, then the chief nightingale swells and goes it like Caruso in the third act, simply a brilliant, bursting frenzy of music, singing you down: till you simply can't hear yourself speak to quarrel, and you have to laugh.
There was, in fact, something very like a nightingale in Caruso, that bird-like bursting miraculous energy of song and self-utterance, and self-luxuriance.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down...
Not yet in Tuscany, anyhow. They are twenty to the dozen. And the cuckoo seems remote and low-voiced, calling low, half-secretive, even as he flies past. - Perhaps really it is different in England.
The voice I heard th
is passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.
I wonder what sort of answer they all made! Diocletian, for instance! And Aesop! And Mademoiselle Ruth! I strongly suspect the last young lady of giving the nightingale occasion to sing, like the nice damsel in the Boccaccio story, who went to sleep with the nightingale in her hand: 'tua figliuola é stata si vaga dell'usignuolo, che ella I'ha preso e tienlosi in mano.'
And I wonder what the hen nightingale thinks of it all, as she mildly sits upon the eggs and hears milord giving himself forth? Probably she likes it, for she goes on breeding him true to type. Probably she likes it better than if, like the poet, he humbly warbled:
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain...
One sympathizes with Keats's Fanny, and understands why she wasn't having any. Much she'd have got out of such a midnight! Perhaps, when all's said and done, the female of the species prefers it when the male of the species is full of his own bright life, and warbles her into the spell of himself. In the end, she gets more out of it that way.
Because, of course, though the nightingale is utterly unconscious of the little dim hen while he sings, she knows well enough that the song is half her; just as the eggs are half his. And just as she doesn't want him coming and putting a heavy foot down on her little bunch of eggs, he doesn't want her to go nestling down on his song and smothering it, or muffling it. Every man to his trade, and every woman to hers.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades...
It never was a plaintive anthem, it was Caruso at his best. But don't argue with a poet.
Villa Mirenda Scandicci Firenze 26 March 1926
My dear Else:
The Schweigermutter wrote from Baden that you aren't well, and had a little operation. That's bad luck! I do hope you're better.
It isn't a good year, anyhow. Here it has rained and rained, till the country is turning yellow with wetness. But these last two days are sunny and warm: but not hot, as it should be.
We took the top half of this old villa, out on one of the little hills of Tuscany, about seven miles from Florence. We are two kilometres from the tram, which takes us in to the Duomo in half an hour. The country around is pretty - all poderi and pinewoods, and no walls at all. I hope in the autumn, really, you'll come and stay a while: unless everything goes muddled again. For myself, I struggle to get back into a good humour, but don't succeed very well. - We've got the villa for a year, anyhow, so there should be time.
Myself, I am labouring at the moment to type Frieda's MS. of the play 'David. ' It's a slow business, I'm no typist. But it is just as well for me to go through the MS. myself and it is good for me to lean some German, I suppose.
Frieda's daughter Else typed the first twenty-six pages and then are a fair number of alterations. But I shall send you the typescript as soon as it is finished: within a month, pray God! - I am interested, really, to see the play go into German, so much simpler and more direct than in English. English is really very complicated in its meanings. Perhaps the simpler a language becomes in its grammar and syntax, the more subtle and complex it becomes in its suggestions Anyhow, this play seems to me much more direct and dramatic in German, much less poetic and suggestive than in English. I shall be interested to know what you think of it.
I said to myself I would write perhaps a book about the Etruscans: nothing pretentious, but a sort of book for people who will actually be going to Florence and Cortona and Perugia and Volterra and those places, to look at the Etruscan things. They have a great attraction for me: there are lovely things in the Etruscan Museum here, which no doubt you've seen. But I hope you'll come in the autumn and look at them again with me. Mommsen hated everything Etruscan, said the germ of all degeneracy was in the race. But the bronzes and terracottas are fascinating, so live with physical life, with a powerful physicality which surely is as great, or sacred, ultimately, as the ideal of the Greeks and Germans. Anyhow, the real strength of Italy seems to me in this physicality, which is not at all Roman. - I haven't yet seen any of the painted tombs at...!
Grand Hotel Chexbres-sur-Vevey Sunday Morning Had your p.c. this morning - glad you found Nusch there. I guess you 'Il schwàtzen schwàtzen all the day. Today is better here - am sitting on my little balcony to write this - Achsah has already sent Earl down with a cup of Ovaltine - and it is sunny in snatches. I worked over my Isis story a bit - am going to try it on Earl. Last night we sang songs, Twankydillo, etc., up in Achsah's attic. Everything very quiet and domestic.
Had a few letters forwarded from Florence this morning: enclose the Curtis Brown. Ask Else what she thinks about a complete break in November with Insel Verlag. Of course it is insolence on their part that they won't tell my agents what they are doing with my books. They should of course write Miss Watson about the proposed book of short stories. Ask Else about it - what they are really doing. And ask her if she kept that short biography of me which she did for the 'Frankfurter Zeitung' man. If she did, you might look it over and send it to Miss Watson, in English, for this Kra man. I simply can't write biographies about myself. Damn them all.
A sort of lamentable letter from Cath Carswell - no money, etc. - and still fussing about what Yvonne Franchetti said about that typing. Then a letter from the irrepressible Durham miner man - wanting 'Lady C. ' very much - nothing else - no word from Orioli though it's his handwriting on the envelopes. Nothing from Huxleys either, save their telegram. Madame will have a double room for them. Wish they'd bring their car, we could look at places a bit higher. I told you they arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday. There is nothing forwarded from that St-Nizier place.
I think of you in the Schwiegermutter's room with Nusch there. Has die Anna got any flowers? Buy her a nice pot from me. And buy something for Nusch for twenty marks. I want her to have something for a quid. Only not Schnecken or foie gras. I now smell Braten of some sort. Perhaps we shall go to Vevey this afternoon. We want to go to Gruyère when you come back - also to Le Pont, which is M. Stucke's other hotel about three thousand feet up, with three little lakes. Might go there. But he leases it in summer to another hotelier. What are Nusch's plans? Love to you all - the goddesses three.
D. H. L.
At Bailathadan Newtonmore Inverness 20 August 1926
Dear Else:
Frieda sent me on your letter from Irschenhausen. I am glad you I like being there, but am surprised it is so cold. Here the weather is j mild, mixed rainy and sunny. The heather is out on the moors: the day lasts till nine o'clock: yet there is that dim, twilight feeling of the North. We made an excursion to the west, to Fort William and Mallaig, and sailed up from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. I liked it very much. It rains and rains, and the white wet clouds blot over the mountains. But we had one perfect day, blue and iridescent, with the bare northern hills sloping green and sad and velvety to the silky blue sea. There is still something of an Odyssey up there, in among the islands and the silent lochs: like the twilight morning of the world, j the herons fishing undisturbed by the water, and the sea running far in, for miles, between the wet, trickling hills, where the cottages are low and almost invisible, built into the earth. It is still out of the world, and like the very beginning of Europe: though, of course, in August there are many tourists and motorcars. But the country is almost uninhabited.
I am going south tomorrow, to stay with my sisters in Lincolnshire for a little while, by the sea. Then really I should like to come to Bavaria, if only for a fortnight. I have a feeling that I want to come again to Bavaria. I hope I shan't have to stay in England for that play. I would much rather come to Germany at the end of August. And Frieda, I know, has had enough, more than enough, of London. Perhaps after all we can come to Irschenhausen for the first part of September, and let that inhalat
ion wait a while. - I am much better since I am here in Scotland: it suits me here: and probably the altitude of Irschenhausen would suit me too. Anyhow we could go back to Baden to do a bit of inhaling. There is no hurry to get to Italy. - If only I need not stay in London for that play.
I find it most refreshing to get outside the made world, if only for a day - like to Skye. It restores the old Adam in one. The made world is too deadening - and too dead.
So I am still hoping to see you all - Friedel will be there? - in __ Bayern, quite soon. Why should one be put off, from what one wants to do.
Auf Wiedersehen.
D. H. L.
Duneville Trusthorpe Rd. Sutton-on-Sea, Lincs. 7 September,1926
My dear Else:
I had your letter today. I'm very disappointed not to be able to come to Irschenhausen. Those fools are still delaying beginning the play. We go to London on Saturday - I'm not sure of the address - and I shall see what I can do. But I am annoyed and bored beforehand.
But I doubt if we could get to Bavaria before the end of the month. Too late! I shall have to wait till spring, and go straight to Irschenhausen from Italy, if I may.
I expect we shall be in Baden, at least a day or two - travel over Paris. So we shall see you. I do hope you are feeling better. What makes you so knocked up?
It's dull weather here - a grey sky, a grey sea. My thoughts are turning south. The swifts are already going, and the swallows are gathering to go. Nothing to stay for.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 1110