Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

THOUGHTS ON ORPHEUS.

Ou, the blessing upon and throughout the whole man, of the first real, warm, green light, and genial glow of Spring! Not as it is seen in towns, giving but a more brazen face to brick presumption, but as it steals gently upon the country, amid rocks and trees, into the deep shade, like a longmourned spirit returning re-embodied from the dead, bearing at once the twofold charm of earthly and Elysian loveliness. Such was Alcestis-Alcestis! the restored Alcestis! We have been reading the beautiful tale the volume of Euripides is open upon the now growing grass-our scholars, whose youthful, hopeful hearts, drew in from the gentle Greek generosity, and the sweet passion, even hence incipient, and soon ready to burst the bud, and open with the promise of perfect love our scholars have bounded away like young fawns stricken, not unconscious of the pleasing wound; and we, lying upon the sunny green, saw them upon the verge of the shade, the dark eye, as it were, of the deep dell before us-and a change came o'er them and us. Is it dream or vision? They have robed behind the trees, and bearded too-they present us with their tasks-we take them graciously. So-they are signed, Euripides-Shakspeare - Alcestisthe Winter's Tale. Then two come up behind them, and look over their shoulders. We know them instinctively-Virgil and Ovid; and there leans the melancholy Orpheus beneath the caverned rock; and deep in its hollow are dimly seen Eurydice and Alcestis in parting embrace, and one with head averted, and in deeper shadow-Alcestis bending forwards, and half in a reflected mysterious light. Then came another, and took up the lyre which Orpheus had left unheeded beside him. He struck; it was Gluck's "Euridice:""Che farò senza Euridice? dóve andrò senza il mio ben?" Oh, the heart-piercing Sounds! Orpheus started up and rushed into the deepest wood, and the voice of his moaning was lost in the indistinct howling of the dimly moving tigers that followed the incantation of his wo. Then did the measure change

to a dying sound; and Alcestis fell back in the shade, fainting upon the supporting arm of a scarce distinguishable figure; and the music was also Gluck's," Le pur cara è a me la vita." We awoke the vision passed Oh, that it would return!

But here is the most substantive presence of it still before us. Here lie the sun-lit pages worthy of such illumination-Euripides, Virgil, Ovid, Orpheus, Shakspeare; and, apart, what is this modest volume? Elton! His tale, too, is of Orpheus-it is a dream. We must, however, keep up our character of Master, and hear our class. The tale of Orpheus is, doubtless, the original of the plays. And how simple the story is! Örpheus, a man-more, a poet-a husband-more, an adoring husbandloses his wife. Lyre in hand, he descends to the infernal regions, and by his art of song obtains the boon he seeks her restoration, but upon the condition that he must not look back in the passage to the upper world. He is overcome by his love, and regards not the condition. He looks back, and she is lost to him—for ever! Here all is tragic, for Orpheus himself is torn to pieces by the Bacchants whose love he scorns. How could this tale have arisen but from a dream? how often does the blessedness of sleep restore!-Then the waking-the looking back-and what utter desolation is there of the heart! As Wordsworth says of his Lucy, "Oh! the difference to me," a fully exact translation of the passage in Euripides of the exclamation of the husband of Alcestis-xoλù yàg rò μérov.

Admetus.Ω σχῆμα δόμων, πως
εἰσέλθω ;

Πῶς δ ̓ οἰκήσω, μεταπίπτοντος
Δαίμονος; οἴ
πολὺ γὰρ τὸ
μέσον.

μοι

It is a domestic reality, and has sunk deep in all its possible wo into many a fond heart-thence how forlorn! There is not among ancient fables one of deeper interest, nor set off with greater variety in the picturesque developement of its scenery and action. The dramatic pieces of the Greek,

and our own bard of Avon, though they are more drawn within the common circle of human life, and may, therefore, be more directly and palpably pathetic, yet want the romantic range and wild accompaniment which make the original an untiring and It is one of ever-affecting narrative. those subjects, the embellishment of which poetry has but vaguely defined, leaving the fuller accomplishment for the sister art. The painter will find in it full scope for his genius; it comprises a series of pictures, each varying in character-it admits of sublimity, magnificence, tenderness, beauty, richness of scenery, forest and mountain, with their subdued and listening monsters, leopards and tigers, and the wild revelry of the Bacchanalian women.

If we must act the Didascalus, the ferule or a sound flogging for Ovid. His jejune narrative has not a single beauty-it is cold and feeble. Nor shall his trite sermonizing save him. And, oh! the puerile conceit that Eurydice did not complain, when relapsing into death and Orcus, because it showed she was too much loved! What business had he to prose it away that we must all die?

"Tendimus huc omnes, hæc est domus

ultima; vosque

Humani generis longissima regna tenetis."

And his abominable conclusion merits for him the real taking up.

Now let us see Virgil's accountread it again and again-it is all Music of Affection. If sparingly told, it is well set, and what is told reaches the heart. The sole, the absorbing passion of Orpheus breathes in the inimitable hexameters-inimitable in tone, and in such choice of words, that a substitution cannot be imagined. In all this it is perfect. What a tone of melancholy pervades it! Virgil leaves much of the agony of Orpheus to be imagined, as a thing not to be told. We see what Orpheus saw with his mind's eye-the picture that haunted him-his Eurydice in the Stygian bark, never to be restored. She was even before him in that fearful passage"Illa quidem Stygia nabat jam frigida cymbâ."

Having thus shown that such was the ever-present scene in the mind's eye of Orpheus, he could add no more

with effect-he leaves it as the one never to be obliterated-and with admirable transition passes on to give some idea of the duration of his grief "Seven whole months by the lonely Strymon".

Septem illum totos perhibent ex ordine

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Integrat, et moestis late loca questibus implet."

The whole tale of the Pastor Aristæus (whom, by the by, we do not at all pity for the loss of his bees), of which the Orpheus forms but a part, is, perhaps, the richest of Virgil's episodes.

But even in Virgil we object to the speech of Eurydice. True, it is the best that could be made for her, but it is destructive of the shadow of mystery, which throws her image upon the imagination as of a creature of love spiritualized, and as yet under the prohibition of the human senses. The injunction renders her invisible, and should have rendered her inaudible.

How striking is this yet remaining mystery of Death upon the living imagined in the Alcestis of Euripides! Simple, too, is the story of Alcestis. Admetus, King of Thessaly, is fated to die. Apollo, who, banished from the Gods, had served him, obtains life for him, on condition that one should die willingly in his stead. Alcestis alone, his wife, consents to die for him. She dies. At the moment of her death, Hercules arrives as a guest to the house of Admetus. The hospitable Admetus receives him, concealing the cause of his grief. This, however, Hercules learns from

the servants, and determines to rescue Alcestis from the hands of Death. He accordingly lies in ambush at the sepulchre, seizes, wrestles with Death, and obtains Alcestis. Hercules returns with her to Admetus, but does not discover her until the lamenting husband has given proof of his love and the depth of his affliction, by refusing to receive her to his care, supposing her to be one whom Hercules (as he had declared) had won as the prize of his toils, and requested Admetus to preserve until his return. The play here terminates in the restoration of Alcestis to her husband. She is thus, in her dying, and more full and happy restoration, the true Eurydice. The dim and faintly sketched character of fable is brought out from the cold shades of Orcus into the warmth and glow of life and love, a mere individual human being, and therefore the more an object of our admiration and sympathy, breathing virtuous patience, unknown endurance, and indomitable altection, in her dying breath. Εurydice is the ideal personification, Alcestis the natural perfection of wedded Jove.

Every thing in the play is made subservient to the developement of this beautiful character. She has none to support her (no female friend) in her resolution, and her husband is unable and, we fear, unworthy the sad office: she is supported solely by her loveher own gentle, yet firm mind. It is this union of firmness and gentleness that constitutes the beauty, we. had, almost said the rarity, of her character. Our sympathy is kept alive by her continual dying; there is no cessation from the secret working of the doom under which, whilst she suffers, she loses not one particle of her resolution: nor has her ebbing life less tenderness; as the life-blood chills, life lingers as it were in the surviving warmth of her affections. Mrs Jameson, in her admirable work on the Female Characters of Shakspeare, in that of Hermione not unaptly describes Alcestis. "She is a queen, a matron, and a mother; she is good and beautiful, royally descended; a majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious simplicity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified selfpossession, are in all her deportment, and in every word she utters; she is

one of those characters of whom it has

been said proverbially that still waters run deep;' her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment" (the last we would omit as not shown, at least in action, in that of Alcestis), "are, like the springs that feed the mountain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and inexhaustible. Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of Hermione in scattered touches, and through the impressions she produces on all around her." "The expressions, most sacred lady,' 'dread mistress,' sovereign,' with which she is addressed or alluded to; the boundless devotion and respect of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence, are so many additional strokes in the portrait." There is a striking instance of one of these incidental touches in Euripides; one of the servants speaks of Alcestis as

Δέσποιναν, ἥ μοι πᾶσί τ' οἰκέταισιν ἦν Μήτηρ· κακῶν γὰρ μυρίων ἐῤῥύετο, 'Opyàs μaλácσova' åvòpós.—Line 772.

My mistress, who to me and all the domestics was

As a mother, for from innumerable ills she freed us,

Soothing the anger of her husband.

Admetus we can scarcely respect; bad as the act of allowing his wife to die for him is, the dialogue between him and his old father, whom he upbraids for not dying, instead of his wife, for him, sinks him lower in our regard than the occasion of the drama requires-and the old man has, unquestionably, the best of the argument. Towards the end of the play, however, he rises, through pity for his unfeigned love and affliction, and his refusal to receive his undiscovered wife brought to him by Hercules, somewhat in our esteem; so that we are artfully thus prepared entirely to sympathize with him, and finally to enter into his full happiness in having the lovely, the lost Alcestis restored to him. aversion to look at the lady to be intrusted to his care, and at the first hasty look the resemblance to the form of Alcestis, and his burst of feeling, and wonder, and entreaty that she should be removed from his sight, thereupon, are perfect in dramatic

effect.

His

σὺ δ ̓, ὦ γύναι,
ન્હે',

2

"Η τίς ποτ' εἶ σὺ, ταῦτ ̓ ἔχεσ Αλκήςιδι
Μορφῆς μέτρ ̓ ἴσθι, καὶ προσήιξαι δέμας.
Οι μοι· κόμιζε πρὸς θεῶν ἀπ ̓ ὀμμάτων

Γυναῖκα τηνδε, μή μ' ἕλης ᾑρημένον. Line 1065.
And you, O lady,

Whoever you are, know that you have the same stature

As Alcestis, and are like to her in person.

Alas, me! remove from my eyes, by the gods I beseech you,

This lady, that you do not utterly destroy me undone.

And his after hesitation, how expressed in the breaking of the line-
Δοκῶ γὰρ, αὐτὴν εἰσορῶν, γυναῖκ ̓ ὁρᾶν

Εμην.

Methinks, as I look on her, I do behold
My wife.

How like Shakspeare, where poor old Lear, in similar doubt and surprise, says,

"Methinks I should know you, and know this man,

Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is; and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me,

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia."-King Lear, Act IV., Scene 5.

Thus Admetus, that the interest may be still in suspense, has the vision removed from his eyes, for they are dim with tears, and he can for awhile no longer see; and then is his grief renewed with double bitterness, as from a double loss.

θολοῖ δὲ καρδίαν· ἐκ δ ̓ ὀμματων Πηγαὶ κατεῤῥώγασιν· ὦ τλήμων ἐγὼ Ὡς ἄρτι πένθος τ8δε γεύομαι πικρᾶ.

It troubles my heart, and from my eyes

The fountains flow down. O, wretched that I am,
How afresh do I taste the bitterness of this grief!

The refusal of Hercules to deliver her into any other hand but that of Admetus most feelingly and naturally brings about the discovery. He receives her with averted look, and knows not that she is his wife till he is told to look at her, and see if she be like her, and be happy. The recognition (even ending in terror, lest it be unreal-some phantom conjured from the dead-is true to nature) is finely conceived.

Admetus. Ω θεοί, τί λέξω ; θαῦμ ̓ ἀνέλπιστον τόδε·
Γυναῖκα λεύσσω τήνδ' ἐμὴν ἐτητύμως.

Ἢ κερτομος με θεοῦ τις ἐμπλήσσει χαρά;

Hercules. Οὐκ ἔστιν· ἀλλὰ τήνδ' ὁρᾷς δάμαρτα σήν.
Admetus. Ορα γε, μή τι φάσμα νερτέρων τόδ ̓ ᾖ.

O Gods! what shall I say? unhoped for is this miracle;

I do indeed look on this my wife,

Or does some false heart-cutting joy of the God strike me with wonder?

Hercules. Not so; but in truth you sce here your very wife.

Admetus. Oh! take care, then, that this be no phantom of the dead. And what does Alcestis say? Alcestis! the recovered from the dead, "forbid to tell the secrets of that prison-house." Can speech tell her

happiness? And who would dissolve the spiritual awe that is around her? -The spell of Death in Life. She speaks not. When Admetus asks why

« ZurückWeiter »