Edward Berdoe
The Browning Cyclopædia: A Guide to the Study of the Works of Robert Browning
“The wondrous Paracelsus, life’s dispenser,
Fate’s commissary, idol of the schools and courts.”
In 1528 we find him at Colmar, in Alsatia. He has been driven by the priests and doctors from Basle. He had been called to the bedside of some rich cleric who was ill; he cured him, but so speedily that his fee was refused. Though not at all a mercenary man (for he always gave the poor his services gratuitously) he sued the priest, but the judge refused to interfere, and Paracelsus used strong language to him, and had to fly to escape punishment. The closing scene of the drama is laid in a cell in the hospital of Salzburg. It is the year 1541, his age but forty-eight, and the divine martyr of science lies dying. Recent investigations in contemporary records have proved that he had been attacked by the servants of certain physicians who were his jealous enemies, and that in consequence of a fall he sustained a fracture of the skull, which proved fatal in a few days. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Sebastian at Salzburg, but in 1752 his bones were removed to the porch of the church, and a monument was erected to his memory by the archbishop. When his body was exhumed it was discovered that his skull had been fractured during life. Writers on magic, of whom Dr. Hartmann is one, describe azoth as being “the creative principle in Nature; the universal panacea or spiritual life-giving air – in its lowest aspects, ozone, oxygen, etc.” Much ridicule has been cast upon Paracelsus for his belief in the possibility of generating homunculi; but after all he may only mean that chemistry will succeed in bridging the gulf between the living and the not-living by the production of organic bodies from inorganic substances. Paracelsus held that the constitution of man consists of seven principles: (1) The elementary body; (2) The archæus (vital force); (3) The sidereal body; (4) The animal soul; (5) The rational soul; (6) The spiritual soul; (7) The man of the new Olympus (the personal God). Those who are familiar with Indian philosophy will recognise this anthropology as identical with its own. Paracelsus, in his De Natura Rerum, says, “The external man is not the real man, but the real man is the soul in connection with the Divine Spirit.” We understand now what Mr. Browning means when he says that “knowing is opening the way to let the imprisoned splendour escape.” His idea that all Nature was living, and that there is nothing which has not a soul hidden within it – a hidden principle of life – led him to the conclusion that, in place of the filthy concoctions and hideous messes that were in vogue with the doctors of his time, it was possible to give tinctures and quintessences of drugs, such as we now call active principles, – in a word, that it is more reasonable and pleasant to take a grain or two of quinine than a tablespoonful of timber. He set himself to study the causes and the symptoms of disease, and sought a remedy in common-sense methods. Mr. Browning is right when he makes him say he had a “wolfish hunger after knowledge”; and surely there never lived a man whose aim was to devote its fruits to the service of humanity more than his. There are many hints in his works that he knew a great deal more than he cared to make known. Take this example. He said: “Every peasant has seen a magnet will attract iron. I have discovered that the magnet, besides this visible power, has another and a concealed power.” Again: “A magnet may be prepared out of some vital substance that will attract vitality.” Mesmer, who lived nearly three hundred years after him, reaped the glory of a discovery made, as Lessing says, by the martyred fire-philosopher who died in Salzburg hospital. “Matter is the visible body of the invisible God,” says Paracelsus. Matter to him was not dead. “Matter is, so to say, coagulated vapour, and is connected with spirit by an intermediate principle which it receives from the spirit.” We cannot understand Paracelsus and the science of his time without a little inquiry as to what was meant by the search for the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life, and the universal medicine. It is very difficult to discern what was really intended by these phrases. Dr. Anna Kingsford, who paid considerable attention to the hermetic philosophy, says: “These are but terms to denote pure spirit and its essential correlative, a will absolutely firm, and inaccessible alike to weakness from within and assault from without.” Another writer ingeniously tries to explain the universal solvent as really nothing but pure water, which has the property of more or less dissolving all the elements. His alcahest– as he termed it – as far as I can make out was nothing more than a preparation of lime; but writers of this school only desired to be understood by the initiated, and probably the words actually used meant something quite different. There was a reason for using an incomprehensible style for fear of the persecutions of the Church, and these books, like the rolls in Ezekiel, were “written within and without.” Many great truths, we know, were enshrouded in symbolic names and fanciful metaphors. It is certain that Paracelsus, like his predecessors, sought to possess the elixir of life. It does not appear from his writings that he thought it possible to render the physical body immortal; but he held it to be the duty – as the medical profession holds it still – of the physician to preserve life as long as possible. A great deal of matter attributed to Paracelsus on this subject is spurious, but there are some of his authentic writings which are very curious and entertaining. He describes the process of making the Primum Ens Melissæ, which after all turns out to be nothing but an alkaline tincture of the leaves of the common British plant known as the Balm or Melissa officinalis. Some very amusing stories are told of the virtues of this concoction by Lesebure, a physician to Louis XIV., and which speak volumes for the credulity of the doctors of those times. Another of his great secrets was his Primum Ens Sanguinis. This is extremely simple, being nothing more than the venous injection of blood from the arm of “a healthy young person.” In this we see that he anticipated our modern operation of transfusion. His doctrine of signatures was very curious and most absurd. He thought that “each plant was in a sympathetic relation with the Macrocosm and consequently with the Microcosm.” “This signature,” he says, “is often expressed even in the exterior forms of things.” So he prescribed the plant we call euphrasy or “eye bright” for complaints of the eyes, because of the likeness to an eye in the flower; small-pox was treated with mulberries because their colour showed that they were proper for diseases of the blood. This sort of thing still lingers in country domestic medicine. Pulmonaria officinalis or Lungwort, so called from its spotted leaves looking like diseased lungs, has long been used for chest complaints. (See my “Paracelsus the Reformer of Medicine” in Browning’s Message to his Time.)
Paracelsus. [The Poem, 1835.] Paracelsus Aspires: Book I. (Würzburg, 1512.) Paracelsus the student is talking with his friends Festus and Michal on the eve of his departure to seek knowledge of the deeper sort, that cannot be learned from books, – in the great world of men. It is a time to arouse young men. The dark night of ignorance yields to the rising sun of learning, for the art of printing and the glories of the Revival of Learning have liberated the minds of men. Authority no longer suffices: the men of Germany will see for themselves. So Paracelsus, pupil of the learned Abbot Trithemius, resolves to forsake the monastery cell and the ancient books, and go out to seek for himself knowledge in the byways of the world. His friends are timid. They mistrust his method; they call him proud and too self-confident, advise him to stick to the beaten ways of learning, nor venture into the tangled forests and pathless deserts which God has evidently closed against man’s rash intrusion. Paracelsus, on the contrary, feels that he has a great commission from God: he dare not subdue the vast longings which fill his soul. God’s command is laid upon him, and he must answer to His will. Festus objects that a man must not presume to serve God save in the appointed channels. God looks to means as well as ends, and Paracelsus ought not to scorn the ordinary means of learning. The impatient student suggests that his fierce energy, his striving instinct, the irresistible force which works within him, are proofs that he possesses a God-given strength never imparted in vain. He will abjure the idle arts of magic. New hopes animate him, new light dawns upon him: he is set apart for a great work. “Then,” replies his friend, “pursue it in an approved retreat; turn not aside from the famed spots where Learning dwells. Rome and Athens shall teach you; leave seas and deserts to their desolation.” Paracelsus declares his aspiration to be no less than a passionate yearning to comprehend the works of God, God Himself, all God’s intercourse with the human mind. He goes to prove his soul. God, who guides the bird in his trackless way, will guide him: he will arrive in God’s good time. His friends think that all this may be but self-delusion; at least, he is selfish to attempt this work alone. Festus declares that were he elect for such a task he would encircle himself with the love of his fellows, and not cut himself off from human weal; for there is nothing so monstrous in the world as a being not knowing what love is. Michal, the tender woman friend, urges him to cast his hopes away – warns him that he is too proud. He will find what he seeks, but will perish so! Paracelsus protests that he does not lightly give up either the pleasures of life or the love they praise. Truth, he says, is within ourselves; knowing consists in opening a way where the splendour imprisoned within the soul may escape. It comes not from outward things. He offers, therefore, no defiance to God in desiring to know. Humanity may beat the angels; yet, if once man rises to his true stature, Festus believes, and so does Michal, that Paracelsus will succeed. He plunges for the pearl; they wait his rise.
Paracelsus Attains: Book II. The scene is laid in a Greek conjuror’s house at Constantinople, 1521. Paracelsus is mentally taking stock of his attainments – what gained, what lost. He has made discoveries, but the produce of his toil is fragmentary – a confused mass of fact and fancy. He can keep on the stretch no longer: he will learn by magic what he has failed to learn by labour. His overwrought brain demands rest; even in failure he will have rest. True, he had hoped for attainment once, but that is past. His heart was human once. He had loving friends in Würzburg; but love has gone, and his life’s one idea has absorbed him, to obtain at all costs his reward in the lump. God may take pleasure in confounding such pride. He may have been fighting sleep off for death’s sake. Is his mind stricken? He believes that God would warn him before He struck. And now from within he hears a voice. It is that of Aprile, the spirit of a departed poet, who has aspired to love beauty only. As Paracelsus has sought knowledge alone, Aprile would love infinitely all forms of art and all the delights of Nature. Paracelsus demands he should do obeisance to him, the Knower. Aprile refuses to acknowledge the kingship of one who knows nothing of the loveliness of life. Paracelsus now sees the error into which both have fallen. He has excluded love, as Aprile has excluded knowledge. They are two halves of one dissevered world. Paracelsus, learning now wherein lies his defect, feels that he has attained.
Paracelsus: Book III. At Basle, 1526. Paracelsus meets his friend Festus, who has come to the famous university town to see the wondrous physician, whom they call “life’s dispenser, idol of the courts and schools.” He has heard him lecture from his Professor’s chair; has seen the benches thronged with eager students; has gathered from their approving murmurs full corroboration of his hopes: his pupils worship him. Paracelsus admits his outward success, but confides to his friend that he is indeed most miserable at heart. The hopes which fed his youth have not been realised. He aspired to know God: he has attained – a professorship at Basle! He has wrought certain cures by means of drugs whose uses he has discovered; he has a pile of diplomas and licences; he has received (what he values most) a generous acknowledgment of his merit from Erasmus; and he has a crowded class-room, and, in place of his high aims, there have sprung up in his soul like fungi at the roots of a noble tree, a host of petty, vile delights. As for his eager following, mere novelty and ignorant amazement, coupled with innate dulness and the opposition to the regular system of the schools, will account for it. Seeing all this, and feeling that the work to which he has addressed himself is too hard for him, he has sunk in his own esteem, fallen from his ambition, and has become brutal, half-stupid and half-mad. He feels that he precedes his age in his contempt and scorn for all who worked before him on the same path. He has in public burned the books of Aetius, Oribasius, Galen, Rhasis, Serapion, Avicenna, and Averroes.
Paracelsus Aspires. Book IV. The scene is at Colmar, in Alsatia, at an inn, 1528. Yet once more Paracelsus aspires. He has sent for his friend Festus to tell him that he is exposed to the world as a quack, that he is cast off by those who erstwhile worshipped him, and denounced by those whom he has served. He has saved the life of a church dignitary, who not only refused afterwards to pay his fee, but made Basle impossible for him. His pupils grew tired of him when he attempted to teach them and gave up amusing them. The faculty drew off from him when their old methods were interfered with; and so he turned his back on the university. And once more the philosopher has started on his travels, seeking to know with all the enthusiasm of his youth – with the old aims, but not by the same means. No longer the lean ascetic, debarring his soul of her rightful pleasures; but embracing all the joys of life, and combining pleasure with knowledge. This is to be his new method. His appetites, he must own, are degraded – his joys impure. Festus warns him that the base pleasures which have superseded his nobler aims will never content him. Paracelsus declares he lives to enjoy all he can and to know all he can. He has cast off his remorseless care, is hardened in his fault; and as he sings the song of —
“The men who proudly clung
To their first fault, and perished in their pride,”
his friend Festus, alarmed at this impiety, urges him to renounce the past, to wait death’s summons amid holy sights, and return with him to Einsiedeln. Paracelsus declares this to be impossible: his baser life forbids; a sneering devil is within him; he is weary; the wine-cup, in which he has long tried to drown his disappointment, fails him now; he can hardly sink deeper. Festus attempts to comfort and advise: he too has felt sorrow: sweet Michal is dead. This rouses Paracelsus to endeavour on his part to comfort Festus by declaring his faith in the soul’s immortality.
Paracelsus Attains. Book V. In a cell in the hospital of Salzburg, in 1541, Paracelsus lies dying. His faithful friend is by his side, watching through the weary night; and as he watches the patient, he prays for the tortured champion of man. He has sinned, but surely he has sought God’s praise. Had God granted him success, it must have been to His honour. Say he erred, God fashioned him and knew how he was made. Festus could have sat quietly at the feet of God. He could never have erred in this great way. God is not made like us. It will be like Him to save him! Now Paracelsus awakes; his failing strength struggles like the flame of an expiring taper. At first, in half-delirious phrases, he tells of the hissing and contempt which struck at his heart at Basle – the measureless scorn heaped on him, as they called him quack and cheat and liar. And now he cries that human love is gone; he dreams of Aprile; he calls on God for one hour of strength to set his heart on Him and love. And then, with a clearer consciousness, he recognises Festus, who tells him that God will take him to His breast, and on earth splendour shall rest upon his name for ever, – the name of the master-mind, the thinker, the explorer. He sings of the gliding Mayne they knew so well; and the simple words loose the dying man’s heart, for he knows he is dying, and his varied life drifts by him. There is time yet to speak; but he will rise and speak standing, as becomes a teacher of men. He has sinned, he feels his need for mercy, and he can trust God. It was meant to be with him as had fallen out. His fevered thirst for knowledge was born in him. He has learned so much of God: His joy in creation; His intentions with regard to man. His final work the product of the world’s remotest ages; its æons of preparation; the love mingling with everything that tended towards the highest work of creation; the progress which is the law of life. The tendency to God he can descry even in man’s present imperfection. He sees now where his error lay: how he overlooked the good in man; how he had failed to note the good in evil, and to detect the love beneath the mask of hate; how he had denied the half-reasons, the faint aspirings, the struggles for truth; the littleness in man, despite his errors; the upward tendency in all his weakness. All this he knew not, and he failed. Yet if he
“Stoop
Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time.”
He “shall emerge one day.” And so he sinks to rest. And this is Browning’s Paracelsus.
It is in Paracelsus (the work that posterity will probably estimate as Browning’s greatest) that we must look for the strongest proof of his sympathy with man’s desire to know and bend the forces of Nature to his service. To some students this magnificent work will appear only the string of pearls and precious stones that some of us consider Sordello to be. To others it is a drama illustrating the contending forces of love and knowledge; others, again, find in it only an elaborate discussion on the Aristotelian and Platonic systems of philosophy. It is none of these alone: rather, if a single sentence could describe it, it is the Epic of the Healer, not of the hero who stole from heaven a jealously-guarded fire, but of him who won from heaven what was waiting for a worthy recipient to take and help us to. In so far as Paracelsus came short, it was deficiency of love that hindered him; of his striving after knowledge, and what he won for man, the epic tells in words and music that, to me at least, have no equal in the whole range of literature. It is most remarkable that long before the scientific men of our time had given Paracelsus credit for the noble work he did for mankind, and the lasting boon many of his discoveries conferred upon the race, Mr. Browning, in this wonderful poem, recognised both his labours and their results at their true value, and raising his reputation at this late hour from the infamy with which his enemies and biographers had covered it, set him in his proper place amongst the heroes and martyrs of science. We owe the poet a debt of gratitude for this rehabilitation. No man could have written this transcendent poem who had less than Browning’s power of thrusting aside the accidents and accretions of a character, and getting at the naked germ from which springs the life of the real man. That no follower of medicine, no chemist, no disciple of science, did this for Paracelsus is, in the splendid light of Mr. Browning’s research and penetration, a remarkable instance of the fact that the unjust verdicts of a time and a class need to be reversed in a clearer atmosphere, and in freedom from class prejudices not often accorded to contemporary biographers. A poet alone could never have done us this service; and a single attentive perusal of this work is enough to show that the intimate blending of the scientific with the poetic faculty could alone have effected the restoration. How lovingly the poet has taken this world-benefactor’s remains from the ditch into which his profession had cast them, and laid them in his own beautiful sepulchre, gemmed, chiselled, and arabesqued by all the lovely imagery of his fancy, no reader of Browning’s Paracelsus needs to be told.
[For a complete study of the life and work of Paracelsus, and Mr. Browning’s poem thereon, see the chapter “Paracelsus, the Reformer of Medicine,” in my Browning’s Message to his Time (Sonnenschein).]
Notes to Book I. —Würzburg is one of the most ancient and historically important towns of Germany. Its bishops were made dukes of Franconia in 1120. Its university was founded in 1582. Trithemius of Spanheim was abbot of Würzburg, and was a great astrologer and alchemist. Einsiedeln, in Canton Schwyz, Switzerland, is a noted place of pilgrimage on the Alpbach, thirty miles from Zurich, under the Herrenberg, with an abbey founded in 861, containing a black statue of the Virgin. Immense quantities of missals, rosaries, etc., are produced there. Zwingle was a priest here 1515-19; and not far from the town is the house where Paracelsus was born. Population now about 7650. Gier-eagle: supposed to be a small vulture (Lev. xi. 18). Black arts: Black magic == sorcery, as opposed to white magic == science. The Stagirite: Aristotle, who was born at Stagira, in Macedon.
Notes to Book II. —Constantinople, the city of the East where many astrologers practised their art. “A Turk verse along a scimitar”: the Arabs use verses of the Koran in the decoration of their walls, pottery, arms, etc. The Alhambra at Granada is profusely decorated in this way. The Arabic, Persian, and Turkish letters lend themselves admirably to ornamental purposes. Arch-genethliac: a genethliac is a calculator of nativities – an astrologer.
Notes to Book III. —Pansies: if these flowers were, as is said, favourites with Paracelsus, the choice was appropriate. Pensées for “the thinker, the explorer,” and “heartsease” for the anxious and overworked man. Rhasis, or Rhazes, was a distinguished physician of Bagdad (925-6). Basil == Basel, Basle. Œcolampadius, a Reformer of Basle, friend of Erasmus. Castellanus was Pierre Duchatel, a French prelate. When at Basle, Erasmus procured him employment as a corrector of the press with Frobenius. He was bishop of Tulle in 1539, of Maçon in 1544, and in 1551 of Orleans. He was a tolerant man in an intolerant age. Munsterus, a Christian Socialist, connected with the Peasants’ War; executed 1525. Frobenius, the friend of Erasmus, cured by Paracelsus. He was a famous printer at Basle. Rear mice: probably a device in the arms on the gate. Lachen, a village of 1200 inhabitants, on the margin of the lake of Zurich. The holy hermit Meinrad, the founder of Einsiedeln, originally lived on the top of the Etzel, near here. “Cross-grained devil in my sword”: the long sword of Paracelsus is famous: —
“Bumbastus kept a devil’s bird
Shut in the pummel of his sword,
That taught him all the cunning pranks
Of past and future mountebanks.”
(Hudibras, Part II., Cant. 3.)
Naudæus (in his “History of Magic”) observes of this familiar spirit, “that though the alchymists maintain that it was the secret of the philosopher’s stone, yet it were more rational to believe that, if there was anything in it, it was certainly two or three doses of his laudanum, which he never went without, because he did strange things with it, and used it as a medicine to cure almost all diseases.” “Sudary of the Virgin”: a handkerchief, a relic of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Suffumigation, a medical fumigation, such as was used by Hippocrates. Erasmus was born at Rotterdam in 1466. The home of his old age was Basel, to which place he was attracted by the fame of the printing press of Frobenius. Here he made the acquaintance of Zwingle and Holbein, and other men full of the desire for learning. “Ape at the bed’s foot”: patients who suffer from delirium frequently see apes, rats, cats, and other animals and figures, mocking them at the foot of the bed. “Spain’s cork-groves”: cork is the bark of the cork-oak (Quercus suber). It grows in Spain, and is most abundant in Catalonia and Valencia. “Præclare! Optime!” == Bravo! well done! “I precede my age”: it has only recently been discovered how much our modern science owes to the labours and researches of Paracelsus. Aëtius was an Arian doctor, who was very skilful in medical disputation. He died at Constantinople in 367. Oribasius was the court physician of Julian the Apostate (326-403). Galen was a great anatomist and a physiological physician. Rhasis (see note, p. 324). Serapion, an Alexandrian physician, “a great name in antiquity.” Avicenna, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born about A.D. 980, who presented to his countrymen the doctrines of Galen blended with those of Aristotle. Averröes, an Arabian philosopher and physician, born at Cordova in 1126, the interpreter of the Aristotelian philosophy to the Mohammedans. Zuinglius == Zwingle the Reformer, of Zurich. Carolstadius, or Carlstadt, one of the first Reformers. He was professor of divinity at Wittemberg, and early joined Luther in the new religion. He became the leader of the fanatical sect of iconoclasts at Wittemberg, and excited them to excesses. He was banished, and died at Basle in 1541. Suabia, the name of an ancient duchy in the south-west part of Germany. Oporinus: lived two years in close intimacy with Paracelsus as his secretary, and has been suspected of defaming his memory. “Sic itur ad astra”: such is the way to immortality. Liechtenfels, a canon who was cured by Paracelsus when he was in danger of death, and refused afterwards to pay the stipulated fee.
Notes to Book IV. – “Quid multa?” why say more? Cassia, an inferior kind of cinnamon. “Sandal-buds”: the sandal is a low tree, like a privet, and has a great fragrance. “Stripes of labdanum” or ladanum: a fragrant, resinous exudation from the plants Cystus creticus and Cystus ladaniferus. Aloes: the fragrant resin of the agalloch or lign-aloe of Scripture. Nard == spikenard; very fragrant. “Sweetness from Egyptian shroud”: the faint odour from the spices used to embalm the mummy. “Fiat experientia corpore vili,” or fiat experimentum in corpore vili: Let the experiment be made on a body of no value (a hospital patient, e. g.!)
Notes to Book V. —Salzburg: the beautifully situated old city of Austria, eighty-seven miles S.E. of Munich. “Jove and the Titans”: the Titans were the sons of Saturn, who made war against Jupiter; and though they were of gigantic size, they were subdued. Phæton, the son of Phœbus and Clymene, who requested his father to give him leave to drive his chariot. The rash youth was unable to bear the light and heat, and dropped the reins. To prevent a general conflagration Jupiter struck him with thunder, and he dropped into the river Eridanus. Galen of Pergamos: an eminent physician of the time of Trajan. Persic Zoroaster “was one of the greatest teachers of the East, the founder of what was the national religion of the Perso-Iranian people from the time of the Achæmenidæ to the close of the Sassanian period.” He founded the wisdom of the Magi. The Zend-Avesta is the great Zoroastrian bible. “Thus he dwells in all,” etc., down to “Man begins anew a tendency to God,” is a faithful representation of the teaching of the Kabbalah (see Encyc. Brit., vol. xiii., p. 812, last ed.): “The whole universe, however, was incomplete, and did not receive its finishing stroke till man was formed, who is the acme of the creation and the microcosm. ‘Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation, for which reason he was formed on the sixth day. As soon as man was created everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms’” (Zohar, iii., 48).
Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day. To wit: Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, and Charles Avison. Introduced by A Dialogue between Apollo and the Fates; concluded by Another between John Fust and his Friends. The title-page stands thus, and the following dedication is on the next page: “In Memoriam J. Milsand. Obiit iv. Sept. MDCCCLXXXVI. Absens absentem auditque videtque.” Published 1887. M. Milsand was a well-known French critic, and was an early admirer of Mr. Browning’s works. Sordello was dedicated to M. Milsand in its revised edition. The Parleyings volume is dealt with in a lucid and sympathetic manner in Mr. Nettleship’s Essays and Thoughts.
Parting at Morning. See Meeting at Night, to which this poem is the sequel.
Patriot, The. An Old Story. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) A patriot who has been the people’s idol, and now, having fallen from his pedestal, is on his way to execution. A year ago that very day they would have given him the sun from their skies had he asked it in that city whose air was a mist of joy bells. He strove his hardest to pluck down that sun to give them, and to-day the year is run out, and he goes bound, with bleeding forehead from the pelting stones, to the shambles. But God will repay, and he feels safe with that. It has been thought that this poem refers to Arnold of Brescia. Mr. Browning contradicted this.
Paul Desforges Maillard. (Two Poets of Croisic.) He is the second of the Poets, René Gentilhomme being the first. He competed for a prize at the French Academy, and was unsuccessful. The poem tells how he made his name known through his sister’s influence.
Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1832). The first work of the poet, and his embryonic work, because it contains in their rudiments all the peculiarities and powers of his genius. He wrote nothing which was not the legitimate development of the forces which we see in this inchoate work. It is nebulous, but it is a nebula which has within itself the potentiality of worlds of thought. Misty and vague as it everywhere seems, it is influenced by laws which will concentrate its thought into stars and planets, such as Paracelsus, and the Ring and the Book. It is autobiographical, and admits us into the laboratory of the writer’s thought; it is marvellously consistent with the latest utterances of the poet on the subjects nearest to his heart. High thoughts, which through the years of a long life will live in royal splendour in his brain, are born here in travail, as regal things are wont to be. It was a boy’s work, – the poet was only twenty years old when he wrote it, – but a competent critic could have detected evidence that in the anonymous author of Pauline a psychological poet had arisen, one who determined to probe to their depths the mysteries of the human soul. From Mr. Gosse’s article in The Century Magazine we learn that the young poet had produced a quantity of verses while a mere child, and had planned a number of soul-studies of a similar character to Pauline. He published the poem anonymously in 1833, when he was twenty years old. It was reprinted in 1867, with the following note: “The first piece in the series (Pauline) I acknowledge and retain with extreme repugnance, indeed purely of necessity; for not long ago I inspected one, and am certified of the existence of other transcripts, intended sooner or later to be published abroad: by forestalling these I can at least correct some misprints (no syllable is changed), and introduce a boyish work by an exculpatory word. The thing was my earliest attempt at ‘poetry, always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine,’ which I have written since according to a scheme less extravagant and scale less impracticable than were ventured upon in this crude preliminary sketch – a sketch that, on reviewal, appears not altogether wide of some hint of the characteristic features of that particular dramatis persona it would fain have reproduced; good draughtsmanship, however, and right handling were far beyond the artist at that time.” With the “good draughtsmanship” and “right handling” of the work we need not concern ourselves; what is of paramount importance is the fact that in Pauline we have “the god, though in the germ.” If the mature artist was ashamed of his puerile performance, his disciples have always loved and admired it, and his deeper students have delighted to trace in its pages the nuclei of principles which have in his maturer works dowered the world with a priceless treasure. The poem is a fragment of a confession from a young man to a young woman whom he loves. It concerns Pauline very little, but is the revelation of the man as a study of the poet’s own naked soul. It is not a confession of deeds, but of moods and mental attitudes. He who could unpack his own heart so completely would be likely to reveal the innermost recesses of the characters with which he should deal in the future. It is the revelation of a soul all self-centred. A soul’s awakening, a soul in terror at its own capabilities, desires and forces too hard to be controlled – “made up of an intensest life” – imbued with “a principle of restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel all” – a soul terrified at its own vast shadow, fearing to face its own spectres, and instinctively “building up a screen” of woman’s love to be shut in with from a brood of fancies with which he dare not wrestle. Had he never left her side he had been spared this shame. He is sure of her love, though ghosts of the past haunt them. He has not the love to offer which befits her; but he has faith, and he trusts her as we trust the east for morning light. He has communed with her, but she knew not the shame which lurked behind his words and smiles, and she drove away despair from him. He has fallen, is ruined; he has felt in dreams he was a fiend chained in darkness, till, after ages had passed came a white swan to remain with him, and it contented him. And again, he had seemed to be a young witch who drew down a god to sing of heaven, and as he sang he perished grinning, but murmuring “I am still a god to thee.” He has thought that his early life, his songs and wild imaginings, were the only worthy things standing out distinct amid the fever of the after years. And this was his (Shelley’s) award. He, the Sun-treader, had drawn out from his worshipper the one spark of love remaining in his soul, and in his tears he praises him. He loved Shelley in his shame, and now he is renowned he watches him as a star, as one altered and worn and full of tears looks to heaven. He strips his mind bare, has a most clear consciousness of self, and recognises that of all his powers an imagination which has been an angel to him is the one which saves his soul from utter death. He feels a need, a trust, a yearning after God, which somehow is reconciled with a neglect of all he deemed His laws. He sees God everywhere, yet can love nothing; has had high dreams and low aims, and so lost himself. Then he turned to song, he gazed without fear on the works of mighty bards, for in them he recognised thoughts his own heart had also borne; then came the outburst of the soul’s power, a key to a new world, a sound as of angelic mutterings. He vowed himself to liberty. Men should be gods, earth, – heaven. His soul rose to meet the new life. As one watches for a fair girl that comes forth a withered hag, so all these high-born fancies dwindled into nothing; faith in man, freedom, virtue, motives, power, human loves, all vanished. They were not missed, for wit and mockery and pleasure came in their stead. His powers grew, his soul became as a temple; only God was gone, and a dark spirit sat in His seat, and mocking shadows cried “Hail!” to him. He resolved to wear himself out with joy, then to win men’s praise by undying song, and the mockery laughed out again. Then he met Pauline and knew she loved him; he looked in his heart for a love to return, and love and faith were gone, and selfishness wears him as a flame, and hunger for pleasure has become pain. Then came a craving after knowledge, as a sleepless harpy. He begins now to know what hate is. Yet with it all he has learned the great truth that his restless longings, his all encompassing selfishness, only prove that earth is not his sphere, because he cannot so narrow himself but he exceeds it. Hateful as his selfishness has grown to be, he can pass from such thoughts. Andromeda, rock-chained, awaiting the snake, causes you no fear for her safety: God will come in thunder from the stars to save her, so he will triumph over his decay; when the calm comes again after the fever has subsided, he will do something equal to his conjecture. He can project himself into all forms of Nature, live the life of plants, mount bird-like, breathe in a fish the morning air in the sun-warm water. He will build a thought-world; he is inspired. Pauline shall come with him to the world of fancy through the ghostly night and sun-warmed morning; he is concentrated, he drinks in the life of all, yet cannot be immortal for all these struggling aims. What is this passionate hunger for the All – this insatiable thirst for utmost pleasure? It is man’s cry for the satisfying presence of God in his soul. The alone to the Alone; nothing intervening can give peace and rest to the spirit of man; flame-like it tends upwards to its source. The only One, the Crucified, the Risen Christ – “Christus Consolator” is recognised as the remedy for his sense of infinite loss; and as he recognises the Divine love he is united with the purest earthly soul he knows: – “Pauline, I am thine for ever.” “Love me, Pauline – leave me not.” And so the hideous past shall be the past, and he will go forward with her —
