Виктор Мари Гюго
William Shakespeare
CHAPTER IV
Here are the facts, – the legend at least; for at such a distance, and in such a twilight, history is legendary: —
There was a king of Egypt, named Ptolemy Euergetes, brother-in-law to Antiochus the god.
Let us mention it en passant, all these people were gods: – gods Soters, gods Euergetes, gods Epiphanes, gods Philometors, gods Philadelphi, gods Philopators. Translation: Gods saviours, gods beneficent, gods illustrious, gods loving their mother, gods loving their brothers, gods loving their father. Cleopatra was goddess Soter. The priests and priestesses of Ptolemy Soter were at Ptolemais. Ptolemy VI. was called "God-love-Mother" (Philometor), because he hated his mother, Cleopatra. Ptolemy IV. was "God-love-Father" (Philopator), because he had poisoned his father. Ptolemy II. was "God-love-Brothers" (Philadelphus), because he had killed his two brothers.
Let us return to Ptolemy Euergetes.
He was the son of the Philadelphus who gave golden crowns to the Roman ambassadors, – the same to whom the pseudo-Aristeus attributes by mistake the version of the Septuagint. This Philadelphus had much increased the library of Alexandria, which, during his lifetime, counted two hundred thousand volumes, and which, in the sixth century, attained, it is said, the incredible number of seven hundred thousand manuscripts.
This stock of human knowledge, formed under the eyes of Euclid, and by the care of Callimachus, Diodorus Cronos, Theodorus the Atheist, Philetas, Apollonius, Aratus, the Egyptian priest Manetho, Lycophron, and Theocritus, had for its first librarian, according to some, Zenodotus of Ephesus, according to others, Demetrius of Phalerum, to whom the Athenians had raised three hundred and sixty statues, which they took one year to put up and one day to destroy. Now, this library had no copy of Æschylus. One day the Greek Demetrius said to Euergetes, "Pharaoh has not Æschylus," – exactly as, later on, Leidrade, archbishop of Lyons and librarian of Charlemagne, said to Charlemagne, "The Emperor has not Scæva Memor."
Ptolemy Euergetes, wishing to complete the work of the Philadelphus his father, resolved to give Æschylus to the Alexandrian library. He declared that he would cause a copy to be made. He sent an embassy to borrow from the Athenians the unique and sacred copy under the care of the recorder of the republic. Athens, not over-prone to lend, hesitated and demanded a security. The king of Egypt offered fifteen silver talents. Now, those who wish to realize the value of fifteen talents, have but to know that it was three-fourths of the annual tribute of ransom payed by Judea to Egypt, which was twenty talents, and weighed so heavily on the Jewish people that the high priest Onias II., founder of the Onion temple, decided to refuse this tribute at the risk of a war. Athens accepted the security. The fifteen talents were deposited. The complete copy of Æschylus was delivered to the king of Egypt. The king gave up the fifteen talents and kept the book.
Athens, indignant, had some thought of declaring war against Egypt. To reconquer Æschylus was as good as reconquering Helen. To recommence Troy, but this time to get back Homer, it was a fine thing. Yet, time was taken for consideration. Ptolemy was powerful. He had forcibly taken back from Asia the two thousand five hundred Egyptian gods formerly carried there by Cambyses, because they were in gold and silver. He had, besides, conquered Cilicia and Syria, and all the country from the Euphrates to the Tigris. With Athens it was no longer the day when she improvised a fleet of two hundred vessels against Artaxerxes. She left Æschylus a prisoner in Egypt.
A prisoner-god. This time the word god is in its right place. They paid Æschylus unheard-of honours. The king refused, it is said, to let a copy be made of it, stupidly bent on possessing a unique copy.
Particular care was taken of this manuscript when the library of Alexandria, enlarged by the library of Pergamus, which Antony gave to Cleopatra, was transferred to the temple of Jupiter Serapis. There it was that Saint Jerome came to read, in the Athenian text, the famous passage in "Prometheus" prophesying Christ: "Go and tell Jupiter that nothing shall make me name the one who is to dethrone him."
Other doctors of the Church made, from the same copy, the same verification. For, at all times, the orthodox asseverations have been combined with what have been called the testimonies of polytheism, and great efforts have been resorted to in order to make the Pagans say Christian things, —teste David cum Sibylla. People came to the Alexandrian library, as on a pilgrimage, to examine "Prometheus," – constant visits which deceived the Emperor Adrian, and made him write to the consul Servianus: "Those who adore Serapis are Christians: those who profess to be bishops of Christ are at the same time devotees of Serapis."
Under the Roman dominion the library of Alexandria belonged to the emperor. Egypt was Cæsar's property. "Augustus," says Tacitus, "seposuit Ægyptum." It was not every one who could travel there. Egypt was closed. The Roman knights, and even the senators, could not easily obtain admission.
It was during this period that the complete copy of Æschylus could be consulted and perused by Timocharis, Aristarchus, Athenæus, Stobæus, Diodorus of Sicily, Macrobius, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Sopater, Clement of Alexandria, Nepotian of Africa, Valerius Maximus, Justin the Martyr, and even by Ælian, although Ælian left Italy but seldom.
In the seventh century a man entered Alexandria. He was mounted on a camel and seated between two sacks, – one full of figs, the other full of corn. These two sacks were, with a wooden platter, all that he possessed. This man never seated himself except on the ground. He drank nothing but water and ate nothing but bread. He had conquered half of Asia and of Africa, taken or burned thirty-six thousand towns, villages, fortresses, and castles, destroyed four thousand Pagan or Christian temples, built fourteen hundred mosques, conquered Izdeger, King of Persia, and Heraclius, Emperor of the East, and he called himself Omar. He burned the library of Alexandria.
Omar is for that reason celebrated. Louis, called the Great, has not the same celebrity, which is unjust, for he burned the Rupertine library at Heidelberg.
CHAPTER V
Now, is not that incident a complete drama? It might be entitled "Æschylus Lost." Recital, node, and dénouement. After Euergetes, Omar. The action begins with a robber and ends with an incendiary.
Euergetes (this is his excuse) robbed from enthusiasm, – an unpleasant instance of the admiration of an imbecile.
As for Omar, he is the fanatic. By the way, we must say that strange historical rehabilitations have been attempted in our time. We do not speak of Nero, who is the fashion; but an attempt has been made to exonerate Omar, as well as to bring a verdict of not guilty for Pius V. Holy Pius V. personifies the Inquisition; to canonize him was enough, why declare him innocent? We do not lend ourselves to those attempts at appeal in trials which have received final judgment. We have no taste for rendering small services to fanaticism, whether it be caliph or pope, whether it burn books or men. Omar has had many advocates. A certain class of historians and biographical critics are readily moved to pity for the sword, – a victim of slander, this poor sword! Imagine then the tenderness that is felt for a scimitar! The scimitar is the ideal sword. It is better than brute, – it is Turk. Omar, then, has been cleaned as much as possible. A first fire in the Bruchion district, where the Alexandrian library stood, was used as an argument to prove how easily such accidents happen. That one was the fault of Julius Cæsar, – another sword. Then a second argument was found in a second fire, only partial, of the Serapeum, in order to accuse the Christians, the demagogues of those days. If the fire at the Serapeum had destroyed the Alexandrian library in the fourth century, Hypatia would not have been able, in the fifth century, to give, in that same library, those lessons in philosophy which caused her to be murdered with broken pieces of earthen pots. About Omar we willingly believe the Arabs. Abd-Allatif saw at Alexandria, about 1220, "the column of pillars supporting a cupola," and said, "There stood the library that Amrou-ben-Alas burned by permission of Omar." Abulfaradge, in 1260, relates in his "Dynastic History" that by order of Omar they took the books from the library, and with them heated the baths of Alexandria for six months. According to Gibbon, there were at Alexandria four thousand baths. Ebn-Khaldoun, in his "Historical Prolegomena," relates another wanton destruction, – the annihilation of the library of the Medes by Saad, Omar's lieutenant. Now, Omar having caused the burning of the Median library in Persia by Saad, was logical in causing the destruction of the Egyptian-Greek library in Egypt by Amrou. His lieutenants have preserved his orders for us: "If these books contain falsehoods, to the fire with them. If they contain truths, these truths are in the Koran; to the fire with them." In place of the Koran, put the Bible, Veda, Edda, Zend-Avesta, Toldos Jeschut, Talmud, Gospel, and you have the imperturbable and universal formula of all fanaticisms. This being said, we do not see any reason to reverse the verdict of history; we award to the caliph the smoke of the seven hundred thousand volumes of Alexandria, Æschylus included, and we maintain Omar in possession of his rights as incendiary.
Euergetes, through his wish for exclusive possession, and treating a library as a seraglio, has robbed us of Æschylus. Imbecile contempt can have the same effect as imbecile adoration. Shakespeare was very near having the fate of Æschylus. He has had, too, his fire. Shakespeare was so little printed, printing existed so little for him, thanks to the silly indifference of his immediate posterity, that in 1666 there was still but one edition of the poet of Stratford-on-Avon (Hemynge and Condell's edition), three hundred copies of which were printed. Shakespeare, with this obscure and pitiful edition, waiting in vain for the public, was a sort of poor wretch ashamed to beg for glory. These three hundred copies were nearly all stored up in London when the fire of 1666 broke out. It burned London, and nearly burned Shakespeare. The whole edition of Hemynge and Condell disappeared, with the exception of forty-four copies, which had been sold in fifty years. Those forty-four purchasers saved from death the work of Shakespeare.
CHAPTER VI
The disappearance of Æschylus! Stretch this catastrophe hypothetically to a few more names, and it seems as though you felt the vacuum annihilating the human mind.
The work of Æschylus was, by its extent, the greatest, certainly, of all antiquity. By the seven plays which remain to us, we may judge what that universe was.
Let us point out what Æschylus lost is.
Fourteen trilogies: the "Promethei," of which "Prometheus Bound" formed a part; the "Seven Chiefs before Thebes," of which there remains one piece, "The Danaid," which comprised the "Supplicants," written in Sicily, and in which the Sicelism of Æschylus is traceable; "Laius," which comprised "Œdipus;" "Athamas," which ended with the "Isthmiasts;" "Perseus," the node of which was the "Phorcydes;" "Etna," which had as prologue the "Etnean Women;" "Iphigenia," the dénouement of which was the tragedy of the "Priestesses;" the "Ethiopid," the titles of which are nowhere to be found; "Pentheus," in which were the "Hydrophores;" "Teucer," which opened with the "Judgment of Arms;" "Niobe," which commenced with the "Nurses" and ended with the "Men of the Train;" a trilogy in honour of Achilles, the "Tragic Iliad," composed of the "Myridons," the "Nereids," and the "Phrygians;" one in honour of Bacchus, the "Lycurgia," composed of the "Edons," the "Bassarides," and the "Young Men."
These fourteen trilogies in themselves alone give a total of fifty-six plays, if we consider that nearly all were tetralogies, – that is to say, quadruple dramas, – and ended with a satyride. Thus the "Orestias" had, as a final satyride, "Proteus," and the "Seven Chiefs before Thebes," had the "Sphinx."
Add to those fifty-six pieces a probable trilogy of the "Labdacides;" add the tragedies, – the "Egyptians," the "Ransom of Hector," "Memnon," undoubtedly connected with some trilogies; add all the satyrides, – "Sisyphus the Deserter," the "Heralds," the "Lion," the "Argians," "Amymone," "Circe," "Cercyon," "Glaucus the Mariner," comedies in which was found the mirth of that wild genius.
See all that is lost.
Euergetes and Omar have robbed us of all that.
It is difficult to state precisely the total number of pieces written by Æschylus. The amount varies. The anonymous biographer speaks of seventy-five, Suidas of ninety, Jean Deslyons of ninety-seven, Meursius of one hundred.
Meursius reckons up more than a hundred titles, but some are probably used twice.
Jean Deslyons, doctor of the Sorbonne, theologal of Senlis, author of the "Discours ecclesiastique contre le paganisme du Roi boit," published in the seventeenth century a work against the custom of laying coffins one above the other in the cemeteries, in which he took for his authority the twenty-fifth canon of the Council of Auxerre: "Non licet mortuum super mortuum mitti." Deslyons, in a note added to that work, now very scarce, and a copy of which was in the possession of Charles Nodier, if our memory is faithful, quotes a passage from the great antiquarian numismatist of Venloo, Hubert Goltzius, in which, in reference to embalming, Goltzius mentions the "Egyptians," of Æschylus, and "The Apotheosis of Orpheus," – a title omitted in the enumeration given by Meursius. Goltzius adds that "The Apotheosis of Orpheus" was recited at the mysteries of the Lycomidians.
This title, "The Apotheosis of Orpheus" opens a field for thought. Æschylus speaking of Orpheus, the Titan measuring the giant, the god interpreting the god, what more magnificent, and how one would long to read that work! Dante, speaking of Virgil and calling him his master, does not fill up this gap, because Virgil, a noble poet, but without invention, is less than Dante; it is between equals, from genius to genius, from sovereign to sovereign, that such homage is splendid. Æschylus raises to Orpheus a temple of which he might occupy the altar himself: it is grand.
CHAPTER VII
Æschylus is incommensurate. There is in him something of India. The wild majesty of his stature recalls those vast poems of the Ganges which walk through art with the steps of a mammoth, and which have, among the Iliads and the Odysseys, the appearance of hippopotami among lions. Æschylus, a thorough Greek, is yet something else besides a Greek. He has the Oriental immensity.
Saumaise declares that he is full of Hebraisms and Syrianisms.13 Æschylus makes the Winds carry Jupiter's throne, as the Bible makes the Cherubim carry Jehovah's throne, as the Rig-Veda makes the Marouts carry the throne of Indra. The winds, the cherubim, and the marouts are the same beings, – the Breezes. Saumaise is right. The double-meaning words so frequent in the Phœnician language, abound in Æschylus. He plays, for instance, in reference to Jupiter and Europa, on the Phœnician word ilpha, which has the double meaning of "ship" and "bull." He loves that language of Tyre and Sidon, and at times he borrows the strange gleams of its style; the metaphor, "Xerxes with the dragon eyes," seems an inspiration from the Ninevite dialect, in which the word draka meant at the same time dragon and clear-sighted. He has Phœnician heresies. His heifer Io is rather the cow of Isis; he believes, like the priests of Sidon, that the temple of Delphi was built by Apollo with a paste made of wax and bees'-wings. In his exile in Sicily he often drank religiously at the fountain of Arethusa, and never did the shepherds who watched him hear him name Arethusa otherwise than by this mysterious name, Alphaga, – an Assyrian word signifying "source surrounded with willows."
Æschylus is, in the whole Hellenic literature, the sole example of the Athenian mind with a mixture of Egypt and Asia. These depths were repugnant to the Greek intelligence. Corinth, Epidaurus, Œdepsus, Gythium, Cheronea, which was to be the birth-place of Plutarch, Thebes, where Pindar's house was, Mantinea, where the glory of Epaminondas shone, – all these golden towns repudiated the Unknown, a glimpse of which was seen like a cloud behind the Caucasus. It seemed as though the sun was Greek. The sun, used to the Parthenon, was not made to enter the diluvian forests of Grand Tartary under the gigantic mouldiness of the monocotyledons under the lofty ferns of five hundred cubits, where swarmed all the first dreadful models of Nature, and under whose shadows existed unknown, shapeless cities, such as that fabulous Anarodgurro, the existence of which was denied until it sent an embassy to Claudius. Gagasmira, Sambulaca, Maliarpha, Barygaza, Cavenpatnam Sochoth-Benoth, Theglath-Phalazar, Tana-Serim – all these almost hideous names affrighted Greece when they came to be reported by the adventurers on their return first by those with Jason, then by those of Alexander. Æschylus had no such horror. He loved the Caucasus. It was there he had made the acquaintance of Prometheus. One almost feels in reading Æschylus that he had haunted the vast primitive thickets now become coal mines, and that he has taken huge strides over the roots, snake-like and half-living, of the ancient vegetable monsters. Æschylus is a kind of behemoth among geniuses.
Let us say, however, that the affinity of Greece with the East, an affinity hated by the Greeks, was real. The letters of the Greek alphabet are nothing else but the letters of the Phœnician alphabet reversed. Æschylus was all the more Greek from the fact of his being a little of a Phœnician.
This powerful mind, at times apparently crude on account of his very grandeur, has the Titanic gayety and affability. He indulges in quibbles on the names of Prometheus, Polynices, Helen, Apollo, Ilion, on the cock and the sun, imitating in this respect Homer, who made on the olive that famous pun which caused Diogenes to throw away his plate of olives and eat a tart.
The father of Æschylus, Euphorion, was a disciple of Pythagoras. The soul of Pythagoras, that philosopher half magian and half brahmin, seemed to have entered through Euphorion into Æschylus. We have said already that in the dark and mysterious quarrel between the celestial and the terrestrial gods, the intestinal war of Paganism, Æschylus was terrestrial. He belonged to the faction of the gods of earth. The Cyclops had worked for Jupiter; he rejected them as we would reject a corporation of workers who had turned traitors, and he preferred to them the Cabyri. He adored Ceres. "O thou, Ceres, nurse of my soul!" and Ceres is Demeter, is Gemeter, is the mother-earth. Hence his veneration for Asia. It seemed then as though Earth was rather in Asia than elsewhere. Asia is, in reality, compared with Europe, a kind of block almost without capes and gulfs, and little penetrated by the sea. The Minerva of Æschylus says, "Great Asia." "The sacred soil of Asia," says the chorus of the Oceanides. In his epitaph, graven on his tomb at Gela and written by himself, Æschylus attests "the Mede with long hair." He makes the chorus celebrate "Susicanes and Pegastagon, born in Egypt, and the chief of Memphis, the sacred city." Like the Phœnicians, he gives the name of "Oncea" to Minerva. In the "Etna" he celebrates the Sicilian Dioscuri, the Palici, those twin gods whose worship, connected with the local worship of Vulcan, had reached Asia through Sarepta and Tyre. He calls them "the venerable Palici." Three of his trilogies are entitled the "Persians," the "Ethiopid," the "Egyptians." In the geography of Æschylus, Egypt was Asia, as well as Arabia. Prometheus says, "the dower of Arabia, the heroes of Caucasus." Æschylus was, in geography, very peculiar. He had a Gorgonian city Cysthenes, which he placed in Asia, as well as a river Pluto, rolling gold, and defended by men with a single eye, – the Arimaspes. The pirates to whom he makes allusion somewhere are, according to all appearance, the pirates of Angria who inhabited the rock Vizindruk. He could see distinctly beyond the Pas-du-Nil, in the mountains of Byblos, the source of the Nile, still unknown to-day. He knew the precise spot where Prometheus had stolen the fire, and he designated without hesitation Mount Mosychlus in the neighbourhood of Lemnos.
When this geography ceases to be fanciful, it is exact as an itinerary. It becomes true and remains without measure. Nothing more real than that splendid transmission of the news of the capture of Troy in one night by bonfires lighted one after the other and corresponding from mountain to mountain, – from Mount Ida to the promontory of Hermes, from the promontory of Hermes to Mount Athos, from Mount Athos to Mount Macispe, from the Macispe to the Messapius, from Mount Messapius over the river Asopus to Mount Cytheron, from Mount Cytheron over the morass of Gorgopis to Mount Egiplanctus, from Mount Egiplanctus to Cape Saronica (later Spireum); from Cape Saronica to Mount Arachne, from Mount Arachne to Argos. You may follow on the map that train of fire announcing Agamemnon to Clytemnestra.
This bewildering geography is mingled with an extraordinary tragedy, in which you hear dialogues more than human: —
Prometheus. "Alas!"
Mercury. "This is a word that Jupiter speaks not."
And where Gerontes is the Ocean. "To look a fool," says the Ocean to Prometheus, "is the secret of the sage," – saying as deep as the sea. Who knows the mental reservations of the tempest? And the Power exclaims, "There is but one free god; it is Jupiter."
Æschylus has his own geography; he has also his own fauna.
This fauna, which strikes as fabulous, is enigmatical rather than chimerical. The author of these lines has discovered and authenticated at the Hague, in a glass in the Japanese Museum, the impossible serpent in the "Orestias," having two heads attached to its two extremities. There are, it may be added, in that glass several specimens of bestiality that might belong to another world, at all events strange and not accounted for, as we are little disposed to admit, for our part, the absurd hypothesis of the Japanese stitchers of monsters.
Æschylus at moments sees Nature with simplifications stamped with a mysterious disdain. Here the Pythagorician disappears, and the magian shows himself. All beasts are the beast. Æschylus seems to see in the animal kingdom only a dog. The griffin is a "dumb dog;" the eagle is a "winged dog," – "The winged dog of Jupiter," says Prometheus.
We have just pronounced the word magian. In fact, Æschylus officiates at times like Job. One would suppose that he exercises over Nature, over human creatures, and even over gods, a kind of magianism. He upbraids animals for their voracity. A vulture which seizes, even while running, a doe-hare with young, and feeds on it, "eats a whole race stopped in its flight." He calls on the dust and on the smoke; to the one he says, "Thirsty sister of mire!" to the other, "Black sister of fire!" He insults the dreaded bay of Salmydessus: "Hard-hearted mother of vessels."
He brings down to dwarfish proportions the Greeks, conquerors of Troy by treachery; he shows them brought forth by an implement of war, – he calls them "these young of a horse." As for the gods, he goes so far as to incorporate Apollo with Jupiter. He magnificently calls Apollo "the conscience of Jupiter."
His familiar boldness is absolute, characteristic of sovereignty. He makes the sacrificer take Iphigenia "as a she-goat" A queen who is a faithful spouse is for him "the good house-bitch." As for Orestes, he has seen him when quite a child, and he speaks of him as "wetting his swaddling-cloths," —humectatio ex urina. He even goes beyond this Latin. The expression, which we do not repeat here, is to be found in "Les Plaideurs," act III. scene 3. If you are bent upon reading the word which we hesitate to write, apply to Racine.
The whole is immense and mournful. The profound despair of fate is in Æschylus. He shows in terrible lines "the impotence which chains down, as in a dream, the blind living creatures." His tragedy is nothing but the old Orphean dithyrambic suddenly launching into tears and lamentations over man.
