But while Christ did not say to men, ‘Live for others,’ he pointed7 out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one’s own life. By this means he gave to man an extended, a Titan personality. Since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or can be made, the history of the world. Of course, culture has intensified8 the personality of man. Art has made us myriad-minded. Those who have the artistic9 temperament10 go into exile with Dante and learn how salt is the bread of others, and how steep their stairs; they catch for a moment the serenity11 and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire cried to God—
‘O Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage
Out of Shakespeare’s sonnets13 they draw, to their own hurt it may be, the secret of his love and make it their own; they look with new eyes on modern life, because they have listened to one of Chopin’s nocturnes, or handled Greek things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold, and whose mouth was as a pomegranate. But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with what has found expression. In words or in colours, in music or in marble, behind the painted masks of an ?schylean play, or through some Sicilian shepherds’ pierced and jointed14 reeds, the man and his message must have been revealed.
To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. But to Christ it was not so. With a width and wonder of imagination that fills one almost with awe15, he took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece. Those of whom I have spoken, who are dumb under oppression, and ‘whose silence is heard only of God,’ he chose as his brothers. He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a cry in the lips of those whose tongues had been tied. His desire was to be to the myriads16 who had found no utterance17 a very trumpet18 through which they might call to heaven. And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom suffering and sorrow were modes through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes incarnate19 and is made an image, he made of himself the image of the Man of Sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated art as no Greek god ever succeeded in doing.
For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of Apollo was like the sun’s disc crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to Marsyas and had made Niobe childless. In the steel shields of Athena’s eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two most deeply suggestive figures of Greek Mythology21 were, for religion, Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of the Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of her death.
But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble22 sphere produced one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of Semele. Out of the Carpenter’s shop at Nazareth had come a personality infinitely23 greater than any made by myth and legend, and one, strangely enough, destined24 to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies of the field as none, either on Cithaeron or at Enna, had ever done.
The song of Isaiah, ‘He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him,’ had seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. We must not be afraid of such a phrase. Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion25 of an idea into an image. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. Christ found the type and fixed26 it, and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate in him for whom the world was waiting.
To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christ’s own renaissance27, which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary28 classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, and Raphael’s frescoes29, and Palladian architecture, and formal French tragedy, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Pope’s poetry, and everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does not spring from within through some spirit informing it. But wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in Romeo and Juliet, in the Winter’s Tale, in Proven?al poetry, in the Ancient Mariner31, in La Belle32 Dame33 sans merci, and in Chatterton’s Ballad34 of Charity.
We owe to him the most diverse things and people. Hugo’s Les Misérables, Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal, the note of pity in Russian novels, Verlaine and Verlaine’s poems, the stained glass and tapestries35 and the quattro-cento work of Burne-Jones and Morris, belong to him no less than the tower of Giotto, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tannh?user, the troubled romantic marbles of Michael Angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children and flowers—for both of which, indeed, in classical art there was but little place, hardly enough for them to grow or play in, but which, from the twelfth century down to our own day, have been continually making their appearances in art, under various modes and at various times, coming fitfully and wilfully36, as children, as flowers, are apt to do: spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been in hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that grown up people would grow tired of looking for them and give up the search; and the life of a child being no more than an April day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus.
It is the imaginative quality of Christ’s own nature that makes him this palpitating centre of romance. The strange figures of poetic37 drama and ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of his own imagination entirely38 did Jesus of Nazareth create himself. The cry of Isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon—no more, though perhaps no less. He was the denial as well as the affirmation of prophecy. For every expectation that he fulfilled there was another that he destroyed. ‘In all beauty,’ says Bacon, ‘there is some strangeness of proportion,’ and of those who are born of the spirit—of those, that is to say, who like himself are dynamic forces—Christ says that they are like the wind that ‘bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.’ That is why he is so fascinating to artists. He has all the colour elements of life: mystery, strangeness, pathos39, suggestion, ecstasy40, love. He appeals to the temper of wonder, and creates that mood in which alone he can be understood.
And to me it is a joy to remember that if he is ‘of imagination all compact,’ the world itself is of the same substance. I said in Dorian Gray that the great sins of the world take place in the brain: but it is in the brain that everything takes place. We know now that we do not see with the eyes or hear with the ears. They are really channels for the transmission, adequate or inadequate41, of sense impressions. It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.
Of late I have been studying with diligence the four prose poems about Christ. At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek Testament43, and every morning, after I had cleaned my cell and polished my tins, I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen verses taken by chance anywhere. It is a delightful44 way of opening the day. Every one, even in a turbulent, ill-disciplined life, should do the same. Endless repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled for us the freshness, the na?veté, the simple romantic charm of the Gospels. We hear them read far too often and far too badly, and all repetition is anti-spiritual. When one returns to the Greek; it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some, narrow and dark house.
And to me, the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it is extremely probable that we have the actual terms, the ipsissima verba, used by Christ. It was always supposed that Christ talked in Aramaic. Even Renan thought so. But now we know that the Galilean peasants, like the Irish peasants of our own day, were bilingual, and that Greek was the ordinary language of intercourse45 all over Palestine, as indeed all over the Eastern world. I never liked the idea that we knew of Christ’s own words only through a translation of a translation. It is a delight to me to think that as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might have listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato understood him: that he really said εyω ειμι ο ποιμην ο καλο?, that when he thought of the lilies of the field and how they neither toil46 nor spin, his absolute expression was καταyαθετε τα κρ?να του αγρου τω? αυξανει ου κοπιυ ουδε νηθει, and that his last word when he cried out ‘my life has been completed, has reached its fulfilment, has been perfected,’ was exactly as St. John tells us it was: τετ?λεσται—no more.
While in reading the Gospels—particularly that of St. John himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle—I see the continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual and material life, I see also that to Christ imagination was simply a form of love, and that to him love was lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase. Some six weeks ago I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy47. It will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To me it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs48 may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil one’s table; and I do so not from hunger—I get now quite sufficient food—but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given to me. So one should look on love.
Christ, like all fascinating personalities49, had the power of not merely saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people say beautiful things to him; and I love the story St. Mark tells us about the Greek woman, who, when as a trial of her faith he said to her that he could not give her the bread of the children of Israel, answered him that the little dogs—(κυναρια, ‘little dogs’ it should be rendered)—who are under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall. Most people live for love and admiration51. But it is by love and admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy52 to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and Domine, non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.
If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself: one is ‘Christ as the precursor53 of the romantic movement in life’: the other is ‘The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.’ The first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme54 romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. He was the first person who ever said to people that they should live ‘flower-like lives.’ He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type of what people should try to become. He held them up as examples to their elders, which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul of a man as coming from the hand of God ‘weeping and laughing like a little child,’ and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should be a guisa di fanciulla che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia. He felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped55 into any form was death. He saw that people should not be too serious over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. The birds didn’t, why should man? He is charming when he says, ‘Take no thought for the morrow; is not the soul more than meat? is not the body more than raiment?’ A Greek might have used the latter phrase. It is full of Greek feeling. But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up life perfectly56 for us.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be. If the only thing that he ever said had been, ‘Her sins are forgiven her because she loved much,’ it would have been worth while dying to have said it. His justice is all poetical57 justice, exactly what justice should be. The beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy. I cannot conceive a better reason for his being sent there. The people who work for an hour in the vineyard in the cool of the evening receive just as much reward as those who have toiled59 there all day long in the hot sun. Why shouldn’t they? Probably no one deserved anything. Or perhaps they were a different kind of people. Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat everybody alike: for him there were no laws: there were exceptions merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, was like aught else in the world!
That which is the very keynote of romantic art was to him the proper basis of natural life. He saw no other basis. And when they brought him one, taken in the very act of sin and showed him her sentence written in the law, and asked him what was to be done, he wrote with his finger on the ground as though he did not hear them, and finally, when they pressed him again, looked up and said, ‘Let him of you who has never sinned be the first to throw the stone at her.’ It was worth while living to have said that.
Like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people. He knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea. But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God’s Kingdom. His chief war was against the Philistines61. That is the war every child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy inaccessibility64 to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire preoccupation with the gross materialistic65 side of life, and their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of Jerusalem in Christ’s day were the exact counterpart of the British Philistine62 of our own. Christ mocked at the ‘whited sepulchre’ of respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance66 to a man. He would not hear of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or morals. He pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and ceremonies. He took sabbatarianism as a type of the things that should be set at nought67. The cold philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter and relentless68 scorn. To us, what is termed orthodoxy is merely a facile unintelligent acquiescence69; but to them, and in their hands, it was a terrible and paralysing tyranny. Christ swept it aside. He showed that the spirit alone was of value. He took a keen pleasure in pointing out to them that though they were always reading the law and the prophets, they had not really the smallest idea of what either of them meant. In opposition70 to their tithing of each separate day into the fixed routine of prescribed duties, as they tithe71 mint and rue20, he preached the enormous importance of living completely for the moment.
Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful moments in their lives. Mary Magdalen, when she sees Christ, breaks the rich vase of alabaster72 that one of her seven lovers had given her, and spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet, and for that one moment’s sake sits for ever with Ruth and Beatrice in the tresses of the snow-white rose of Paradise. All that Christ says to us by the way of a little warning is that every moment should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the coming of the bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the lover, Philistinism being simply that side of man’s nature that is not illumined by the imagination. He sees all the lovely influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a manifestation73 of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another.
But it is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic, in the sense of most real. The world had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners’ Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.
It seems a very dangerous idea. It is—all great ideas are dangerous. That it was Christ’s creed admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed I don’t doubt myself.
Of course the sinner must repent74. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance75 is the moment of initiation76. More than that: it is the means by which one alters one’s past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms77, ‘Even the Gods cannot alter the past.’ Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said—I feel quite certain about it—that the moment the prodigal78 son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine-herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments in his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the idea. I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, it may be worth while going to prison.
There is something so unique about Christ. Of course just as there are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into squandering79 its gold before its time, and make some foolish bird call to its mate to build on barren boughs80, so there were Christians82 before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been none since. I make one exception, St. Francis of Assisi. But then God had given him at his birth the soul of a poet, as he himself when quite young had in mystical marriage taken poverty as his bride: and with the soul of a poet and the body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not difficult. He understood Christ, and so he became like him. We do not require the Liber Conformitatum to teach us that the life of St. Francis was the true Imitatio Christi, a poem compared to which the book of that name is merely prose.
Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said: he is just like a work of art. He does not really teach one anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes something. And everybody is predestined to his presence. Once at least in his life each man walks with Christ to Emmaus.
As regards the other subject, the Relation of the Artistic Life to Conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that I should select it. People point to Reading Gaol83 and say, ‘That is where the artistic life leads a man.’ Well, it might lead to worse places. The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation84 depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going, and go there. They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more. A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor85, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.
But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose desire is solely86 for self-realisation never know where they are going. They can’t know. In one sense of the word it is of course necessary, as the Greek oracle87 said, to know oneself: that is the first achievement of knowledge. But to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains88 oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? When the son went out to look for his father’s asses89, he did not know that a man of God was waiting for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his own soul was already the soul of a king.
I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character that I shall be able at the end of my days to say, ‘Yes! this is just where the artistic life leads a man!’ Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, the one Christian81 poet since Dante; the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia. And for the last seven or eight months, in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from the outside world almost without intermission, I have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison through man and things, that has helped me beyond any possibility of expression in words: so that while for the first year of my imprisonment90 I did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing else, but wring91 my hands in impotent despair, and say, ‘What an ending, what an appalling92 ending!’ now I try to say to myself, and sometimes when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely say, ‘What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!’ It may really be so. It may become so. If it does I shall owe much to this new personality that has altered every man’s life in this place.
You may realise it when I say that had I been released last May, as I tried to be, I would have left this place loathing93 it and every official in it with a bitterness of hatred94 that would have poisoned my life. I have had a year longer of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison along with us all, and now when I go out I shall always remember great kindnesses that I have received here from almost everybody, and on the day of my release I shall give many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in turn.
The prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I would give anything to be able to alter it when I go out. I intend to try. But there is nothing in the world so wrong but that the spirit of humanity, which is the spirit of love, the spirit of the Christ who is not in churches, may make it, if not right, at least possible to be borne without too much bitterness of heart.
I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls ‘my brother the wind, and my sister the rain,’ lovely things both of them, down to the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities. If I made a list of all that still remains to me, I don’t know where I should stop: for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one else. Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got before. I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant95, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think I have become.
If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? Besides, feasts are not for me any more. I have given too many to care about them. That side of life is over for me, very fortunately, I dare say. But if after I am free a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would come back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant96 humiliation97, as the most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted98 on me. But that could not be. I have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realise something of the wonder of both, is in immediate99 contact with divine things, and has got as near to God’s secret as any one can get.
Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity63 of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity100 is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences101, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic102 quality at any rate.
When Marsyas was ‘torn from the scabbard of his limbs’—della vagina della membre sue, to use one of Dante’s most terrible Tacitean phrases—he had no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. The lyre had vanquished103 the reed. But perhaps the Greeks were mistaken. I hear in much modern Art the cry of Marsyas. It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive104 in Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is in the deferred105 resolutions of Chopin’s music. It is in the discontent that haunts Burne-Jones’s women. Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells of ‘the triumph of the sweet persuasive106 lyre,’ and the ‘famous final victory,’ in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress107 that haunts his verses, neither Goethe nor Wordsworth could help him, though he followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for Thyrsis or to sing of the Scholar Gipsy, it is the reed that he has to take for the rendering108 of his strain. But whether or not the Phrygian Faun was silent, I cannot be. Expression is as necessary to me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless in the wind. Between my art and the world there is now a wide gulf109, but between art and myself there is none. I hope at least that there is none.
To each of us different fates are meted110 out. My lot has been one of public infamy111, of long imprisonment, of misery112, of ruin, of disgrace, but I am not worthy of it—not yet, at any rate. I remember that I used to say that I thought I could bear a real tragedy if it came to me with purple pall30 and a mask of noble sorrow, but that the dreadful thing about modernity was that it put tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the great realities seemed commonplace or grotesque113 or lacking in style. It is quite true about modernity. It has probably always been true about actual life. It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the looker on. The nineteenth century is no exception to the rule.
Everything about my tragedy has been hideous115, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially60 designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o’clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction116 in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward58 without a moment’s notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled117 the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering118 mob.
For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic119 thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day’s experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on which one’s heart is happy.
Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people who laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal, I was in the pillory120. But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific reality. They should have known also how to interpret sorrow better. I have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow. It were wiser still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate121 the mere50 outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?
I write this account of the mode of my being transferred here simply that it should be realised how hard it has been for me to get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and despair. I have, however, to do it, and now and then I have moments of submission122 and acceptance. All the spring may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark42 may hold the joy that is to herald123 the feet of many rose-red dawns. So perhaps whatever beauty of life still remains to me is contained in some moment of surrender, abasement124, and humiliation. I can, at any rate, merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and, accepting all that has happened to me, make myself worthy of it.
People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be far more of an individualist than ever I was. I must get far more out of myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than ever I asked. Indeed, my ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible125 action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection. To have made such an appeal would have been from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for having made it? Of course once I had put into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said, ‘Have you been living all this time in defiance126 of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full. You shall abide127 by what you have appealed to.’ The result is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly128, and by such ignoble129 instruments, as I did.
The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art. Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement.
People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But then, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approach them they were delightfully130 suggestive and stimulating131. The danger was half the excitement. . . . My business as an artist was with Ariel. I set myself to wrestle132 with Caliban. . . .
A great friend of mine—a friend of ten years’ standing—came to see me some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice133, still that my life had been full of perverse134 pleasures, and that unless he accepted that as a fact about me and realised it to the full I could not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. It was a terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and I have not got his friendship on false pretences135.
Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in Intentions, are as limited in extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. The little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no more, though all the purple vats136 of Burgundy be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony137 vineyards of Spain. There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The martyr114 in his ‘shirt of flame’ may be looking on the face of God, but to him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole scene is no more than the slaying138 of an ox is to the butcher, or the felling of a tree to the charcoal139 burner in the forest, or the fall of a flower to one who is mowing140 down the grass with a scythe141. Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them.
* * * * *
I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety142 of observation, than Shakespeare’s drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet’s college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity143 of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much. He has no conception of what to do, and his folly144 is to feign145 folly. Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal146 the sword of his purpose, the dagger147 of his will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. He makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but ‘words, words, words.’ Instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided will.
Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing. They bow and smirk148 and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sickliest intonation149. When, at last, by means of the play within the play, and the puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet ‘catches the conscience’ of the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach150 of Court etiquette151. That is as far as they can attain152 to in ‘the contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions.’ They are close to his very secret and know nothing of it. Nor would there be any use in telling them. They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more. Towards the close it is suggested that, caught in a cunning spring set for another, they have met, or may meet, with a violent and sudden death. But a tragic ending of this kind, though touched by Hamlet’s humour with something of the surprise and justice of comedy, is really not for such as they. They never die. Horatio, who in order to ‘report Hamlet and his cause aright to the unsatisfied,’
‘Absents him from felicity a while,
And in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,’
dies, but Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are as immortal153 as Angelo and Tartuffe, and should rank with them. They are what modern life has contributed to the antique ideal of friendship. He who writes a new De Amicitia must find a niche154 for them, and praise them in Tusculan prose. They are types fixed for all time. To censure155 them would show ‘a lack of appreciation156.’ They are merely out of their sphere: that is all. In sublimity157 of soul there is no contagion158. High thoughts and high emotions are by their very existence isolated159.
* * * * *
I am to be released, if all goes well with me, towards the end of May, and hope to go at once to some little sea-side village abroad with R--- and M---.
The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigeneia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world.
I hope to be at least a month with my friends, and to gain peace and balance, and a less troubled heart, and a sweeter mood. I have a strange longing160 for the great simple primeval things, such as the sea, to me no less of a mother than the Earth. It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity161 in the Greek attitude. They never chattered162 about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy163 that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.
We call ours a utilitarian164 age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse165, and fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is of the sun and deals directly with things. I feel sure that in elemental forces there is purification, and I want to go back to them and live in their presence.
Of course to one so modern as I am, ‘Enfant de mon siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes166, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny167 aromatic168 brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals169 of some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice170 of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible existe.’
Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulate utterances171 of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.
All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention172, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts173 in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
The End
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1
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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2
entreaty
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| n.恳求，哀求 | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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hawthorn
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| 山楂 | |
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sickle
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| n.镰刀 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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12
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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13
sonnets
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| n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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jointed
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| 有接缝的 | |
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15
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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16
myriads
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| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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18
trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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incarnate
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| adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的 | |
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20
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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21
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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22
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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frescoes
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| n.壁画( fresco的名词复数 )；温壁画技法，湿壁画 | |
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30
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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31
mariner
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| n.水手号不载人航天探测器，海员，航海者 | |
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32
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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dame
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| n.女士 | |
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ballad
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| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
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tapestries
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| n.挂毯( tapestry的名词复数 )；绣帷，织锦v.用挂毯（或绣帷）装饰( tapestry的第三人称单数 ) | |
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wilfully
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| adv.任性固执地；蓄意地 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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41
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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42
lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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43
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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44
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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45
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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46
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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47
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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48
crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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49
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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50
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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51
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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52
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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53
precursor
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| n.先驱者；前辈；前任；预兆；先兆 | |
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54
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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55
stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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57
poetical
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| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
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58
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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59
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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60
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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61
philistines
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| n.市侩，庸人( philistine的名词复数 )；庸夫俗子 | |
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philistine
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| n.庸俗的人；adj.市侩的，庸俗的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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inaccessibility
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| n. 难接近, 难达到, 难达成 | |
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materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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encumbrance
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| n.妨碍物，累赘 | |
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nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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68
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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69
acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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70
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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71
tithe
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| n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税 | |
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72
alabaster
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| adj.雪白的；n.雪花石膏；条纹大理石 | |
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73
manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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74
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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75
repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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76
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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77
aphorisms
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| 格言，警句( aphorism的名词复数 ) | |
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prodigal
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| adj.浪费的，挥霍的，放荡的 | |
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squandering
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| v.（指钱，财产等）浪费，乱花( squander的现在分词 ) | |
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80
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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81
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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82
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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83
gaol
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| n.(jail)监狱；(不加冠词)监禁；vt.使…坐牢 | |
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84
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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85
solicitor
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| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
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86
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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87
oracle
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| n.神谕，神谕处，预言 | |
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88
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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89
asses
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| n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人 | |
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90
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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91
wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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92
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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93
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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94
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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95
cant
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| n.斜穿，黑话，猛扔 | |
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96
poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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97
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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98
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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99
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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100
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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101
cadences
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| n.（声音的）抑扬顿挫( cadence的名词复数 )；节奏；韵律；调子 | |
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102
aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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103
vanquished
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| v.征服( vanquish的过去式和过去分词 )；战胜；克服；抑制 | |
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104
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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105
deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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106
persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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107
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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108
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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109
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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110
meted
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| v.（对某人）施以，给予（处罚等）( mete的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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111
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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112
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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113
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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114
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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115
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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116
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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117
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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118
jeering
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| adj.嘲弄的，揶揄的v.嘲笑( jeer的现在分词 ) | |
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119
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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120
pillory
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| n.嘲弄；v.使受公众嘲笑；将…示众 | |
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121
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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122
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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123
herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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124
abasement
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| n.滥用 | |
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125
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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126
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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127
abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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128
ignobly
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| 卑贱地，下流地 | |
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129
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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130
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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131
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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132
wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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133
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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134
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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135
pretences
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| n.假装( pretence的名词复数 )；作假；自命；自称 | |
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136
vats
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| varieties 变化，多样性，种类 | |
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137
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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138
slaying
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| 杀戮。 | |
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139
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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140
mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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141
scythe
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| n. 长柄的大镰刀，战车镰； v. 以大镰刀割 | |
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142
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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143
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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144
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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145
feign
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| vt.假装，佯作 | |
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146
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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147
dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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148
smirk
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| n.得意地笑；v.傻笑；假笑着说 | |
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149
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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150
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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151
etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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152
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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153
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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154
niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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155
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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156
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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157
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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158
contagion
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| n.(通过接触的疾病)传染；蔓延 | |
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159
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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160
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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161
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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162
chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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163
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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164
utilitarian
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| adj.实用的，功利的 | |
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165
cleanse
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| vt.使清洁，使纯洁，清洗 | |
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166
plumes
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| 羽毛( plume的名词复数 )； 羽毛饰； 羽毛状物； 升上空中的羽状物 | |
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167
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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168
aromatic
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| adj.芳香的，有香味的 | |
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169
petals
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| n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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170
chalice
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| n.圣餐杯；金杯毒酒 | |
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171
utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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172
detention
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| n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下 | |
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173
clefts
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| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
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