Part 14 (1/2)
Our Euripides the hus of warm tears
”If the Alkestis is not the enius of Euripides,”
wrote Paul de Saint-Victor, ”it is perhaps the masterpiece of his heart”[110]
Balaustion herself, not a rose of ”the Rosy Isle” but its wild-poranate-flower, since amid the verdure of the tree ”you shall find food, drink, odour all at once,” is hellenic in her bright and swift intelligence, her enthusiasrace of every movement of her spirit, her culture and her beauty The atularly lu; the narrative of the adventure is rapid yet always lucid; the verse leaps buoyantly like a wave of the sea
Balaustion tells her tale to the four Greek girls, her corape vines, the rippling streaale and watermint, Its mat-floor,
and in presence of the little teion and of art By a happy and original device the transcript of the Alkestis is much more than a translation; it is a translation rendered into dramatic action--for we see and hear the perforer masked--and this is accompanied with a coraceful apology for the function of the critic put forward than that of Balaustion:
'Tis the poet speaks: But if I, too, should try and speak at ti your love to where my love, perchance, Climbed earlier, found a nest before you knew-- Why, bear with the poor cli has not often played the part of a critic, and the interpretation of a poet's work by a poet has the double value of throwing light upon the inal writer and the mind of his commentator
The life of ht into a beautiful relation throughout the play It is pre-erief and in its joy; yet at every point the divine care, the divine help surrounds and supports the children of earth, with their transitory tears and smiles Apollo has been a herdsman in the service of Ad's friend and guest The interest of the play for Browning lay especially in three things--the pure self-sacrifice of the heroine, devotion ehten the effect hich Euripides has rendered this; secondly, the joyous, beneficent strength of Herakles, and this Browning has felt in a peculiar degree, and by his coher relief; and thirdly, the purification and elevation through suffering of the character of Ad has not divined the intention of Euripides, but certainly he has added so's interpretation of the spiritual significance of the drama is a beautiful perversion of the purpose of the Greek poet; that Ad his wife's offer to be his substitute in dying, the king was no craven but a king who recognised duty to the state as his highest duty The general feeling of readers of the play does not fall in with this ingenious plea Browning, as appears froined recast of the theme, which follows the transcript, had considered and rejected it If Adree justified, it can only be by bearing in mind that the fact by which he shall himself escape from death is of Apollo's institution, and that obedience to the purpose of Apollo rendered self-preservation a kind of virtue But Ad to the reproaches of his father, and he anticipates that the verdict of the world will be against hiainst Adly than does Euripides, who seeht to face the test of death, rief which is imposed upon him by the duties of hospitality Readers of the Winter's Tale have sometimes wondered whether there could be much rapture of joy in the heart of the silent Hermione when she received back her unworthy husband If Admetos remained at the close of the play what he is understood by Browning to have been at its opening, reunion with a self-lover so base could hardly have flushed with gladness the spirit of Alkestis just escaped from the shades[111] But Alkestis, who had proved her own loyalty by deeds, values deedsshe had put her love into an act, and had refrained from mere words of wifely tenderness; death put an end to her services to her husband; she felt towards hi's earlier poem be true, may feel to any husband; but still she could render a service to her children, and she exacts from Admetos the promise that he will never place a stepiance to this vow is an act, and it shall be for Alkestis the test of his entire loyalty And the good Herakles, who enjoys a glorious jest aly, and who by that jest can benevolently retort upon Admetos for his concealment of Alkestis'
death--for now the position is reversed and the king shall receive her living, and yet believe her dead--Herakles contrives to put Admetos to that precise test which is alone sufficient to assure Alkestis of his fidelity Words are words; but here is a deed, and Ade, but demonstrates to her that for him to violate it is ith proved to be her very own
Browning, who delights to sho good is brought out of evil, or what appears such to mortal eyes, is not content with this He must trace the whole process of the purification of the soul of Admetos, by sorrow and its cruel yet beneficent reality, and in his commentary he emphasises each point of development in that process When his wife lies at the point of death the sorrow of Admetos is not insincere, but there was a childishness in it, for he would not confront the fact that the event was of his own election Presently she has departed, and he begins to taste the truth, to distinguish between a sorrow rehearsed in fancy and endured in fact In greeting Herakles he rises to a manlier strain, puts tears away, and accepts the realities of life and death; he will not add ill to ill, as the sentihts of earth that renanimous presence of the hero-God He renders duty to the dead; is quieted; and entersIn dealing with the ignoble wrangle with old Pheres the critic is hard set; but Balaustion, speaking as interpreter for Browning, explains that for a little the king lapses back from the firmer foothold which he had attained Perhaps it would have been wiser to adic-coe and youth But it is true that one who has ives freely; and one who has little to give, like Pheres, clutches that little desperately and is starved not only in possessions but in soul For Browning the significance of the scene lies in the idea, which if not just is ingenious, that the encounter with Pheres has an educational value for Ade of his own egoism, and thus he learns more profoundly to hate his baser self
When the body of Alkestis has been borne away and the king re-enters his desolate halls the full truth breaks in upon hi can be as it has been before--”He stared at the impossible htly lived, is a harder thing than death:
He was beginning to be like his wife
And those around hirief so far to the truth of things, he could not but return to the light an altered and a better man Instructed so deeply in the realities of sorrow, Admetos is at last made worthy to receive the blessed realities of joy with the words,
When I betray her, though she is no eneration of Admetos is accomplished How much in all this exposition is derived from the play, how much is added to it, may be left for the consideration of the reader ill coinal with the transcript
If the character of Ad beneath the conception of the Greek dramatist, to allow room for its subsequent elevation, the conception of Herakles is certainly heightened We shall not say that Balaustion is the speaker and that Herakles is so himself fully enters into Balaustion's enthusias, joyous helper of oes before hie and a summons to whateverthe pave the ferry we may happen to encounter this face of Herakles:
Out of this face e; I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the slaves of runners clearing the way, I hear victorious drums
This face is a life-boat
For Walt Whitman too had seen Brother Jonathan Herakles, and indeed the face of the strong and tender wound-dresser was itself as the face of a calmer Herakles to 's transcript require an abundant commentary, but it is the commentary of an irrepressible joy, an outbreak of enthusiasantuan creature, in the best sense Rabelaisian, is uplifted by Browning into a very saint of joyous effort; no pallid ascetic, indeed, beating his breast with the stone, but a Christian saint of Luther's school, while at the saiant:
Gladness be with thee, Helper of our world!
I think this is the authentic sign and sea!
Of Godshi+p, that it ever waxes glad, And e to suffer forof the Herakles ideal appears again and again in other poe His Breton sailor, Herve Riel, has aiety in arduous effort His Ivan Ivanovitch wields the axe and abolishes a life with the Heraclean joy in righteousness And in the last of Browning's poems, not without a pathetically over-boisterous effort and strain, there is the suggestion of an ideal conception of hi; the old reat voice before hiined by Balaustion at the close of the poem, are wedded lovers who, like the married in Pompilia's dream of heaven, ”know themselves into one” For the; and therefore no place is left for Herakles in this treathest conception of the union of soul with soul: