ABSTRACT
It is admirable, not merely for single touching lines and for single happy expressions and delicate strokes. Like ‘The Scholar Gipsy’, its companion-piece, in a former volume, it is remarkable for unity and completeness of conceptionfor that harmoniousness of composition which at once stirs and soothes, excites and satisfies the reader’s mind, and which is the object and criterion of art. In ‘Thyrsis’ the poet projects his mind into the outer world with an effect that contrasts but too vividly with the self-brooding tone of the rest of the volume. One can only regret that the mood did not last longer, and has not been more frequent. Let us turn to ‘Empedocles on Etna’, the most important piece in the volume. Empedocles, as the familiar legend tells us, was a Sicilian Greek who flourished probably about the middle of the fifth century before our era. Men revered him for his control over the winds and the rain, for his miraculous skill in the art of medicine, and for the loftiness of his wisdom. The manner of his death is told variously. Some say that he was drawn up in a shining chariot to the seats of the gods. Others tell that, wearied of the praises of men, and perplexed with his life, he plunged into the burning crater of Mount Etna. Mr. Arnold takes the latter
legend. This is the whole story. And surely it is evident even to people far inferior to Mr. Arnold in fineness and depth of critical judgment-in which he has barely an equal-that the action here is incurably faulty as the base of a tragedy. He confessed, indeed, in one of his remarkable and instructive prefaces, written fourteen years ago, that he was sensible of the poetical weakness of such a situation as that of Empedocles. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘are the situations from the representation of which, though accurate, no poetical enjoyment can be derived? They are those in which the suffering finds no vent in action; in which a continuous state of mental distress is prolonged, unrelieved by incident, hope, or resistance; in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be done. In such situations there is inevitably something morbid; in the description of them something monotonous.’ Precisely. From the moment that Empedocles appears in the pass among the forests that clothe the sides of the fiery mountain, we are filled with mere profitless pain. We know that the catastrophe is certain, and that it is not of a kind that action can modify or prevent or retard. It may be said that we know the same thing in more than one tragedy of the highest order. Take the Ajax of Sophocles. Except in the first short dialogue between Ajax, still in his frenzy, and Athené, the misery of the hero is as monotonous-as little capable, that is, of being alleviated by any incident, hope or resistance-as is the fate of Empedocles himself. We know that the Greek hero is doomed, and that the sympathizing strains of Tecmessa and the mariners from Salamis, and his own passionate and stern lamentations, cannot avert or delay the terrible climax. Does this, then, fall within the class of dramatic situations to which Empedocles belongs? On the contrary, there is a most important distinction. Ajax is the unhappy victim of the anger of the gods. We are horrified at his fate, but the horror is deeply penetrated by religious awe. The spectator prays that never upon him may the ire of Athené fall, and he trembles with devout pity for the ill-fated hero. With Empedocles the case is very different. In his dreadful end the gods have no part. The self-inflicted destruction of a philosopher, however sublime the exposition of the intellectual miseries and misgivings which have prompted the act, cannot affect us with anything but a helpless and unelevating distress. The graceful and musical verses which Mr. Arnold has put into the mouth of Callicles at the close of the tragedy are not able to transform the dreary pain with which we have pictured Empedocles plunging into the crater, into that mood of repose and resignation in which it should be the aim of the dramatist to leave us. For one thing, it may be said in passing, we have some difficulty to discover what idea it is that may be supposed to incorporate Callicles’s song with what has gone before.
