Part 11 (2/2)

January, 1826. ”But when one is compelled to despise the _character_ of a human being, especially of one who has been or is dear to one, then that is the bitterest experience which life can afford; then it is not strange if a frank and ardent soul turns with loathing from this false, hypocritical generation and shuts himself up, as well as may be, in the hermitage of his own heart.

”My mind is unchristian, for it has no day of rest. Generally I think that my disease has its seat in the abdomen or in the waist.

Mineral waters I can no more drink this summer. But is there not a mineral water which is called Lethe?

”Whether my little personality returns thither whence it came, with or without consciousness, a few months later or earlier, in order to be drowned in its great fountain-head, or to float for some time yet like a bubble, reflecting the clouds and an alien light--this appears to me constantly a matter of less and less consequence.”

There is to me a heartrending pathos in these confessions. It is easy to stand aloof, of course, like a schoolmaster with his chastising rod, and lash the frailties of poor human nature. It is easy to declare with virtuous indignation that the man who covets his neighbor's wife is a transgressor who has no claim upon our sympathy. And yet who can help pitying this great, n.o.ble poet, who fought so bravely against his ”barbaric, t.i.tanic self with its hairy arms”? His pa.s.sionate intensity of soul was, indeed, part of his poetic equipment; and he would not have been the poet he was if he had been cool, callous, and self-restrained.

The slag in him was so intimately moulded with the precious metal that their separation would have been the extinction of the individuality itself. The fiery furnace of affliction through which he pa.s.sed warped and scorched and cracked this mighty compound, but without destroying it. A glimpse of this experience which transformed the powerful, joyous, bright-visaged singer into a bitter, darkly brooding pessimist, fleeing from the sinister shadow which threatened to overtake him, is afforded us in the poem ”Hypochondria[40]”:

”I stood upon the alt.i.tude of life, Where mingled waters part and downward go With rush and foam in opposite directions.

Lo, it was bright up there, and fair to stand.

I saw the sun, I saw his satellite, Which, since he quenched his light, shone in the blue; I saw that earth was fair and green and glorious, I saw that G.o.d was good, that man was honest.

”Then rose a dread black imp, and suddenly The black one bit himself into my heart; And lo, at once the earth lay void and barren, And sun and stars were straightway drenched in gloom.

The landscape, glad erewhile, lay dark, autumnal; Each grove was sere, each flower stem was broken; Within the frozen sense my strength lay dead, All joy, all courage withered within me.

”What is to me reality--its dumb, Dead bulk, inert, oppressive, grim, and crude?

How hope has paled, alas, with roseate hue!

And memory, the heavenly blue, grown h.o.a.ry!

And even poesy! Its acrobatic Exertions, leaps--they pall upon my sense; Its bright mirage can satisfy no soul-- Light skimmings from the surface fair of things.

”Still I will praise thee, oh, thou human race.

G.o.d's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking!

Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show; The name of one is man, the other's woman!

Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty, 'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat.

Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast Is Cain's foul mark upon thy forehead branded.

”A mark quite legible, writ by G.o.d's finger; Why did I fail ere now to heed that sign?

A smell of death pervades all human life, And poisons spring's sweet breath and summer's splendor.

Out of the grave that odor is exhaling.

The grave is sealed and marble guards its freight, But still corruption is the breath of life, Eludes its guard and scatters everywhere.

”Oh, watchman, tell me now the night's dark hour!

Will it then never wane unto its end?

The half-devoured moon is gliding, gliding, The tearful stars forever onward go, My pulse beats fast as in the time of youth, But ne'er beats out the hours of torment sore.

How long, how endless is each pulse-beat's pain!

Oh, my consumed, oh, my bleeding heart.

”My heart! Nay in my bosom is no heart, There's but an urn that holds life's burnt-out ashes; Have pity on me, thou green mother Earth, And hide that urn full soon in thy cool breast.

In air it crumbles, moulders; earth's deep woe Has in the earth, I ween, at last an end; And Time's poor foundling, here in school constrained, Finds then, perchance, beyond the sun--a father.”

[40] The poem is written in the _ottava rime_, but in order to preserve the sense intact I have rendered it in blank verse.

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