Part 9 (1/2)

This, then, is _Pauline_; I pa.s.s on to _Paracelsus_. _Paracelsus_, in order to give the poem a little local colour, opens at Wurzburg in a garden, and in the year 1512. But it is not a poem which has to do with any place or any time. It belongs only to the country of the human soul.

The young student Paracelsus is sitting with his friends Festus and Michal, on the eve of his departure to conquer the whole world by knowledge. They make a last effort to retain him, but even as he listens to their arguments his eyes are far away--

As if where'er he gazed there stood a star,

so strong, so deep is desire to attain his aim.

For Paracelsus aims to know the whole of knowledge. Quiet and its charms, this homelike garden of still work, make their appeal in vain.

”G.o.d has called me,” he cries; ”these burning desires to know all are his voice in me; and if I stay and plod on here, I reject his call who has marked me from mankind. I must reach pure knowledge. That is my only aim, my only reward.”

Then Festus replies: ”In this solitariness of aim, all other interests of humanity are left out. Will knowledge, alone, give you enough for life? You, a man!” And again: ”You discern your purpose clearly; have you any security of attaining it? Is it not more than mortal power is capable of winning?” Or again: ”Have you any knowledge of the path to knowledge?” Or, once more, ”Is anything in your mind so clear as this, your own desire to be singly famous?”

”All this is nothing,” Paracelsus answers; ”the restless force within me will overcome all difficulties. G.o.d does not give that fierce energy without giving also that which it desires. And, I am chosen out of all the world to win this glory.”

”Why not then,” says Festus, ”make use of knowledge already gained? Work here; what knowledge will you gain in deserts?”

”I have tried all the knowledge of the past,” Paracelsus replies, ”and found it a contemptible failure. Others were content with the sc.r.a.ps they won. Not I! I want the whole; the source and sum of divine and human knowledge, and though I craze as even one truth expands its infinitude before me, I go forth alone, rejecting all that others have done, to prove my own soul. I shall arrive at last. And as to mankind, in winning perfect knowledge I shall serve them; but then, all intercourse ends between them and me. I will not be served by those I serve.”

”Oh,” answers Festus, ”is that cause safe which produces carelessness of human love? You have thrown aside all the helps of human knowledge; now you reject all sympathy. No man can thrive who dares to claim to serve the race, while he is bound by no single tie to the race. You would be a being knowing not what Love is--a monstrous spectacle!”

”That may be true,” Paracelsus replies, ”but for the time I will have nothing to do with feeling. My affections shall remain at rest, and then, _when_ I have attained my single aim, when knowledge is all mine, my affections will awaken purified and chastened by my knowledge. Let me, unhampered by sympathy, win my victory. And I go forth certain of victory.”

Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal, Two points in the adventure of the diver: One--when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge; One--when, a prince, he rises with his pearl?

Festus, I plunge!

FESTUS. We wait you when you rise.

So ends the first part, and the second opens ten years afterwards in a Greek Conjurer's house in Constantinople, with Paracelsus writing down the result of his work. And the result is this:

”I have made a few discoveries, but I could not stay to use them. Nought remains but a ceaseless, hungry pressing forward, a vision now and then of truth; and I--I am old before my hour: the adage is true--

Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream;

and now I would give a world to rest, even in failure!

”This is all my gain. Was it for this,” he cries, ”I subdued my life, lost my youth, rooted out love; for the sake of this wolfish thirst of knowledge?” No dog, said Faust, in Goethe's poem, driven to the same point by the weariness of knowledge, no dog would longer live this life.

My tyrant aim has brought me into a desert; worse still, the purity of my aim is lost. Can I truly say that I have worked for man alone? Sadder still, if I had found that which I sought, should I have had power to use it? O G.o.d, Thou who art pure mind, spare my mind. Thus far, I have been a man. Let me conclude, a man! Give me back one hour of my young energy, that I may use and finish what I know.

”And G.o.d is good: I started sure of that; and he may still renew my heart.

True, I am worn; But who clothes summer, who is life itself?

G.o.d, that created all things, can renew!”

At this moment the voice of Aprile is heard singing the song of the poets, who, having great gifts, refused to use them, or abused them, or were too weak; and who therefore live apart from G.o.d, mourning for ever; who gaze on life, but live no more. He breaks in on Paracelsus, and, in a long pa.s.sage of overlapping thoughts, Aprile--who would love infinitely and be loved, aspiring to realise every form of love, as Paracelsus has aspired to realise the whole of knowledge--makes Paracelsus feel that love is what he wants. And then, when Paracelsus realises this, Aprile in turn realises that he wants knowledge. Each recognises that he is the complement of the other, that knowledge is worthless without love, and love incapable of realising its aspirations without knowledge--as if love did not contain the sum of knowledge necessary for fine being. Both have failed; and it seems, at first, that they failed because they did not combine their aims. But the chief reason of their failure--and this is, indeed, Browning's main point--is that each of them tried to do more than our limits on earth permit.

Paracelsus would have the whole sum of knowledge, Aprile nothing less than the whole of love, and, in this world. It is impossible; yet, were it possible, could they have attained the sum of knowledge and of love on earth and been satisfied therewith, they would have shut out the infinite of knowledge and love beyond them in the divine land, and been, in their satisfaction, more hopelessly lost than they are in their present wretchedness. Failure that leaves an unreached ideal before the soul is in reality a greater boon than success which thinks perfect satisfaction has been reached. Their aim at perfection is right: what is wrong is their view that failure is ruin, and not a prophecy of a greater glory to come. Could they have thought perfection were attained on earth--were they satisfied with anything this world can give, no longer stung with hunger for the infinite--all Paradise, with the illimitable glories, were closed to them!

Few pa.s.sages are more beautiful in English poetry than that in which Aprile narrates his youthful aspiration: how, loving all things infinitely, he wished to throw them into absolute beauty of form by means of all the arts, for the love of men, and receive from men love for having revealed beauty, and merge at last in G.o.d, the Eternal Love.

This was his huge aim, his full desire.

Few pa.s.sages are more pathetic than that in which he tells his failure and its cause. ”Time is short; the means of life are limited; we have no means answering to our desires. Now I am wrecked; for the mult.i.tudinous images of beauty which filled my mind forbade my seizing upon one which I could have shaped. I often wished to give one to the world, but the others came round and baffled me; and, moreover, I could not leave the mult.i.tude of beauty for the sake of one beauty. Unless I could embody all I would embody none.