Mary Sturgeon

“ They have many charms, and they can sing sweetly to ease the heart from pain. They live a dainty and a joyous life, which he may share if he will; and which he does share for a time. They are more beautiful than Penelope; they have strange lore, and a knowledge of enchantments; they have, too, eternal youth and kinship with the immortals. But when all is said, they cannot compare with the dear human soul who is waiting for Odysseus in Ithaca; and this contrast the poet makes us clearly see, in the way in which Odysseus always turns with longing to the thought of Penelope. ”

“ Its charm is greatest when the creative energy of it is outpoured through what is called personality. Never was a poet more lavish in the giving of himself, yielding up a rich and complex individuality with engaging candour. And poems will be found in which all its qualities are blended in a soft and intricate harmony. Passion is subdued to tenderness: imagination stoops to fantasy: thought, in so far as it is not content merely to shape the form of the work, is bent upon ideas that are wistful, or sad or ironic. ”

“ They are devoted to each other, and vowed as one mind to the aggrandizement of Cesare. Indeed, the core of the tragedy is, astonishingly, this simple human feeling. But the affection between them might never appear, under their sinister star, as a natural family bond. It was suspect from its origin. Thus the thread which binds the play together, and might have been so clear and firm a line, wavers and slips in those slippery high places of Renaissance Italy; and, however innocent in fact, takes from so much corruption the colour of guilt. ”

“ For once Odysseus is at a loss. How shall he address her? He is almost naked, haggard, and sea-worn, a terrible object to girlish eyes. Shall he go up close, and in the attitude of the suppliant, clasp her knees? Or will not his touch and his close approach startle and shock her? But his wits are not long to seek. He decides that it will be better not to come too near, but to address her gently, from a little distance. “I kneel to you, Protectress. God are you, or mortal?” Thus he speaks first, gracefully complimenting her beauty and courage. ”

“ Luckily, there is a poem called "Biography" which gives a clue and something more. It is a pæan of zest for life, of the intense joy in actual living which seems to be the dynamic of Mr Masefield's genius. There is, most conspicuous and significant, delight in beauty; a swift, keen, accurate response of sense to the external world, to sea and sky and hill, to field and flower. But there is fierce delight, too, in toil and danger, in strenuous action, in desperate struggle with wind and wave, in the supreme effort of physical power, in health and strength and skill and freedom and jollity ”

“ We are caught in the onward sweep of the poet’s imagination, and moved by the intense human interest of the theme. It is only when the catastrophe comes, when Æneas, fleeing from Carthage in the cold dawn, sees the light of the queen’s funeral pyre reddening the sky, that we begin to reflect on the meaning of it. Even then, so complete is the victory of the poet’s art, our last thought is one of pity—for the indignant spirit of Dido that has fled to the House of Shadows; and for the miserable man no less, whom fate is driving to the coast of Italy. ”

“ Instead of watching, recording, analyzing, after the method of so many contemporary poets, this is a mentality which contemplates and reflects. It leans lovingly toward the past, and has a sense, partly instinctive and partly scholarly, of historic values: while, for its artistic method, it passes all the treasure that fancy has gathered, and even passion itself, through the alembic of memory. So is created a softer grace, a serener atmosphere, and a richer dignity than the realist can achieve—and we will not be churlish enough to complain if, at the same time, the salt of reality is missing. ”

“ But the seed comes to its fruit through the logic of events: the grace and sweetness of humanity wither as, one by one, those whom he loved and trusted prove traitors. His deepest affection had been for Lucilla, and her plot to murder him shakes him to the soul. But he cannot bring himself to sentence her, and it is only under the shock of another perfidy that he is hardened sufficiently to order her death. That act is the spiritual crisis of his life, for in committing it he sins against the last ray of light left in him. ”

“ The Trojan Cycle and the Theban Cycle, with all the tragic grandeur with which Æschylus and Sophocles have invested them, are left behind. We come to a new theme, fair as a garden and clean as a morning breeze. It is the tale of a wife’s supreme love: of the friendship of a god for a mortal man: of an unique act of hospitality and its magnificent requital. The oppressive sense of destiny, of something almost malign in the heart of things, has lifted. Human error and wrongdoing and impotence, which have hitherto made such a sombre background for heroic figures, are lost in a glow of human love. ”

“ Romance is reborn in the novel; the poetry of the old saga blooms again in the lyric; and a healthy new development has given to Ireland what she never before possessed—a native drama.
Now it is true that the larger figures of the movement have receded a little; the one in whom the flame of genius burned most fiercely has passed into silence. And Synge being gone, there is no hand like his, cunning to modulate upon every string of the harp. There is no voice of so full a compass, booming out of tragic depths or shrilling satiric laughter or sweet with heroic romance ”

“ For these exquisite love-scenes, these magnanimous friends and lovers, and this clear greatness of thought issuing simply in noble action might bear some relation to a ‘marriage question’ in Utopia, but would have little enough to do with such a problem in the actual world. That, however, is rather a cause for rejoicing to those who can delight in the ideal beauty of the work, and who can see in its ethical audacity an innocence which only could dare to follow up so boldly a logical attack upon the conventions of morality. ”

“ So Paris was to gain the fairest woman in the world. It seemed an honest promise, full of the happiest portent; and the young prince soon set out upon his search for a bride over the western seas. But Aphrodite was no better than a cheat, and had invoked on Paris, though he did not know it then, the curse of guilty love. For the exquisite child who was to be the world’s queen of beauty had grown up in the home of Tyndareus, king of Sparta; and even while the goddess gave her word to Paris, was happily married to Menelaus there. ”

“ Imagination overtops them, darting with the lightness of a bird, or soaring majestically, or sweeping, strong and rapid, through a storm-cloud, or putting a swift girdle round the earth. Thought is a degree less powerful, perhaps. It is brooding, museful, tinged with a melancholy that may be wistful or passionate; and though it commonly revolves the larger issues of life within the canons of authority, it is keen and clear enough to see beyond them, and even, upon occasion, to pierce a way through. But it is not always sufficiently strong to control completely so fertile an imagination ”

“ It is clear that Michael Field, in the noble unity of her life and work, represented something that was finest in the dying era; and yet she was, in certain respects, aloof from that Victorian Age, and in advance of it. It is profoundly moving to see how, even in extremity, her genius remained true to itself. It was so true, indeed, that in her pitiful, scanty record of those days one may catch a glimpse, through her winging spirit, of the moments of greatness to which the spirit of England rose in that crisis. ”

“ Her passionate soul flames into indignation, and in her anger she is less than just to Ismene. Despite her heroism, she is simply human. Nor is she, as has sometimes been suggested, like a martyr of the early Christian era, whose humility and gentleness would bless the hand that smote. Antigone’s warm heart is as strong in its hatred as its love; absolute in devotion, but impetuous in anger; capable of supreme self-sacrifice, and tender to infirmity; but intolerant of moral weakness and meanness and timidity. ”

“ They are graceful songs, and their glamour will not fail so long as there remain lovers to read them. The critic is disarmed by their ingenuousness: he is constrained to take them as they stand, with their warmth and colour, their sweet music and the occasional flashes of observed truth (like the March runnels of this poem) which redeem them from total unreality. The reward lies close ahead. For even on this theme of love, and still in the lyric mood, sanity soon triumphs. It heralds its victory with a laugh, and the air is lightened at once from the scented gloom of romanticism. ”

“ To Dido, this handsome prince whose fame has reached her, and whose melancholy history is so like her own, seems to have flashed upon her as the fulfilment of her wish. And to Æneas, who has just learned that she can be kind as well as brave, she seems peerless among women. While from each to each is passed the silent intuitive sense that here is a nature great and good. Æneas, touched by her generosity to his comrades, tries to thank her. But he feels that only the gods can reward her adequately. ”

“ The poem called "The Seekers" is beautifully apt in this regard. Simply, clearly, directly, it expresses the alpha and omega of this genius: the zest which is its driving force and the [Pg 201] aspiration, the tireless and ceaseless pursuit of an ideal, which is its objective.
Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind,
For we go seeking a city that we shall never find.
There is no solace on earth for us—for such as we—
Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see.
There is the spirit of adventure, the eternal allure of romance, as old and as potent as poetry itself. ”