Jaques

“ Jaques has just seen the aspect of famine, and heard the words of despair; the Duke has pointed out to him the consideration that more woful and practical calamities exist than even the exile of princes and the downfall of lords; and he breaks off into a light strain of satire, fit only for jesting comedy. ”

“ For example, touching Frederick and Oliver, our wish is that they should repent, and repair the wrong they have done, in brief, that they should become good; which is precisely what takes place; and as soon as they do this, they naturally love those who were good before. Jaques, too, is so fitted to moralize the discrepancies of human life, so happy and at home, and withal so agreeable, in that exercise, that we would not he should follow the good Duke when in his case those discrepancies are composed. ”

“ Jac ́omo, an irascible captain and a woman-hater. Frank (the sister of Frederick) is in love with him.—Beaumont and Fletcher, The Captain (1613) .
Jacques (1 syl.) , one of the domestic men-servants of the duke of Aranza. The duke, in order to tame down the overbearing spirit of his bride, pretends to be a peasant, and deputes Jacques to represent the duke for the nonce. Juliana, the duke’s bride, lays her grievance before “duke” Jaques, but of course receives no redress, although she learns that if a Jaques is “duke,” the “peasant” Aranza is a better man.—J. Tobin, The Honeymoon (1804) . ”

“ There are some men who, vulture-like, make their living166 out of the ruin and dead bones of things, only in that way do they prosper, Jaques was one of these men, though you would never have guessed his vulturous instincts from his appearance which was that of a plump prosperous-looking business man, rather past the prime of life, grey-headed, clean-shaven, always smiling, always calm, always polite, always seeming to yield to your wishes—but iron in driving a bargain. ”

“ DUKE SENIOR. If he, compact of jars, grow musical,
We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.
Go seek him; tell him I would speak with him.
Enter JAQUES
FIRST LORD. He saves my labour by his own approach.
DUKE SENIOR. Why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this,
That your poor friends must woo your company?
What, you look merrily!
JAQUES. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' th' forest,
A motley fool. A miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool,
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms- and yet a motley fool. ”

“ An atmosphere of enthusiasm and good-will permeates the social life. No community of the kind could have a more delightful spirit of unity than that which pervades the Jaques-Dalcroze School. All students are keen and anxious to live as full a life as possible, every one will willingly and unselfishly take time and trouble to help others who know less than themselves. ”

“ LESSONS AT HELLERAU
[Pg. 48] Monsieur Jaques-Dalcroze's lessons are full of vitality and entertainment, combined with the serious work in hand. No slacking is possible. He will perhaps open a rhythmic gymnastic lesson by playing a vigorous theme of one or two bars in a rhythm such as the following:—
which, as soon as it is grasped by the pupils, they begin to realize, [1] that is, to mark the tempo with the arms, and to move the feet according to the notes. ”

“ Putting his hand into his pocket, the prince gave the woman all he had left, so that after their day's food, which cost what small store Jack had by him, they were without a penny between them.
When the sun got low, the king's son said: "Jack, since we have no money, where can we lodge this night?"
But Jack replied: "Master, we'll do well enough, for I have an uncle lives within two miles of this place; he is a huge and monstrous giant with three heads; he'll fight five hundred men in armour, and make them to fly before him." ”

“ The Ass, the Table, and the Stick
A LAD named Jack was once so unhappy at home through his father's ill-treatment, that he made up his mind to run away and seek his fortune in the wide world.
He ran, and he ran, until he could run no longer, and then he ran right up against a little old woman who was gathering sticks. He was too much out of breath to beg pardon, but the woman was good-natured, and she said he seemed to be a likely lad, so she would take him to be her servant, and would pay him well. ”

“ Jack soon put on his coat of darkness with his shoes of swiftness and was there as soon as her, by reason of his coat they could not see him.—When she enter’d the place, she gave the handkerchief to old lucifer, who laid it upon the shelf, from whence Jack took it, and brought it to his master, and so saved his life.
The next day she saluted the king’s son, telling him, he must shew her tomorrow morning, the lips that she kissed last that night, or lose his head. Ah! reply'd he, If you kiss none but mine. I will. 'Tis neither here nor there said she; if you do not death’s your portion. ”

“ In addition to his title of wise man, he will also be called the much-enduring man. Sorrow is his lot and great tribulation; the mighty sea will rise up in wrath and swallow all, except that which is mightier, namely his heroic heart. Knowledge and suffering—are they not the two poles of the universal character? At any rate the old poet has mated them as counterparts in his hero; the thirst to know drives the latter to reach beyond, and then falls the avenging blow of powers unseen. ”

“ How Jack got into the Enchanted castle; broke the enchantment, killed the Giant, put the conjuror to flight, set free the knights and ladies, likewise the duke's daughter, whom he afterwards married. Having refreshed themselves with a small morsel of meat, they laid them down to rest, and in the morning Jack arose and put on his invisible coat, and cap of knowledge, and shoes of swiftness, and so prepared himself for the dangerous enterprise. ”

“ But the chief duty of these people, now disguised to destroy disguise, is to hold the Old Man fast when they have once caught him, that shifty, ever-changing Old Man of the Sea. Let him turn to water, to a snake, to a lion, to a tree—hold him fast; he is the One under them all and will at last reveal himself. Very necessary, indeed, is it to hold fast, and never let go in the grand play of Appearances; the strength of the man is shown by his ability to hold fast, amid the fleeting shadows of Time.
Menelaus holds the Old Man fast, and asks: What God detains me from my return? ”

“ Still Ulysses pays him the meed of heroship: "We Argives honored thee as a God, while living, and now thou art powerful among the dead; therefore do not sorrow at thy death, O Achilles." But he answers that he would rather be the humblest day laborer to a poor man than to be King of the Shades. It is not his world, he longs for the realm of heroic action, here he has no vocation. No Troy to be taken, no Hector to be vanquished down in Hades; the heroic man must sigh for the Upper World with its activity. ”

“ He gathered them, doubtless, but he transfigured them into an image reflecting the experience of a human soul. Our age is indeed scientific, it is collecting the folk-songs and the folk-tales from every quarter of the globe, and stringing them on a thread, like so many beads, not being able to transmute them into poetry. Wolf heralded the coming time by starting to reconvert Homer into his primitive materials, by making him scientific and not poetic, at least not architectonic. ”

“ We like to think of the old Poet seeing this fact, not as a deduction of science, not even as a misty tradition from some other land, but as an immediate act of poetic insight, which beholds the law of the physical world rising out of the spiritual by the original creative fiat; the Poet witnesses the necessity by which nature conforms to mind. Homer knew the spiritual Return, this whole Odyssey is such a Return, whereby the soul is rounded off to completeness, and becomes a true totality. ”

“ The Trojan cycle, complete in itself as a phase of Greek consciousness, is but a fragment, a half of a still larger cycle of human development. The Iliad and the Odyssey give the Greek half of the grand world-movement of the Trojan epoch; there is also an Oriental half which these poems presuppose and from which they separate. Thus the grand Homeric cycle, while a unit in itself, is really a separation from the East, a separation which rendered the Occident possible; the woes before Troy were the birth-pangs of the new-born child, Europe, now also grown a little old. ”

“ Everywhere we notice that Ulysses doubts at first, doubts Calypso, doubts Ino, doubts even his final safety when on land. He is the skeptical man, he never fails to call up the possibilities on the other side. Though a God give the promise, he knows that there are other Gods who do not promise, or may give a different promise to somebody else. It is the experience of life, this touch of doubt at first; it always accompanies the thinking man, who, like Ulysses, must be aware of a negative counterpart even to truth. ”

“ The Suitors, when they hear of the deed of Telemachus, are not only surprised but startled, and they at once recognise that a new power has risen which threatens to punish their misdeeds. The youth has plainly become a man, a man showing the skill and courage of his father, and with the sense of wrong burning in his breast. ”

“ JACK having been successful in all his undertakings, resolved not to be idle for the future, but to perform what service he could for the honour of his king and country; he humbly requested of the king his royal master, to fit him with a horse and money, to travel in search of strange and new adventures; for said he, there are many giants yet alive in the remotest part of the kingdom and the dominions of Wales, to the unspeakable damage of your majesty's liege subjects ”

“ We may note in it touches of flattery, of enticement, of boundless promises, even of wisdom for the wise man. Then that favorite theme, the Trojan War, they claim to know, "and all that has ever happened upon the foodful earth." Such are the gorgeous promises to the man thirsty for knowledge; but mark in their meadow the bones and decaying bodies of dead men. Evidently their sweet song, promising all, lures only to destroy. Their power, however, lasts but for the moment, while the senses are tingled; when the fit is over, Ulysses is set free and he makes no attempt to return to them. ”

“ Ulysses is declared to be really a sun-god, a form of Apollo, deity of archery; he shoots his arrows which are sunbeams and destroys the Suitors, who are the clouds obstructing his light, and wooing his spouse, the day or the sky. ”

“ Jack soon felt much better after having something to eat, and began to ask the old gentleman how he knew he was a king's son.
"Oh dear!" said the old man, "I knew that you were a king's son, and I know what is your business better than what you do yourself. So you will have to stay here to-night; and when you are in bed you mustn't be frightened whatever you may hear. There will come all manner of frogs and snakes, and some will try to get into your eyes and your mouth, but mind, don't stir the least bit or you will turn into one of those things yourself." ”

“ One man is to take the place of all, or a few men the place of the many, for the work must be done. The mightiness of the individual in the time of a great crisis is thus set forth in vivid reality; the one man with the Gods on his side is the majority. With truest instinct does the old poet show the Goddess Pallas directing Telemachus, who participates in the Divine and is carrying out its decree. This communion between man and deity is no mere mythologic sport, but the sincerest faith; verily it is the solidest fact in the government of the world, and the bard is its voice to all ages. ”

“ That wisdom of his was employed, and that suffering of his was endured, not for his own good merely, but for the good of others. He must think and suffer for his companions; a suggestion of vicariousness lies therein, a hint of self-offering, which has not yet flowered but is certainly budding far back in old Hellas. He must do for others what he does for himself, if he be truly the universal man, that is, if he be Hero. For is not the universal man all men—both himself and others in essence? So Ulysses tries to save his companions, quite as much he tries to save himself. ”

“ But the young man beginning life, the son Telemachus, is to obtain the same kind of knowledge, not through experience but through inquiry. Oral tradition is to give him the treasures of wisdom without the bitter personal trial. It is for this reason that Pallas sends him to find out what his father did, and to make the experience of the parent his own by education; it is, indeed, the true education—to master the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the race up to date. ”

“ Helen disappears from the scene, she has contributed her share, her own selfhood, to the experience of the young man. Telemachus has seen Helen, and thus attained one supreme purpose of Greek education. Never can that face, beautiful still, yet stamped with all the vicissitudes of human destiny, pass out of his mind; never can that life of hers with its grand transformation pass out of his soul. ”