Pléiade

“ JODELLE, ÉTIENNE, seigneur de Limodin (1532–1573) , French dramatist and poet, was born in Paris of a noble family. He attached himself to the poetic circle of the Pléiade (see Daurat) and proceeded to apply the principles of the reformers to dramatic composition. Jodelle aimed at creating a classical drama that should be in every respect different from the moralities and soties that then occupied the French stage. ”

“ There existed, in 1595, as great a crowd of versifiers as had been called forth fifty years earlier by the splendour of the Pléiade. A feature of poetic history which is worthy of our notice is that an extreme abundance of poetical composition is by no means necessarily connected with the wholesomeness and vigour of the art at that moment. There was a crowd of poets in France during the reign of Henri IV, but they were distinguished more by their exuberance and their eccentricity than by their genius. ”

“ He was, however, a scholar by natural taste, and became eventually a teacher at the College de Plessis, and on the death of Ramus was made professor of Latin in 1572 in the College de France. In the meanwhile Passerat had studied law, and had composed much agreeable poetry in the Pleiade style, the best pieces being his short ode Du Premier jour de mai, and the charming villanelle, J’ai perdu ma tourterelle. ”

“ Even with people who do not know them by sight and have not felt the sweet influences of the Pleiades, there is a vague memory of some story about a lost Pleiad that stirs an emotion suggesting something romantic and sad. The Pleiades form in truth a delightful group of twinkling unfathomable stars, singularly fascinating and singularly persistent in their brilliancy. ”

“ PLEIAD (Gr. Πλειάς) , in Greek literature, the name given (by analogy from Pleiades, below) by the Alexandrian critics to seven tragic poets who flourished during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 B.C.) . In French literature, in addition to the Pleiad of Charlemagne, there were two famous groups of the kind. ”

“ Now it is time to prove the truth of our assertion that the star-stories of savage and of civilised races closely resemble each other. Let us begin with that well-known group the Pleiades. The peculiarity of the Pleiades is that the group consists of seven stars, of which one is so dim that it seems entirely to disappear, and many persons can only detect its presence through a telescope. The Greeks had a myth to account for the vanishing of the lost Pleiad. ”

“ The verse is full of allegory; it is repetitive; it might weary one with the savour of that unhappy fifteenth century when the human mind lay under oppression, and only the rich could speak their insignificant words; a foreigner especially might find it all dry bones, but his judgement would be wrong. Charles of Orleans has a note quite new and one that after him never failed, but grew in volume and in majesty until it filled the great chorus of the Pleiade--the Lyrical note of direct personal expression. ”

“ The Pleiades, for instance, they believe to be seven of their departed countrymen, fixed in the firmament; one eye of each of them appearing in the shape of a star, being the only part that is visible. But it is a common superstition among them, as we have already noticed, that the left eyes of their chiefs, after death, become stars.
This notion is far from being destitute of poetical beauty ”

“ Before the colure of the Vernal Equinox had passed into Aries, and after it had left Aldebarán and the Hyades, the Pleiades were, for seven or eight centuries, the leading stars of the Sabæan year. And thus we see, on the monuments, the disk and crescent, symbols of the sun and moon in conjunction, appear successively,—first on the head, and then on the neck and back of the Zodiacal Bull, and more recently on the forehead of the Ram. ”

“ The other children reached the high heavens safely and now we see them in the star group known as the Pleiades."
Another Indian legend relates that "seven brothers once upon a time took the warpath and discovered a beautiful maiden living all alone whom they adopted as their sister. One day they all went hunting save the youngest, who was left to guard his sister. Shortly after the departure of the hunters, the younger brother discovered game and set off in pursuit of it, leaving his sister unprotected. Whereupon a powerful buffalo came to her lodge and carried her away. ”

“ Long before rules for navigating the Ægean came to be formulated, the ‘sailing-stars’ must have been designated by name amongst the Achæan tribes. Besides, Homer is ignorant of any such association. Now in Arabic the Pleiades are called Eth Thuraiyâ, from therwa, copious, abundant. The meaning conveyed is that of many gathered into a small space; and it is quite similar to that of the Biblical kîmah, a near connexion of the Assyrian kimtu, family. [48] Analogy, then, almost irresistibly points to the interpretation of Pleiades by the Greek pleiones, many, or pleîos, full ”

“ If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had squatted;—
“There was a shepherd that did live,
And held his thoughts as high
As were the mounts whereon his flocks
Did hourly feed him by.” ”

“ I looked up at Pelleas almost fearfully in the flood of Spring moonlight. The radiance was full on his white hair and tranquil face, and he met my eyes with the knowledge that we were suddenly become the custodians of an exquisite secret. The words of the young servant of God came to me understandingly.
“‘And the house shall be filled with the odour of the ointment,’” I said over. “O, Pelleas,” I added, tremulously, “do you think....”
Pelleas lifted his face and I thought that it shone in the dimness.
“Ah, well,” he answered, “we must believe all the beautiful things we can.” ”

“ Since Pelleas and I have grown old together the events of our days lie rather among plants than people, or so we imagine.
“You know,” he said with a kind of happy importance, “we wondered who would be the first to find our motto on the sun-dial.”
“Yes,” I said eagerly.
“Just now,” imparted Pelleas, “I came through the rose-garden. And at the turn of the path by the Blush-rose tree, I surprised—but I took care they didn’t see me—two lovers, reading the motto.”
“Lovers!” cried I in fine excitement. “How do you know that they were lovers, Pelleas?” ”

“ Could such a man as Pelleas serve her longer after such a confession? He would become a king again, a stranger, a man set in high places far beyond the mere yearning of a woman's white face. And yet, it was possible that his love might prove stronger than his reason; it was possible that he might front the world and frown down the petty judgments of men. Glorious and transcendant sacrifice! She could face calumny beside him as a rock faces the froth of waves; she could look Gorlois in the eyes, and know neither shame nor pity. ”

“ Yet how to give to Hobart Eddy in effect: A momentary knowledge that there is more about a bird and about what he is and about what we are than one commonly supposes. How to tell him that some gracious purpose—like winning the love of Viola—would teach the secret? I longed unspeakably, and so, I know, did Pelleas, to be to him a “restorer of paths to dwell in”—a restorer of the path of In-the-Spring which we feared that he had long lost. Though, indeed, how should one ever lose that path which runs to the end of the world? ”

“ Pelleas admitted justly, “nothing can be. All the same—”
“Pelleas!” I cried in despair, “we could have that young rector over here, and they could be married in the little round drawing-room—or in the rose arbour—or in the garden at large. Think of it—cream sherbet and little cakes afterward and us for parents and wedding party and all. Then you and I could go straight to Dudley Manners at Chynmere and tell him how it was, and I know he would forgive them. Pelleas! Can you really think of that dear child spending two years with an authority on plant life in Alaska?” ”

“ And there on my pillow I saw as she hastened away the great pink tea rose that had blossomed only that day from the rose plant in her own window where she had tended it for months.
Pelleas was in the library across the hall from the drawing-room where those two dear little people were. I opened the library door softly and went in and stood close beside his chair before he turned. Pelleas is not in the least deaf, as we both know; he is simply no longer distracted by small, unnecessary noises. ”

“ And win me this fine circlet, Pelleas,
That I may love thee?'
Then his helpless heart
Leapt, and he cried, 'Ay! wilt thou if I win?'
'Ay, that will I,' she answered, and she laughed,
And straitly nipt the hand, and flung it from her;
Then glanced askew at those three knights of hers,
Till all her ladies laughed along with her.
'O happy world,' thought Pelleas, 'all, meseems,
Are happy; I the happiest of them all.'
Nor slept that night for pleasure in his blood,
And green wood-ways, and eyes among the leaves;
Then being on the morrow knighted, sware
To love one only. ”

“ When one is seventy and closes one’s eyes it is wonderful how the whole world grows youthful. And when I had almost dozed that tender rustling brought me back so happily that I could hardly tell which was memory of that other little head upon my arm and which was now. At midnight and twice later when the baby’s food had to be warmed it was I who did this, and the old familiar helplessness of Pelleas in this little presence delighted me beyond measure. ”

“ Pelleas said most wisely, “why there is likely to be some enchantment about. The more human you are the more wonderful things are likely to happen.”
That is true enough, and it was in very human fashion that next instant the figure in pink in the portico of the temple came swiftly toward us and took me in her arms. It was Avis, all tender regret for what she fancied to be her inhospitality and as perfectly the hostess as if it were usual for her to receive her guests in a white temple. ”

“ Nichola’s rose, fading in my lace, gave out a fragrance to which some influence in the room was akin; and we both knew.
I said: “Pelleas, I have been remembering that morning long ago at Miss Deborah Ware’s—and our Fountain of Gardens. When we were twenty-something, like Lisa and Eric.”
“But so have I been thinking of that!” Pelleas cried. And we nodded, smiling, for we love to have that happen. Perhaps it makes us momentarily believe that we are each other, and no aid asked of science to bring it about. ”

“ And Pylades answered, "This I cannot say; all men have knowledge of what befell the King. But hearken to this. It were shame to me to live if thou diest. I sailed with thee, and will die with thee. For otherwise men will account lightly of me both in Argos and in Phocis, which is my own land, thinking that I betrayed thee, or basely slew thee, that I might have thy kingdom, marrying thy sister, who shall inherit it in thy stead. Not so: I will die with thee, and my body shall be burnt together with thine." ”

“ Indeed, Enid was twenty-two that Spring, and had been for two years happily married in spite of the fact that Pelleas and I had had no hand in the wooing. To see Enid with her baby in her arms was considerably like watching a wild rose rock a butterfly, and no one can fancy how tenderly we two observed her. I think that few sweet surprises of experience or even of wisdom have so confirmed our joy in life as the sight of our grandniece Enid with her baby. ”

“ God's blessings were not man's blessings, God's ways not man's ways. Pelleas had learnt to look for what he might have called the contradictions of divine charity. We are smitten when we pray for a blessing, chided when desirous of comfort. Life would seem at times a gigantic tyranny for the creation of patience. Pelleas remembered the past, and kept his hopes and desires well in hand. ”

“ I hope that there is no one in the world who could not from his soul say that at least once of some hour of Spring and youth. In such a moment, it is my belief, the spirit is very near entering upon its own immortality—for I have always held that immortality must begin at some beautiful moment in this life. Though as for me, at that moment, I confess myself to have been thinking of nothing more immortal than the adorable way that Pelleas had of saying my name. ”

“ But though I held the flowers to my face I, who can even detect the nameless fragrance of old lace, could divine in them no slightest perfume. I held them toward Pelleas, dozing in a deep chair, and when he had lifted them to his face he too shook his head.
“It is strange,” he said; “I would say that they have no odour.”
“They’ve such a beautiful smell,” said the child, sighing, and took back her flowers with that which immediately struck Pelleas and me as a kind of pathetic resignation. ”

“ In the fourth act the moon shone on a little châlet in the leaves and one saw that there are love and sacrifice and good will enough to carry on the world in spite of its other connections. It was a play which made me thankful that Pelleas and I have clung to each other through society and poverty [Pg 36] and dyspepsia and never have allied ourselves with the other side. And if any one thinks that there is a middle ground I, who am seventy, know far better. ”