V.
April 2, 1841.
The story of Venus and Cupid and Psyche was discussed.
Margaret said that of Venus she had less to say than of either of the preceding Deities! She was not the expression of a thought, but of a fact. She was the Greek idea of a lovely woman,—the best physical development of woman. When we have said, “It is,” we have said all. The birth of Beauty was the only ideal thing about her. She sprang from the wave, from the flux and reflux of things, from the undulating line. On this Venus, transitoriness had set its seal. As we look at her, we feel that she must change. Her loveliness is too fair to last. Her beauty would pass next moment. She could not live a year, we think, without losing something of her full grace. It was peculiarly Greek to create a beautiful symbol, and to pause in the symbol. The Greeks were very apt to do this. They did it effectually in the Goddess of Love. She was sportive in all her amours. They had no idea of an Everlasting Love. They enjoyed themselves too much to abstract themselves. Venus seemed to Margaret a merely human creature. She was not the type of Universal Beauty: the Greek eye was closed to that. Still, their own embodiment did not satisfy their own need. They filled out their ideal with Venus Urania, Hebe, and all the attendant Hours and Graces, yet were not satisfied. Then came the fable of Psyche and her three Cupids. Venus was only a pretty girl! Her cestus, her doves, her pets, her jealousies, all betray it. The Venus Urania was more. She was the child of Celestial Light. Hebe was born of immortal bloom. To fill out the gaps in their conception, Eros, or Love in Sadness, Cupid a frolicsome boy, and the more noble, more creative Love which brooded over Chaos were evolved from their consciousness. Psyche, who did not appear until the age of Augustus, who was too modern to be mythological, yet glowing with mythic beauty, was only another evidence of their imperfect idea. Her story expresses more than that of Venus. It tells not only the story of human love, but represents the pilgrimage of a soul. The jealousy of Venus was that which the good must always feel toward the better which is to supersede it, and as soon as Psyche looked upon her sleeping lover she became immortal. The soul in the fulness of Love became conscious of Destiny.
James Clarke asked what was the difference between the girl-mother—the Madonna—and the Greek Venus.
Margaret replied, with more patience than I was capable of, that the Madonna represented more than passing womanly beauty. She was prophetic, and lived again in her child.
Then, persisted James F., why was Vulcan the husband of Beauty, to which Margaret gave no satisfactory answer. He then gave his own thought, to which I can do no justice, although it was what I tried in vain to say at the last conversation. It amounted to this,—that in seeking for beauty we lose it, but in aiming at utility through hard labor we find perfect proportion—and consequently perfect beauty. He said that he and his sister Sarah had often spoken to each other about this, and he felt that the time would come when essays would be written about our ships, as we now write essays about the Pyramids and the Greek Art. Posterity might find the proof of our search after beauty in the graceful prow and swelling hold and tall, tapering mast or shrouds of shredded jet; in the bellying canvas and the patron saint which watches the wake from the stern. But we know that the ship, the most beautiful object in our modern world, was the product of labor, gradually evoked, according to the law of fitness, compass, and general proportion. To bring its form into a natural relation to wind and wave, was to find perfect harmony and beauty. At first the prow was too sharp, and the water had rushed over it; the hold was too shallow, and she sat ungracefully where she now rides as mistress.
Emerson quoted some German author to the same effect.
Mr. Clarke said there was something in one of R. W. E.’s own Essays which expressed the same thing.
Emerson laughed and said, “Very important authority,” and would have changed the subject, when—
William White said that it did not tally well with James Clarke’s theory that the ugly steamer had succeeded the beautiful clipper.
Mr. Clarke said the theory failed only because there was no noble end in view. The steamer was not intended to be in harmony with Nature.
Emerson asked if the Greeks had no symbol for natural beauty. Several were suggested that he would not accept, but he finally took Diana on Charles Wheeler’s suggestion.
Wheeler then spoke of the birth of Venus. He said many writers thought the story as late as that of Psyche, and the line of Hesiod relating to it an interpolation.
Margaret thought she should have suspected this if she had never heard it. The thought it expressed was too comprehensive to be in keeping with the remainder of her story.
Charles Wheeler would not accept the criticism, but went on to talk about the marriage of Venus with Mars, which had amazed Olympus.
Margaret said the Olympian Deities were like modern men, who talk to women forever about their softness and delicacy, until women imagine that the only good thing in man is a strong arm. The girl elopes with a red coat, and the indignant lords of creation wonder why she did not appreciate their modest merit and unobtrusive virtues. Poor Beauty weeps out the crimson stain upon her escutcheon in a long age of suffering.
A laugh followed this bright sally, and then somebody said that Venus once married Mercury.
Margaret declared that must be an interpolation, for there were no points of sympathy between the Goddess of beauty and the God of craft.
James Clarke did not know about that; he thought that the finish and completeness of the late robbery of Davis, Palmer, & Co. constituted a kind of beauty!
Margaret said that affair was altogether grand; she had never heard of anything so Greek as Williamson’s exclaiming, “Gentlemen! you will not deprive me of the implements of my trade?” She could not help respecting his impudence! The Greeks ought to be respected for developing every human faculty into deity. She thought lying, stealing, and so forth only excesses of a good faculty; and so did the Greeks, for in their mistaken way they had deified Mercury. The Spartans taught their children to steal, and the Greeks universally acknowledged that to cheat was honorable if it could be concealed.
I remembered the passage in the “Republic” where Polemarchus confesses that he had learned from Homer to admire Autolycus, grand sire of Ulysses, distinguished above all men for his thefts and oaths! Thrasymachus said that the unjust were both prudent and good, if they were able to commit injustice to perfection! Is the immortality of Autolycus the destiny of Williamson?
Wheeler said there certainly was a well authenticated marriage between Venus and Mercury.
I could not help thinking it might be an astral connection that was indicated. On that remarkable day of his birth, Mercury was not content with stealing the divining-rod from Apollo; he took also the cestus from Venus, the voice from Neptune, the sword from Mars, the will from Zeus, and his tools from Vulcan! Sagacity compassed all the deeps of divinity to reach its end.
Ida Russell asked if Venus and Astarte were not the same.
Margaret said Astarte belonged to the stars.
Did not Venus, I wonder? But of course they are creations far asunder as the poles.
Charles Wheeler thought Astarte and Venus Urania were the same.
Ida said that could not be. The first statues of Astarte were rough blocks of wood, with veiled heads.
So, I said, were all first statues of Deities; so that was no argument.
When James Clarke asked Margaret to compare Venus with the Madonna, a curious talk arose between Alcott, Margaret, Charles Wheeler, and Emerson.
Alcott wanted to know why Christ was not as much an impersonation of a human faculty as either of the Greek Deities!
Margaret said Jesus was not a thought. He was born on the earth, and lived out a thought. He was no abstraction to her, but a brother.
Alcott wanted to know whether a purer mythology, suited to the wants of coming time, might not arise from the mixed mythology of Persians, Greeks, and Christians!
A very confusing and tiresome talk arose thereupon, which Charles Wheeler smiled at, but did not join in, and which profited nobody.
CAROLINE WELLS HEALEY.
April 3, 1841.
VI.
CUPID AND PSYCHE.
April 9, 1841.
Margaret thought it would be very impertinent to begin by telling what everybody knew,—the old story of Cupid and Psyche.
E. P. P. declared that Margaret never told it twice alike, and at last she yielded and said:—
The beautiful young princess Psyche was envied by Venus, who sent Eros to destroy her; but the God, finding Psyche wholly lovely, wedded her. They lived happily until Psyche began to doubt. Eros had told her that she must not seek to know him; but curiosity prevailed over faith, and in looking at him as he slept she wounded and waked him. He left her in dismay; and as a punishment the three trials which are the lot of mortals were awarded to her. She must sort grain, she must bring three drops from the river Styx, and must get the box of beauty from Proserpine. The birds helped her with the grain; but when she reached the banks of the Styx and stooped to fulfil the second task, she found the water too dark, too cold, and the eagle came to her aid. At the prospect of the third trial her soul sank; she refused to undertake it; but, winning from one of the Gods the secret of self-dependence, she set off for Tartarus, gave the usual sop to Cerberus, and returned with her prize. But she was “possessed” with the idea that the treasures the box contained might restore to her her husband’s love, and she opened the box as she came. The noxious vapors which issued from it deprived her of consciousness, and she fell. Eros, who had flown to seek her as soon as his wound was healed, brought her the gift of Immortality which he had begged of Jupiter.
Elisabeth Hoar asked what had become of Psyche’s sisters, whose interference was a striking point in the story.
Margaret said she knew nothing of them, and wished Miss Hoar would tell us. Her own knowledge of the story was gained entirely from Raphael’s original studies, and his frescos on the walls of a Roman palace.
Elisabeth Hoar recapitulated. The parents of Psyche were ordered by the angry Venus to expose her upon a high mountain, when Zephyr carried her to the embraces of Love, who dwelt in the depths of a quiet valley hard by. Her sisters came to bewail her death, and Psyche begged Love to let Zephyr bring them to rejoice in her happiness. For some time he refused, telling her that it was not for her good, and that she could be happy without them. This our foolish Psyche would not believe, and at last they were permitted to come, only she must not tell them the little she knew about her husband.
The first time Psyche had sent them away loaded with gifts. They had questioned her about her husband, and Psyche replied that he was only a lovely child. The year went round, and again the lovely bride longed for her sisters’ presence. Again the God entreated her to be patient, assuring her that if they came it would only be to make her miserable. Psyche could not be quieted. Again they came, again they questioned. She forgot the story she had previously told, and replied that he was an old man, bent with years, but very kind to her. Then the envious women saw that Psyche was herself ignorant of his true nature. They told her that he was a dragon, and meant to devour her; that they had themselves seen him as he passed through the fields. They begged her to take a knife and lamp and kill him as he slept. The frightened Psyche consented.
The God was sleeping in radiant beauty at her side, and as she gazed upon him she drew an arrow from his quiver and carelessly scratched her finger. Impassioned by the wound, she bent over him, and a drop of scalding oil fell from her lamp. Angry and confused, the God awoke, and, irritated by the pain, flew away. Psyche clung to him; but she could not support herself, and he was too angry to hold her. She fell to the ground, and he, perched upon a neighboring tree, reproached her.
Margaret did not know this, but said she remembered that Psyche tried to drown herself.
Elisabeth said that was later. She despaired, and threw herself into the river; but the river pitied her, and bore her to the shore. Venus, growing tired of her guest, sent Mercury to advertise her. Psyche yielded to the terms of the Goddess, rendered herself up, and was busy sorting the gifts in the temple of Beauty when Custom was sent to berate her.
This, I suppose, is a condensation of the lovely allegory of Apuleius in the second century of our era, but it seems to me Elisabeth made some additions.
Margaret said that everybody had to contend with the meddlesome sisters. They were at the bottom of every fairy story, from that of Psyche to Beauty and the Beast.
Elisabeth Hoar said it was always with the young soul as it was with Psyche. It could give no account of the love which made it so happy.
So, I said, every human heart shrivels under a curious touch. Love is angry that we wound him, and if he ever does return it is with Immortality in his hand. When custom berates, God accepts.
James Clarke asked if there was not a celebrated statue of Cupid and Psyche.
Margaret had only heard of Canova’s, but James said he was sure there was one older.
William Story asked if it were older than Apuleius, but James did not know.
Ida Russell said it was wrong for Psyche to look.
Yes, Margaret said, but her temptations were strong; and if they had not come through her sisters, they must have come through her own soul. Everything was produced by antagonism. This morning she had taken up Kreitzer, meaning to open the Greek volume, but took up the Indian. In that Mythology which William Story called deep and all-embracing there were the antagonist principles of Vishnu, or unclouded innocence, and Brahm, who could only become pure by wading through all wickedness. There seemed to be a need of sin, to work out salvation for human beings.
Emerson said faith should work out that salvation. It was man’s privilege to resist the evil, to strive triumphantly; to recognise it—never! Good was always present to the soul,—was all the true soul took note of. It was a duty not to look!
Margaret thought it the climax of sin to despair. She believed evil to be a good in the grand scheme of things. She would not recognize it as a blunder. She must consider its scope a noble one. In one word, she would not accept the world—for she felt within herself the power to reject it—did she not believe evil working in it for good! Man had gained more than he lost by his fall. The ninety-nine sheep in the parable were of less value than the “lost found,” over which there was joy in heaven.
E. P. P. spoke of the Tree of Life,—which would have made immortal those who ate of the Tree of Knowledge.
Caroline Sturgis said that this probation was what she could not comprehend. We began at the circumference, and if we fulfilled our destiny must end by being near the centre. How much better to have begun there! Why could not God have made it so?
William Story began to say that God must seek the best good of all his creatures; but Caroline interrupted him by saying that there was certainly more good at the centre than at the circumference.
William White thought all this good, better, and best very puzzling.
Margaret asked Caroline if she could not see probation to be a good, as she had herself defined it?
Are we better then, than God? asked Caroline.
Not better, replied Margaret, for we cannot compare dissimilar things.
William White asked if any one could be more than good, more than pure.
William Story said perfection had its degrees!
White said, How can you progress after you have reached your goal?
As if any live man ever did reach his goal! said I.
Is there any progress for God? retorted he.
Not any, for that is a contradiction in terms, I said; but surely you conceive of it for souls in heaven?
Margaret said something about the Gospel injunction to be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Does not “even as” mean “after the pattern of”? Does it involve the nature, as well as the degree?
Emerson interrupted quickly, “We are not finite.”
Everybody smiled; but the best answer to this is found in the fact, that we never conceive of ourselves as infinite and at rest,—only as reaching after the Infinite in our motion.
White said to Caroline Sturgis, “If evil brings knowledge of good, is it not a gain?”
William Story talked nobly, something to this effect: That good and evil were related terms. If both did not exist, neither could, antagonism being the spring of most things in the universe.
Margaret went back to Cupid, and said that in Raphael’s original studies Cupid was always a boy,—in his frescos, a youth, almost a man. She spoke of the difference of expression which he gave to his Venus and his Psyche, especially in the eye. That of Psyche was deep and thoughtful. The distinction extended to their attendant Cupids, and was most marked in the Psyche when she takes the cup of Immortality from her husband.
Margaret wanted to pass on to Diana, but there were too many clergymen in the company. Everybody was interested in somebody nearer at hand, and views of the unchanging Providence were next presented.
Margaret said God was the background against which all creation was thrown.
William Story asked if she did not think He was greater than his creatures?
“Always beyond,” was Margaret’s reply.
Creation, Story said, was rather the exponent of a Love which must bless, than of an activity which must act. It was a Paternal power that ruled, not an autocratic power which fathered us.
Margaret said that the story of Cupid and Psyche was the story of redemption. It contained the seeds of the doctrine of election,—saving by grace, and so on!
A good many queer things were said on various points touched by this.
Emerson said, that to imagine it possible to fall was to begin to fall.
E. P. P. got into a little maze trying to introduce Margaret and R. W. E. to each other,—a consummation which, however devoutly to be wished, will never happen!
James Clarke told her that she was just where Paul was when he said, “What then? Shall I sin, that Grace may the more abound?”
Emerson said the woodlands could tell us most about Diana, about whom we contrived to say very little. The omission of orgies in her worship was dwelt upon. Her pure and sacred character with the Athenians was compared to that of the Diana of Ephesus, whose orgies were not unusual, and who was considered as a bountiful mother rather than as a virgin huntress.
Ida Russell said that her Mythology accused Diana of being the mother of fifty sons and fifty daughters!
Margaret laughed, and said that certainly was Diana of Ephesus!
The maddening influence of moonlight was commented upon, as if it were a fable; but William Story said it was a fact. In tropical regions very sad consequences resulted from long gazing on the moonlight or sleeping in it. In one town he had known sixteen persons bewildered in this way.
William White said that in a late book of Nichols it was contended that the moon had some light of her own, because she shows a brazen color even under eclipse, when the dark side of the earth is toward her. But why may she not gather stellar light from the whole universe, as the earth seems to?
Sallie Gardiner said something to William Story in a low voice. He laughed, and said he had been thinking of the consequences of his theory.
Margaret asked what he was talking about.
Story said it was an application of eclipses to his theory that love was the motive to creation. If the sun is beneficent truth shorn of its beams, it would be like the moon, no better than brass!
Caroline Sturgis asked why the Mahomedans bore the crescent.
William White said because of some change in the moon which occurred at the time of the Hegira.
William Story said that the worshippers at Mecca carried the crescent before Mahomet’s time. There is a crescent on the black stone.
Both stories may be true. There is certainly a crescent on the old Byzantine coin, or besant.
Ida Russell said something about Diana being wedded.
This reminded E. P. P. of Minerva’s marriage, discussed last week. She said that Charles Wheeler had seen the gem of which she then spoke, and that Neptune was the favored suitor.
William Story said the Greeks could not wed Neptune to Diana, for the tides were too low in the Mediterranean!
C. W. HEALEY.
April 10, 1841.
VII.
PLUTO AND TARTARUS.
April 15, 1841.
Margaret said very little about Pluto. On the first evening she had called him the depth of things, and James Clarke now had a good deal to say upon the three ideas which she thought pervaded the Greek mythology,—the source, the depth, and the extent or flow of thought. He said that this distinction had struck him very forcibly when Margaret first mentioned it. We speak of widely diffused thought, of aspiring and profound thought; of sympathetic, exalted, or deep feeling,—and this seemed to exhaust language. It was through the depths of feeling and experience that we came to the profound of thought.
E. P. P. said, “There is no genius in happiness.” Not a very intelligible statement.
Margaret said, “There is nothing worth knowing that has not some penalty attached to it. We pay it the more willingly in proportion as we grow wise. Depth, altitude, diffusion, are the three births of Time. It is this which makes the German cover the operations of the miner with a mystic veil. Bostonians laugh at the Germans because they think.”
Wheeler liked what Mr. Clarke said, and added that there was meaning in the Irish phrase, “Lower me up.”
Margaret said that all the punishments of Tartarus expressed baffled effort, the penalty least endurable to the active Greek.
Mr. Mack thought it singular that in every nation where the belief in Tartarus had prevailed, an exact locality had always been assigned to it.
William White said that, so long as anybody could point out the locality of the garden of Eden, we had no need to smile at the locality of a Tartarus or an Elysium.
I do not think these “myths” belong to the same class.
Charles Wheeler quoted Champollion to the effect that the Styx was only a small river flowing between the Temple at Thebes and a neighboring “place of tombs.” The ferryman was named Charon, and the Egyptian habit of judging the dead probably gave rise to the rest of the fable.
Margaret said, “This was very natural.” She asked Mr. Wheeler the meaning of certain names.
Phlegethon, he answered, meant burning fire; Acheron, anguish.
Why did not somebody say that the lifeless current of the Styx first tempted Homer to give it to the Infernals? It is in reality a river of Epeiros.
The Styx, Wheeler said, was a cold unhealthy stream, like that which caused the death of Alexander. It flowed slowly through Acadia, but was supposed to take its rise in Hades. Lethe is a river near the Syrtus in Africa. It disappears in the sand, but rises again. Hence its name.
Mr. Wheeler had some difficulty in explaining certain inconsistencies in the poets.
Mr. Clarke quoted the remark of Achilles (?) concerning Elysium,—that a day of hard labor on earth was preferable to an eternity of pleasure in Elysian fields!
Margaret said that in Elysium, as in Tartarus, souls waited. These restless Greeks could do nothing. They were cut off from action, which was their delight. All their punishments seem to consist of frustrated effort,—the consequence of some presumption. Tantalus was ever thirsty and ever famished because he had aspired to nectar and ambrosia. Ixion, who would have scaled the heavens, was condemned to incessant revolution upon a wheel, which never paused yet never accomplished anything. The Danaides, who murdered the love which wooed them, were doomed to fill a broken vessel with water which as constantly escaped. Sisyphus, who had never labored except for a selfish end, was to roll a stone up hill, which as constantly rolled down,—fit emblem of all selfish labor. As for Tityrus, who sought to violate the secrets of Nature, the vulture fed always upon his entrails.
Wheeler said this did not represent frustrated effort.
Margaret said, No: this was remorse; but there was an admirable instance of the former given by Goethe, of a man who wove rope from the sedges which grew upon the banks of Lethe, for an ass who continually devoured it. The moral seemed to be that the ass could just as well have eaten them unwoven. Goethe goes on to say that the Greeks only thought that the poor man had a prodigal wife, but that the moderns would look deeper and see more in the fable.
We all weave sedges for asses to eat, thought I.
Margaret seemed to think that every heart might have an experience which would correspond to Tartarus. Every hero must visit it at least once.
I suggested Pluto, Persephone, the Fates, the Gorgons, the Furies, and Cerberus. Pluto was equal to Neptune and Jupiter.
Margaret continued: Hades was not given to Pluto to mark defective character, but simply as his kingdom. His wants were all supplied. The bride Olympus refused him he was permitted to steal from earth while she gathered flowers. Persephone, seed of all things, must dwell in the dark; but another legend tells us that if she had been willing to leave her veil, she might have stolen away. There was a meaning in her being forbidden to eat in the infernal regions. Fate said, “Do not touch what you don’t want.” Psyche was forbidden to partake of the regal banquet Persephone spread. Seeking for Immortality, this soul, like every other, must be content to eat bitter bread.
There was then a talk about Cerberus and the Gorgons.
Mr. Clarke said that in the New Testament the dog seemed to stand for popular prejudice. The swine stood for what could not, the dog for what would not, be convinced.
Yes, Margaret said, the wolf is a misanthropic dog. He has little dignity.
Ida Russell said Cerberus stood for the temperaments.
Well, Margaret said, that being so, she liked the Greeks for making no allowance for the lymphatic. To what, she continued, do we offer the first sop, as we pass through life? As for the Gorgons, every one, she thought, would find his own interpretation of them. To her there was no Gorgon but apathy; there is nothing in creation that will so soon turn a live man into stone. These Gorgons were three women, who used one eye and one tooth between them,—except Medusa, who was beautiful and perfect. Her hair had provoked the envy of Minerva, and was changed into serpents. Margaret had a copy of a gem, which Marion Dwight had made for her, which showed this.
E. P. P. asked if Perseus did not endeavor to show Medusa her own head.
Margaret said that might well rouse her!
Charles Wheeler explained. Perseus only used a mirror given him by Minerva to avoid looking at the Gorgon.
Caroline Sturgis said that the old woman who keeps house for Helen in the second part of “Faust” was a Gorgon to her.
This dragged a critical analysis of the “Faust” forward.
Margaret said the Seeker represents the Spirit of the Age. He never sinned save by yielding, and yet he was emphatically saved by grace. It was difficult to see what Goethe meant until he got to the Tower of the Middle Ages. That made all clear.
Charles Wheeler said, the reader would a great deal rather that Faust went to the Devil than not!
Margaret defended Goethe’s way of exhibiting character, of which Wilhelm Meister was an instance. Goethe said to himself, What should I do with a hero in such rascally society? Meister preferred the Brahmal experience.
E. P. P. asked if this moral indifference was well?
Margaret replied, that it was just as frightful as any other Gorgon. If we are to have a purely intellectual development, it was well for a man like Goethe to represent it. To choose fairly between evil and good, the intellect must regard both with indifference.
Somebody asked how the Gorgon’s head came to be on the Ægis of Minerva?
If Apathy is the Gorgon, surely Wisdom needs it!
Then we began to talk about Theseus in connection with Tartarus. Why should he sit forever on a stone?
Margaret thought he represented reform!
Mr. Mack said reform checked itself by its own fanaticism.
Wheeler, in this connection, asked after the Greek notion of accountability.
Margaret did not think the Greeks had any.
Wheeler assured her to the contrary, and told anecdotes to prove it. He spoke of the fatal transmission of guilt in one family, generation after generation.
Margaret said the Greeks never rejected facts.
Ida Russell spoke of the last King of Athens, Codrus, supposed to have been punished for the crimes of his ancestors.
Wheeler said that when the Greeks killed some ambassadors, they felt so sure that Heaven would avenge the sin that they sent two citizens to expiate it; but Darius, to whom they were sent, refused to release the Greeks from their impending doom.
Margaret said the moment such a supposition was started, there were plenty of facts to sustain it. Orestes is the purified victim of his family. The old Greeks had made no complete statement of their destiny or their accountability.
E. P. P. said they had made it in art.
C. W. HEALEY.
April 16, 1841.
VIII.
MERCURY AND ORPHEUS.
April 22, 1841.
Margaret said it surprised her that young men did not seek to be Mercuries. She said that one of the ugliest young men that she knew had become so enraptured with one of Raphael’s Mercuries, that he confessed to her that he was never alone without trying to assume its attitude before the glass. She said she could not help laughing at the image he suggested, an ugly figure in high-heeled boots and a strait-coat in the act of flying, commissioned with every grace from Heaven to men! but she respected the feeling, and thought every sensitive soul must share it.
Emerson had sent Sophia Peabody several fine engravings. One of these, a Correggio, represented a woman of Parma as a Madonna. It might give any woman a similar desire.
William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida Russell, and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing to-night.
Margaret said that she was sorry she had allowed our subject to embrace so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed to mean so little that she had not thought of the depth and difficulty connected with the Egyptian Hermes. Among the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno represent the productive faculties, Jupiter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury simply the human understanding, the God of eloquence and of thieves.
Marianne Jackson thought it strange that he should be at once the God of persuasion and the Deity of theft!
Margaret said eloquence was a kind of thieving!
Did the Greeks so consider it? asked Marianne.
Margaret said, Yes, more than any nation in the world, and taught their children so to do; and in fact such mental recognitions were what distinguished the nation from all other peoples.
The Egyptian Hermes represented the whole intellectual progress of man. If one made a discovery it was signed Hermes, and under that name transmitted to posterity. Hence the forty volumes of Hermetic theology, philosophy, and so on. Individuals were merged in the God. Hermes was always the mediator, the peacemaker, and it was in this relation that the beautiful story was told of the caduceus. Mercury has originally only the divining-rod which Apollo had given him, but, finding two serpents fighting one day, he pacified them, and had ever after the right to bear them embracing on his rod. There was another story, Margaret said, which she could not understand,—the story of his obtaining the head of the Ibis from Osiris. Hermes kept the first or outside gates of Heaven, a significant fact typically considered.
I am sure there is something in Heeren’s researches about the Ibis story, but Caroline Sturgis said, No.
William White asked if the God gave the name to the planet?
Margaret said, Yes; and it was given because it stood nearest the sun.
E. P. P. said Plutarch had written something about Hermes in his “Morals.”
Margaret said, Perhaps so, but she didn’t know, as she never could read them. Plutarch went round and round a story; presented all the corners of it, told all the pretty bits of gossip he could find, instead of penetrating to its secret. So she preferred his anecdotes of Heroes to his Parallels or Essays.
I said, in surprise, how much I liked the “Morals.”
“Yes,” Margaret said, “even Emerson paid the book the high compliment of calling it his tuning-key, when he was about to write.”
E. P. P. said Coleridge was her own tuning-key, and asked Margaret if she had no such friendly instigator.
Margaret said she could keep up no intimacy with books. She loved a book dearly for a while; but as soon as she began to look out a nice Morocco cover for her favorite, she was sure to take a disgust to it, to outgrow it. She did not mean that she outgrew the author, but that, having received all from him that he could give her, he tired her. That had even been the case with Shakespeare! For several years he was her very life; then she gave him up. About two years ago she had occasion to look into “Hamlet,” and then wished to refresh her love, but found it impossible. It was the same with Ovid, whose luxuriant fancy had delighted her girlhood. She took him up, and read a little with all her youthful glow; but it would not last. Friends must part, but why need we part from our books? She regretted her oddity, for she lost a great solace by it.
She proceeded to contrast the Apollo with Mercury. In Egypt, Hermes was the experimental Deity, the Brahma.
Caroline Sturgis asked what the Hermes on the door-posts of the Athenian houses meant.
Margaret thought that he posed there as a messenger, an opener of the gates merely, and then spoke of several Mercuries by Raphael. One she knew, so full of beauty and grace that it seemed a single trumpet-tone. Another all loveliness was handing the cup of life to Psyche. She wondered that such symbols as Apollo and Mercury did not inspire all young men with ardor, and make them something better than young men usually are.
William White said Apollo was too far beyond the average man to do this; but that Mercury, graceful and vivacious, would naturally attract the attention.
Margaret asked if he would be an easier model to imitate, and then repeated her anecdote about the ugly youth who longed to be a Mercury.
William said that if his faith had been strong enough, the transformation might have taken place.
Query—what is meant by strong enough?
Margaret spoke of the Egyptian Osiris in his relation to Hermes, and said that she did not like him to be confounded with the Apollo. He was in reality the Egyptian Jove.
This led me to speak of the Orphic Hymn in which Apollo is addressed as “immortal Jove.”
Margaret said she had discovered very little about Orpheus. In relation to the five points of Orphic theology, she had lately read a posthumous leaf from Goethe’s Journal. The existence of a Dæmon seemed to be a favorite idea of his. He did not believe with Emerson that all things were in our own souls, but that they existed in the original souls, (does anybody know what that means?) and we must go out to seek them. This notion Goethe thought verified by his own experience. Goethe’s works, Margaret thought, had more variety than anybody’s except Shakespeare’s. His powers of observation seemed to condense his genius.
William White wondered why Goethe showed such tenderness for Byron.
Margaret said that in every important sense Byron was his very opposite; but Goethe hardly looked upon him as a responsible being. He was rather the instrument of a higher power. He was the exponent of his period.
Sophia Peabody had been making a drawing of Crawford’s Orpheus at the Athenæum. It was here brought down for me to see.
At Sophia’s request, Margaret repeated a sonnet she had written on it. She recited it wretchedly, but the sonnet was pleasant.
I spoke of Bode’s Essay on the Orphic Poetry, and sympathized in his view of the spuriousness of the Hymns. They might have been signed Orpheus, however, as other things were signed Hermes, simply because they were exponents of Orphic thought.
Margaret dilated on this Orphic thought.
I quoted Proclus in his Commentary on Plato’s “Republic” as follows:—
“Mars perpetually discerns and nourishes, and constantly excites the contrarieties of the Universe, that the world may exist perfect and entire in all its parts; but requires the assistance of Venus, that he may bring order and harmony into things contrary and discordant.
“Vulcan adorns by his art the sensible universe, which he fills with certain natural impulses, powers, and proportions; but he requires the assistance of Venus, that he may invest material effects with beauty, and by this means secure the comeliness of the world. Venus is the source of all the harmony and analogy in the Universe, and of the union of form with matter, connecting and comprehending the powers of the elements. Although this Goddess ranks among the supermundane divinities, yet her principal employment consists in beautifully illuminating the order, harmony, and communion of all mundane concerns.”
I asked Margaret if this was not something like her own thought,—this Venus, for example, was it not better than that we got from Greek art?
She said it was the primal idea, but she did not attach much importance to chronology. Philosophy must decide the age of a thought.
I gave her as good an abstract of Bode’s theory as I could.
William White took the drawing of Orpheus from me, and, while speaking of its beauty, said it always made him angry to think of the deterioration of the human figure. He thought it ought to have been prevented, and that his ancestors had deprived him of his rights.
Upon this, Margaret entered into a lively disquisition upon masculine beauty. She said the best specimens of it she had ever seen were a Southern oddity named Hutchinson and some Cambridge students who came from Virginia.
We lost a finer talk to-night through the inclemency of the weather. Wheeler was to have come with a great stock of information. Had he done so, I need not have quoted Bode or Proclus.
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
April 23, 1841.
IX.
HERMES AND ORPHEUS.
April 29, 1841.
We did not have a very bright talk. There were few present, and we had only the subject of last week. Margaret did not speak at length. Wheeler had been ill, and his physician prescribed light diet of both body and mind.
Somebody spoke of Mercury sweeping the courts of the Gods, but that suggested nothing to Margaret.
Sarah Shaw had a pin, with a Mercury on it, represented as holding the head of a goat.
Margaret had never seen anything that would explain it, and there was some dispute about it.
E. P. P. said that, according to the Orphic Hymn, Mercury sought the love of Dryope under the form of a goat. Pan was the fruit of that amour. In this form also he wooed Diana.
We wandered from our subject a little, to hear Mr. Mack talk about the Gorgons. He thought they stood for the three sides of human nature. Medusa, the chief care-taker, the body, was the only one not immortal, and the only one beautiful. Stheno and Euryale, wide-extended force and wide-extended scope, represented spirit and intellect, essentially immortal. The changing of Medusa’s curls (or elements of strength) into serpents represented the fall. It was not the Gorgons who had but one eye and one tooth between them, but three sister guardians, whom Perseus was compelled to destroy before he could reach Medusa.
Mr. Mack did not tell us why human nature so divided had a certain petrifying power!
E. P. P. thought the intellect, not the body, was the care-taker. Mr. Mack tried in vain to explain, owing, I think, to his German misconception of words. Certainly the five senses are the providers, which was what he must have meant.
Margaret liked his theory, because there was a place in it for sin! She disliked failure. Perhaps we all had perceived her attachment to evil! Not that she wished men to fall into it, but it must be accepted as one means of final good.
The only copies of Bode belong to Edward Everett and Theodore Parker. Neither is at this moment to be had. The talk turned on the age of the Orphic idea.
The Orphic Hymns, Wheeler said, were merely hymns of initiation into the Orphic mysteries. They were altered by every successive priesthood, and finally by the Christian Platonists. Those now remaining were undoubtedly their work. Perhaps the ancient formulas were still hidden in them. We know the beautiful story of Orpheus. If he indeed represents many, yet all that has been said of him is also true of one.
Mr. Mack declared that Eurydice represented the true faith! She was killed by an envenomed serpent, which might possibly stand for an enraged priesthood!
I got a little impatient here, and said I did not care to know about the Hymns; but the Orphic idea, which made Scaliger speak of the Hymns as the “Liturgy of Satan,”—how old was that?
Margaret could not guess why he called them so.
Charles Wheeler said that, since they made a heathen worship attractive, perhaps he fancied them a device of the Evil One!
Too great a compliment to Scaliger, I thought.
Margaret had no objection to Orpheus as crowning an age; she liked that multitudes should produce one.
Charles Wheeler said that Carlyle had spoken of Orpheus as standing in such a relation to the Greeks as Odin bore to the Scandinavians.
Margaret said at this point (I don’t see with what pertinency) that Carlyle displeased her by making so much of mere men.
James Clarke quoted Milton, speaking of himself among the revellers of the Stuart Court, as like Orpheus among the Bacchanals.
I said that Bode placed Homer in the tenth century before Christ, and Orpheus in the age just preceding, say the thirteenth century before.
Mr. Mack thought all that mere conjecture.
I told him it made a good deal of difference to me whether the Orphic Mythology came before or after that of Homer. Had man grown out of the noble and into the base idea? Was all our knowledge only memory? Had the Orphic fancies no beauty till the Platonic Christians shaped them?
Margaret responded to what I said, that she did not like a mind always looking back.
E. P. P. said there was a great deal of consolation in it. Memory was prophecy. She didn’t like such a mind, but since she happened to have it she wanted support for it.
Mr. Mack said all history offered such support.
Charles Wheeler didn’t like to believe it, but felt that he must. He spoke of the Golden Age.
Margaret said every nation looked back to this; but, after all, it was only the ideal. The past was a curtain on which they embroidered their pictures of the present.
William White said that all great men looked to the appreciation of the future. We are too near to the present.
Margaret agreed.
E. P. P. said, all the science of Europe could not offer anything like the old Egyptian lore.
Margaret said the moderns needed the assistance of a despotic government.
Charles Wheeler spoke of the monuments in Central America; but before he could utter what was in his mind, Margaret interrupted, saying that all the greatness of the Mexicans only sufficed to show their littleness. We might have lost in grandeur and piety, but we had gained in a thousand tag-rag ways.
Mrs. Farrar whispered to me, “Write that down!” and I have done it.
Charles Wheeler said that late discoveries proved that there was a complete knowledge of electricity among the ancients. There were lightning-rods on the temple at Jerusalem, and they are described by Josephus, who however does not know what they are.
Margaret and I clung to the “tag-rag” gain.
Charles Wheeler agreed with me in thinking the Orphic Hymns of very late origin.
Margaret could not see the use of creating a race of giants to prepare the earth for pygmies! If these must exist, why not in some other sphere? She referred to the beautiful Persian fable. The first was God, of course; since man may always revert to Him, what matter about the giants?
I said that primitive ages were supposed to be innocent rather than great.
Margaret said the Persian fable bore to the same point as the Vishnu and Brahma. It was antagonism that produced all things. The universe at first was one Conscious Being,—“I am;” no word, no darkness, no light. This Conscious Being needed to know itself, and it passed into darkness and light and a third being,—the Mediator between the two. This Trinity produced ideals,—men, animals, things; and after a period of twelve thousand years all return again into the One, who has gained by the phenomena only a multiplied consciousness.
“Were they merged?” asked Charles Wheeler.
Margaret said, “No! once created, they could not lose identity.”
C. W. HEALEY.
April 30, 1841.
X.
BACCHUS AND THE DEMIGODS.
May 6, 1841.
Few present. Our last talk, and we were all dull. For my part, Bacchus does not inspire me, and I was sad because it was the last time that I should see Margaret. She does not love me; I could not venture to follow her into her own home, and I love her so much! Her life hangs on a thread. Her face is full of the marks of pain. Young as I am, I feel old when I look at her.
Margaret spoke of Hercules as representing the course of the solar year. The three apples were the three seasons of four months each into which the ancients divided it. The twelve labors were the twelve signs.
E. P. P. accepted this, and spoke of Bryant’s book, which Margaret did not like.
Margaret said Bryant forced every fact to be a point in a case. Bending each to his theory, he falsified it. She wished English people would be content, like the wiser Germans, to amass classified facts on which original minds could act. She liked to see the Germans so content to throw their gifts upon the pile to go down to posterity, though the pile might carry no record of the collectors. She spoke of Kreitzer, whose book she was now reading, who coolly told his readers that he should not classify a second edition afresh, for his French translator had done it well enough, and if readers were not satisfied with his own work, they must have recourse to the translation. This she thought was as it ought to be.
James Clarke said it always vexed him to hear ignorant people speak of Hercules as if he were a God, and of Apollo and Jupiter as if they might at some time have been men.
Margaret said, Yes, the distinction between Gods and Demigods was that the former were the creations of pure spontaneity, and the latter actually existent personages, about whose heroic characters and lives all congenial stories clustered.
J. F. C. did not like the statues of Hercules; the brawny figure was not to his taste.
Margaret thought it majestic. She said he belonged properly to Thessaly, and was identified with its scenery. She told several little stories about him. That of his sailing round the rock of Prometheus, in a golden cup borrowed of Jupiter, was the least known. She told the story from Ovid, the glowing account of his death, of the recognition by delighted Jove. She said Wordsworth’s “Tour in Greece” gave her great materials for thought.
Then she turned to Bacchus.
To show in what manner she supposed Bacchus to be the answer or complement to Apollo, she mentioned the statement of some late critic upon the relation of Ceres and Persephone to each other.
Persephone was the hidden energy, the vestal fire, vivifying the universe. Ceres was the productive faculty, external, bounteous. They were two phases of one thing. It was the same with Apollo and Bacchus. Apollo was the vivifying power of the sun; its genial glow stirred the earth, and its noblest product, the grape, responded.
She spoke of the Bacchanalian festivals, of the spiritual character attributed to them by Euripides, showing that originally they were something more than gross orgies.
Mrs. Clarke (Ann Wilby) said that they licensed the wildest drunkenness in Athens.
I said that was at a later time than Euripides undertook to picture. Were they identical with the Orphic? Did Orpheus really bring them from Egypt?
Margaret would accept that for a beginning.
E. P. P. thought that next winter we might have a talk about Roman Mythology.
Margaret liked the idea, and James Clarke seemed to accept it for the whole party. He said that he had never felt any interest in the Greek stories, until Margaret had made them the subject of conversation.
E. P. P. said she had felt excessively ashamed all through that she knew so little.
Margaret said no one need to feel so. It was a subject that might exhaust any preparation. Still, she wished we would study! She had herself enjoyed great advantages. Nobody’s explanations had ever perplexed her brain. She had been placed in a garden, with a great pile of books before her. She began to read Latin before she read English. For a time these deities were real to her, and she prayed: “O God! if thou art Jupiter!” etc.
James Clarke said he remembered her once telling him that she prayed to Bacchus for a bunch of grapes!
Margaret smiled, and said that when she was first old enough to think about Christianity, she cried out for her dear old Greek gods. Its spirituality seemed nakedness. She could not and would not receive it. It was a long while before she saw its deeper meaning.
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
May 7, 1841.