LANDOR’S “ALFIERI AND SALOMON”

There is only one Jew in Landor’s long series of Imaginary Conversations, and he was, most probably, an invention of the author’s. “Salomon the Florentine Jew,” who discourses in Landor’s pages with Count Vittorio Alfieri, never existed; at all events he is not identifiable. There is no mention of such a person in Alfieri’s autobiography; so Landor’s editor—Mr. C. G. Crump—is careful to point out. Still, Landor (1775-1864) spent several years in Florence, and it is possible that he heard of some Jewish worthy whom he used for the purpose of his dialogue.

Landor treats his solitary Jewish character with courtesy. “You are the only man in Florence with whom I would willingly exchange a salutation,” says Alfieri at the opening of the conversation. Salomon expresses himself as highly flattered. The actual dialogue is not one of Landor’s best, unless it be for its recognition of the sterling quality of the English middle-class. “It is among those who stand between the peerage and the people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than in the rest of Europe.” The historical Alfieri found himself out of sympathy both with kings and with the French Revolution which destroyed kingship. It was a happy touch of Landor’s, therefore, to put into Alfieri’s mouth the praise of the class which stood between royalty and the masses.

But Alfieri and Salomon is hardly a successful work of art. It has neither the romantic beauty of Landor’s Aesop and Rhodope, nor the dramatic interest of his Hannibal and Marcellus. Naturally, however, it has some good epigrams. “A poet can never be an atheist,” says Landor’s Alfieri. He calls on God to confound the fools who always eulogize the least praiseworthy of princes because, he complains, “the rascals have ruined my physiognomy; I wear an habitual sneer upon my face.” How many a genius has been made similarly disagreeable because he could not suffer fools gladly! Very true again is Alfieri’s paradox that the gravest people are the wittiest. “Few men have been graver than Pascal, few have been wittier.” Had Landor’s Florentine Salomon been a real Jew, he could have capped Alfieri’s citation of Pascal by referring to many a Jewish instance, among them Abraham Ibn Ezra. On the contrary, Salomon disputes the truth of Alfieri’s statement. Landor is fond of national generalizations. “Not a single man of genius hath ever appeared in the whole extent of Austria,” he makes Salomon say; while Alfieri asserts that “the Spaniards have no palate, the Italians no scent, the French no ear.” Fortunately it did not occur to Landor to sum up the Jews in an epigram. He retained, however, the eighteenth century tolerance, and might have been lenient. The only thing he thoroughly detested was priest-craft, fanaticism. His Salomon confesses that “theology is without attraction” for him, and the saying came from Landor’s heart.

There is not much of the Jew in Salomon. He might have been any cultured contemporary of Alfieri. At one point, however, he refuses to hazard a word as to certain clerics, while Alfieri freely judges and condemns them. “The people who would laugh with you, would stone me,” says Salomon. Was this really true of the end of the eighteenth century in Italy? I doubt it. Landor is no true guide to the opinions of his age. To continue. Landor’s Salomon speaks of Florence as his native city; he knows it and its extraordinary story in every detail; he discusses its men of genius, though he admits: “My ignorance of Greek forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer.” Salomon is through and through Italian. Perhaps Landor meant to depict him as a Jew by putting into his mouth a good anecdote:

A sailor found upon the shore a piece of amber; he carried it home, and, as he was fond of fiddling, began to rub it across the strings of his violin. It would not answer. He then broke some pieces off, boiled them in blacking, and found to his surprise and disquiet that it gave no fresh lustre to the shoe-leather. ‘What are you about?’ cried a messmate. ‘Smell it, man; it is amber.’ ‘The devil take it,’ cried the finder, ‘I fancied it was resin’; and he threw it into the sea. We despise what we cannot use.

There is one touch in Alfieri and Salomon which makes it look as though the latter were a real personage. Salomon urges Alfieri to ignore his detractors and inferiors, and to be assured that, though his contemporaries might belittle him, posterity would be more appreciative.

Salomon: All the present race of them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation, will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or beating their bosoms at your Bruto Primo....

Alfieri: I believe, sir, you were the first in commending my tragedies.

Salomon: He who first praises a good book becomingly is next in merit to the author.

That sentence, “you were the first in commending my tragedies,” has a genuine ring, it is life-like. Had Landor any real ground for believing that a certain Florentine Jew named Salomon or Solomon was the first to recognize Alfieri’s genius for tragedy? It is an interesting fact, if it be a fact. Even so, it has its curious side. Alfieri (1749-1803) was a prolific writer of plays, but the best of his tragedies—and his tragedies as a whole were superior to his comedies—was not his Brutus. It is queer that the Jew should forget which was the best. It was certainly Alfieri’s Saul, published in October, 1784. It won more success than any other of his dramas. His “severe and unadorned manner” was peculiarly adapted to the rugged simplicity of the characters which are presented in Saul. The drama deals with the last day of the king, the scene being laid in the Israelite camp on mount Gilboa. There are only six characters: Saul, Gionata (Jonathan), David, Micol, Abner, Achimelech, with stage armies of “soldati israeliti” and “soldati filistei.” Apart from the subtle contrasts between David the warrior and David the minstrel, the finest thing in the play is the management of Saul’s insanity. Indeed, it has been truly said of Alfieri: “In the representation of that species of mental alienation, where the judgment has perished but traces of character still remain, he is peculiarly happy.”

Another poet who was in Florence with Landor also chose the subject of Saul for one of his most dramatic efforts. I refer to Robert Browning, who had intellectually much in common with Landor, though his temperament and philosophy of life were quite other. Landor ignored Alfieri’s Saul, Browning imitated it. Earlier, in 1820, Joseph Ephrathi, no doubt instigated by Alfieri’s success, produced a Hebrew drama with Saul as hero. Gutzkow later on wrote a tragedy on the subject. Another who treated of the topic was Byron. He had no likeness to Landor, but was not dissimilar to Alfieri; both were aristocrats, both pretended to cynicism, both were versatile authors, both squanderers of a great opportunity. It is strange that it was left to Alfieri to detect the dramatic possibilities in the tragedy of Saul. Handel’s exploitation of the theme was, naturally, musical rather than dramatic. In the new freedom of the English stage we shall, no doubt, soon have plays and to spare on the subject. Landor, as we have seen, makes no use whatever of biblical personages for his dialogues. But English poetry has not done ill with Saul’s memory. Sir Philip Sydney, or one of his age, gave us as beautiful a rendering as we need wish of David’s elegy over Saul and Jonathan. What could be more lovely than

Pleasant they were in life, and fair,
Nor yet did death their love divide.

or than

Ah! Jonathan, my brother! lorn
And friendless I must look to be!—
That heart whose woe thou oft hast borne
Is sore and stricken now for thee!
Young bridegroom’s love on bridal morn,
Oh! it was light to thine for me;
Thy timeless lot I now must plain,
Even on thine own high places slain!
How lowly now the mighty are,
How still the weapons of the war!

We have got rather far from Landor. Yet I cannot but think that the best thought suggested by his Alfieri and Salomon is just Alfieri’s Saul, to which the parties to the “imaginary conversation” make no allusion.

PART V

Part V
BROWNING’S “BEN KARSHOOK”

Two great literary forces, poets both yet both greater in what they said than in how they said it, expressed their most intimate beliefs on life and destiny under the guise of a Jewish personation. Nathan the Wise, the hero of Lessing’s drama, was Lessing, just as Rabbi Ben Ezra, the supposititious soliloquist of Browning’s poem, was Browning. Lessing, it is certain, had a living model in Moses Mendelssohn. Nathan was drawn from his friend. Had Browning any such model? Yes and no. Many a writer since Furnivall has identified the hero of Browning’s poem with Abraham Ibn Ezra. It is probable that the poet had him vaguely in mind. When, however, it is sought—as several have done—to work out the identity in detail, the effort fails. The poet clearly meant to prevent any such error. For in Holy-Cross Day, he introduces a Rabbi Ben Ezra as singing a “Song of Death” quite different in tone from the poem in which Rabbi Ben Ezra unfolds his scheme of life. Browning obviously meant us to infer that Ben Ezra was no one in particular.

Browning’s Hebrew knowledge was probably good; like his wife he was apparently able to read the Bible in the original. He also had dipped into curious, out of the way books on Jewish lore. The Rev. Michael Adler cleverly detected that he owed some of the astonishing Hebrew words in his Jocoseria to a little read edition of the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. Very bad Hebrew it is, but its author was not Browning but Baratier (see Jewish Chronicle, April 25, 1890). On the other hand, Dr. Joseph Jacobs records in the Jewish Quarterly Review for April, 1890, an incident which shows that the poet was “shaky” in his use of Hebrew names. One of Browning’s most important “Jewish” poems was his Johanan Hakkadosh, Johanan the Holy. Dr. Jacobs tells us that the author was about to call this worthy “Hakkadosh Johanan.” But “through a common friend I pointed out the error to the poet, and the adjective was put in its proper position.” Another misconception of epithets will be noted below.

Similarly with the poem entitled Ben Karshook’s Wisdom. Who was “Ben Karshook”? I doubt whether the writer could have told. In the Tauchnitz copy of 1872, as well as in the English edition of 1889, as Mrs. Sutherland Orr points out, the name is spelt “Karshish.” Ben Karshook, seems a mere jumble of Ben Hyrkanos. But either way, there was no Rabbi of the name. Elsewhere, Browning employs the name Karshish to designate an Arabian physician. It was one of Browning’s foibles, to quote Dr. Jacobs again, to give an impression of recondite learning. Ben Karshook would seem to have been the poet’s first attempt at a Jewish, as distinct from a biblical subject. Holy-Cross Day was the first to be published; it appeared in 1855. Rabbi Ben Ezra came in 1864, Filippo Baldinucci in 1876, Johanan Hakkadosh (with other Jewish poems) in 1883. This list is not a complete summary, but (if one adds Abt Vogler) it includes the most important. Ben Karshook’s Wisdom was not published until a year later than Holy-Cross Day, for it was printed in the Keepsake for 1856. But it was written on April 27, 1854 (according to the statement of Berdoe). Browning himself omitted the poem, apparently by accident, from one of his own volumes, where it is included in the table of contents but not in the book. He never reprinted it. The result has been that it has often been reproduced by others for that very reason; and now, though it has been given a place in the Oxford Browning, let it be printed again!