Here is the glorious privilege of a form known only in the world of genius. There is on it no stain of usage or calculation to dull our sense of its immeasurable life. What in our daily walk, mid common faces and common places, fleets across us at moments from glances of the eye, or tones of the voice, is felt from the whole being of one of these children of genius.
This precious gem is set in a ring complete in its enamel. I cannot hope to express my sense of the beauty of this book as a work of art. I would not attempt it if I had elsewhere met any testimony to the same. The perfect picture, always before the mind, of the chateau, the moss hut, the park, the garden, the lake, with its boat and the landing beneath the platan trees; the gradual manner in which both localities and persons grow upon us, more living than life, inasmuch as we are, unconsciously, kept at our best temperature by the atmosphere of genius, and thereby more delicate in our perceptions than amid our customary fogs; the gentle unfolding of the central thought, as a flower in the morning sun; then the conclusion, rising like a cloud, first soft and white, but darkening as it comes, till with a sudden wind it bursts above our heads; the ease with which we every where find points of view all different, yet all bearing on the same circle, for, though we feel every hour new worlds, still before our eye lie the same objects, new, yet the same, unchangeable, yet always changing their aspects as we proceed, till at last we find we ourselves have traversed the circle, and know all we overlooked at first,—these things are worthy of our highest admiration.
For myself, I never felt so completely that very thing which genius should always make us feel—that I was in its circle, and could not get out till its spell was done, and its last spirit permitted to depart. I was not carried away, instructed, delighted more than by other works, but I was there, living there, whether as the platan tree, or the architect, or any other observing part of the scene. The personages live too intensely to let us live in them; they draw around themselves circles within the circle; we can only see them close, not be themselves.
Others, it would seem, on closing the book, exclaim, "What an immoral book!" I well remember my own thought, "It is a work of art!" At last I understood that world within a world, that ripest fruit of human nature, which is called art. With each perusal of the book my surprise and delight at this wonderful fulfilment of design grew. I understood why Gœthe was well content to be called Artist, and his works, works of Art, rather than revelations. At this moment, remembering what I then felt, I am inclined to class all my negations just written on this paper as stuff, and to look upon myself, for thinking them, with as much contempt as Mr. Carlyle, or Mrs. Austin, or Mrs. Jameson might do, to say nothing of the German Gœtheans.
Yet that they were not without foundation I feel again when I turn to the Iphigenia—a work beyond the possibility of negation; a work where a religious meaning not only pierces but enfolds the whole; a work as admirable in art, still higher in significance, more single in expression.
There is an English translation (I know not how good) of Gœthe's Iphigenia. But as it may not be generally known, I will give a sketch of the drama. Iphigenia, saved, at the moment of the sacrifice made by Agamemnon in behalf of the Greeks, by the goddess, and transferred to the temple at Tauris, appears alone in the consecrated grove. Many years have passed since she was severed from the home of such a tragic fate, the palace of Mycenæ. Troy had fallen, Agamemnon been murdered, Orestes had grown up to avenge his death. All these events were unknown to the exiled Iphigenia. The priestess of Diana in a barbarous land, she had passed the years in the duties of the sanctuary, and in acts of beneficence. She had acquired great power over the mind of Thoas, king of Tauris, and used it to protect strangers, whom it had previously been the custom of the country to sacrifice to the goddess.
She salutes us with a soliloquy, of which I give a rude translation:—
Beneath your shade, living summits
Of this ancient, holy, thick-leaved grove,
As in the silent sanctuary of the Goddess,
Still I walk with those same shuddering feelings,
As when I trod these walks for the first time.
My spirit cannot accustom itself to these places;
Many years now has kept me here concealed
A higher will, to which I am submissive;
Yet ever am I, as at first, the stranger;
For ah! the sea divides me from my beloved ones,
And on the shore whole days I stand,
Seeking with my soul the land of the Greeks,
And to my sighs brings the rushing wave only
Its hollow tones in answer.
Woe to him who, far from parents, and brothers, and sisters,
Drags on a lonely life. Grief consumes
The nearest happiness away from his lips;
His thoughts crowd downwards—
Seeking the hall of his fathers, where the Sun
First opened heaven to him, and kindred-born
In their first plays knit daily firmer and firmer
The bond from heart to heart—I question not the Gods,
Only the lot of woman is one of sorrow;
In the house and in the war man rules,
Knows how to help himself in foreign lands,
Possessions gladden and victory crowns him,
And an honorable death stands ready to end his days.
Within what narrow limits is bounded the luck of woman!
To obey a rude husband even is duty and comfort; how sad
When, instead, a hostile fate drives her out of her sphere!
So holds me Thoas, indeed a noble man, fast
In solemn, sacred, but slavish bonds.
O, with shame I confess that with secret reluctance
I serve thee, Goddess, thee, my deliverer.
My life should freely have been dedicate to thee,
But I have always been hoping in thee, O Diana,
Who didst take in thy soft arms me, the rejected daughter
Of the greatest king! Yes, daughter of Zeus,
I thought if thou gavest such anguish to him, the high hero,
The godlike Agamemnon;
Since he brought his dearest, a victim, to thy altar,
That, when he should return, crowned with glory, from Ilium,
At the same time thou would'st give to his arms his other treasures,
His spouse, Electra, and the princely son;
Me also, thou would'st restore to mine own,
Saving a second time me, whom from death thou didst save,
From this worse death,—the life of exile here.
These are the words and thoughts; but how give an idea of the sweet simplicity of expression in the original, where every word has the grace and softness of a flower petal?
She is interrupted by a messenger from the king, who prepares her for a visit from himself of a sort she has dreaded. Thoas, who has always loved her, now left childless by the calamities of war, can no longer resist his desire to reanimate by her presence his desert house. He begins by urging her to tell him the story of her race, which she does in a way that makes us feel as if that most famous tragedy had never before found a voice, so simple, so fresh in its naïveté is the recital.