Jurgen and the law

by Unknown

And yet it is not the real Jurgen who makes this voyage. The real Jurgen, where is he? There are, in fact, many Jurgens. One of these is a little boy in Heaven. “That boy”, says God, “is here with me as you yourself have seen. And today there is nothing remaining of him anywhere in the man that is Jurgen” (297). Another Jurgen is “a young man barely come of age” (23) who had loved the young girl Dorothy, and who sees the Jurgen of today only “as one might see the face of a dead man drowned in muddy water” (31). Then there is the Jurgen of today, the Jurgen who “retains his shop and a fair line of business”, the Jurgen whose confiteor is that Koshchei, the earth spirit “who made things as they are”, has dealt with him very justly. “And probably his methods are everything they should be; certainly I cannot go so far as to say that they are wrong; but still, at the same time—” (368). And, separate from all these Jurgens, the little boy who loved God, the youth who cherished the normal things of youth, and the Jurgen of middle age who worships things as they are, is yet another Jurgen—the Faust-Jurgen, who, by favor of the powers of darkness, goes careering on his voyage of the world of fancy, the world of vision, the world of regrets, the world of disillusion.

The sequence of his adventures may easily be traced.

In the first episode Jurgen visits a garden between dawn and sunrise. It is a garden where “each man that has ever lived has sojourned for a little while, with no company save his illusions” (20). And the spirit of it all is shown forth in the people whom he first encounters. For they are a small boy and a girl who forever walk in the glaze of a mustard jar (19),—forever, that is, like the youth and the maid on the Grecian urn which drew the immortal gaze of Keats. The glance sweeps forward soon, however, and hence presently in this garden of memory Jurgen meets the girl Dorothy, meets her and talks with her (24–33). When she had gone all was gone and so, when the sun rose, it was simply “another workday” (34). The Philistine spirit blew upon the garden, it was to be remodelled and all the gold was to be rubbed away (36–7).

Then follows a visit to a character of many names, but always the same. Jurgen calls her Sereda, after the manner of Russian mythology, but she corresponds with the Roman Cybele, the Goddess of Earth (210, 316) and in the Norse she is called Æsred (176–7). Goddess of Earth, she takes the color out of all things. The Fates spin the glowing threads and weave them into curious patterns; but when she is done with them there is no more color, beauty or strangeness apparent “than in so many dishrags” (40), for she bleaches where others have colored. Naturally enough she refers Jurgen back to Koshchei, the spirit who made things as they are. Once more, through his intervention, Jurgen meets Dorothy. For in his attempt to answer life’s riddle, he must perforce return to the girl whom he had loved while young. If but they two could be together again in youth, would not the failures of his life, the disappointments of the middle years, be but as things that never had happened? (See 55.)

While the glamour still holds its spell, to Jurgen this is the young Dorothy, the girl who has not yet married; and so, on the moonlit ramp of her father’s castle they talk of many things as young lovers would. To them soon comes the girl’s future husband, but to Jurgen the magic makes it the appearance simply of a rival suitor; and, the magic having not yet exhausted its force, the conventional will have it that, in the words of the old stage directions, “they fight, and the rival is slain”. Then the conqueror turns to the lady, but dawn is coming and the magic is spent. Jurgen finds that this is not the Dorothy whom he had seen in the garden between dawn and sunrise (47–60). She is now repulsive, and he repels her. It is meet and right, therefore, that the next place to which Jurgen comes is a cave where are the bodies of many whom he had formerly known (60–65).

Winding his way through this cave he comes to Guenevere. She is held by the power of a giant; and from that giant does Jurgen rescue her (66–78).

Guenevere, of course, is the lady, charming but of errant fancy, to whom the chronicles Morte d’Arthur and Mabinogion were devoted, and of whose vagaries speak Tennyson’s “Idyls of the King.” At this time her marriage to Arthur has been arranged, and Lancelot is coming as his master’s envoy to arrange the details of the wedding. In the end Lancelot captures the heart of Guenevere (147) but, meanwhile her inclinations have their way with Jurgen. For Jurgen abides with her father in the latter’s city of Cameliard, which, of course, is but another name for Camelot (78–146). It is, to use the words of our time, a house party; and, like many house parties, it brings forth various events. To the guest Jurgen it befalls to do things ancient and modern, to rescue a princess from a giant, after the fashion of Sir Thomas Malory (82–3), to converse with ghosts in a haunted bed room (145–9) and to carry on with the fickle Guenevere, whose outstanding trait is “her innocence, combined with a certain moral obtuseness” (108). Her worldlywise father learns of the affair, talks it over with Jurgen, and reminds him of the duty apparent in the circumstances, that, if necessary, Jurgen should lie like a gentleman (93). The matter, however, comes to nothing, for the time of Guenevere’s marriage to Arthur is at hand. So she and Jurgen part, she with her mind already full of Lancelot (147) and Jurgen being taken with the charms of a new person of the play, of whom presently. In short, Jurgen leaves Guenevere where Tennyson takes her up, the stage being thus cleared for the drama of Lancelot.

Jurgen leaves Cameliard with one who is called Anaitis (147). But even as Guenevere typifies innocence combined with obtuseness (108) Anaitis is the personification of a capital sin. Like the earth goddess Sereda, known also to men as Cybele and Æsred (of whom supra) this Anaitis bears different names in different places. But always she is the same. In the Arthurian legend she is the Lady of the Lake (109), in classic lands she was Venus, on Eastern soil she was Ashtoreth. She serves the moon (150), she is the sun’s daughter (173); and in all lands from Paphos to Babylon do men rear temples in her honor (341–3). But the breath of evil nevertheless goes forth from her; and in her train follows Alecto, whose quality is retribution (178).

With this Venus, this Anaitis in her land of Cocaigne, Jurgen lives for a time. But he is not the only guest of whom legend bears record, not the only visitor of whom contemporary literature and art have spoken. Mr. Cabell, however, preserving that balance of humor which always in this book is kept level, has given this situation a new color. Tannhäuser is tempted to return to the Venusberg; Jurgen leaves Anaitis with never a glance behind.

But while he stays there, things of black magic happen. Nor is that strange. Anyone familiar with the legend embodied in “Tannhäuser” might expect to find that all things abhorred by Christians are practiced in the land of Venus, the Cocaigne of Anaitis.