Jurgen and the law

by Unknown

A better fate befalls the allied city of Pseudopolis. There live those of the Grecian spirit, of that spirit of Hellenism which, according to Matthew Arnold, wars always with the genius of Philistia. There abides Helen of Troy. Her Jurgen sees (224–9) the occasion being much the same as that which is pictured in Keats’ “St. Agnes Eve”. These people the Philistines could not slay, for “when the Philistines shouted in their triumph, Achilles and all they who served him rose from the ground like gleaming clouds and passed above the heads of the Philistines, deriding them” (231). But Jurgen and the people of ordinary conventionality perished, and thus our next view of Jurgen finds him in Hell.

The Hell to which he has gone is the Hell of his forefathers, being in truth but a monument to their egotism. They built it “out of the pride which led them to believe that what they did was of sufficient importance to merit punishment” (253). There Jurgen sees his father standing calmly in the midst of an especially tall flame, and very well satisfied with it, because of his confidence that he is important enough to deserve a special place in Hell. Therefore he is angry when the attendant devil does not sufficiently tend his furnace (254, 260–7).

It is not obscene, at least at common law, to speak lightly of Hell. If it were otherwise a great many books would be condemned. Every lawyer knows what was said about Lord Hatherley, when he, sitting in the Privy Council, held that the calvinistic idea of Hell was not part of the religion of the Church of England. It was said that Lord Hatherley had dismissed Hell with costs and had deprived thousands of their hope of everlasting damnation. Nor is it obscene to represent that there are people whose sense of personal importance rules even in death, people who think that their sins are greater than the sins of anybody else, not because of their quality as sins but because of the persons who commit them. And, pausing yet further at this point, let us suggest that if it is lewd to make fun of Philistia, then all of Matthew Arnold’s books should be burned by the hangman; and certainly Whistler’s book, “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, should never have been allowed in public print. Indeed it was Arnold, the father-in-law of a late most respectable member of this Bar, who invented the term Philistines as used in the present connection. Mr. Cabell has simply put in another form the protest that can be made against this point of view. At least it is open to protest.

Of course, we may not be able to agree with all of Mr. Cabell’s classifications as to what pertains to Philistia. Many of us are citizens of that country without knowing it. But it is not obscene or lewd for some one else to call us Philistines because of the views we may happen to hold dear. Legally we cannot object; practically we conserve our energies by not doing so. Like the famous Bishop Bonner of Queen Mary’s time, we may do well to laugh at the caricatures which the heretics make of us.

With this in mind we might get enjoyment out of Jurgen’s observations as to the real issue between Heaven and Hell. The war between them is not as Milton saw it. Rather, the war is between autocracy and democracy; and Hell is fighting to make the universe safe for democracy (287). Everybody knew how Satan came to be the chief magistrate of Hell, he was elected to that office, and he has continued in office so long simply because elections are inadvisable in war time (278–9). And while Hell used vigorous methods against dissenters, that was only because of necessary war time legislation (278–9). But Heaven was indisputably an autocracy, because nobody knew how God derived his power. He had been there through the ages, and He proposed to have no successor (286). Such, then, was the issue. Of its outcome, the shrewd Jurgen was inclined to favor Heaven, because of its superior military efficiency (287). And so, although Jurgen’s friends in Hell try to dissuade him (288), although he has married in Hell a vampire who is quite conventional, and life there is conventional also—“Hurry”, says his wife, “for we are spending the evening with the Asmodeuses” (277)—Jurgen leaves Hell and visits Heaven.

At that moment the mood of the author changes. Jurgen ascends to Heaven leaving irreverence behind, and the pictures now uncovered are of different tone and motive. The first person whom he sees is a little boy who was once Jurgen himself. When Jurgen meets God he says, “Once very long ago I had faith in you”; to which the reply is, “No, for that boy 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).[7] Heaven contains children, mothers and grandmothers. Logic cannot lead one to it, because logic does not exist there. Therefore, children, mothers and grandmothers can ascend to Heaven where people like Jurgen cannot. Taking Heaven as an illusion, Jurgen finds none of his own illusions there, and hence he must “return to such illusions as are congenial, for one must believe in something” (306). And yet he has stood motionless for thirty-seven days in that place, “forgetful of everything save that the God of his grandmother was love” (306–7). Nobody else, he is told, has willingly turned away so soon, and it is supposed that this is due to some evil wrought in the Nessus shirt he was wearing, the like of which was never seen in Heaven (307). And finally this wayfarer, this man of modern philosophy, says that he turned away from Heaven because he seeks for justice and he cannot find it in the eyes of God, “but only love and such forgiveness as troubled him” (307). To which archangels reply that because of that very fact he should rejoice (307).

If that is obscene, then “The Little Flowers” of St. Francis D’Assisi should at once be suppressed by Mr. Sumner. If it is lewd to teach that none of us would go to Heaven if we had justice done us, Christianity once more should betake itself to the catacombs.

We are let down from these heights by way of an interview between Jurgen and St. Peter. The Saint has something to say about prohibition (311–313) with which, theoretically speaking, many might disagree. But as the defendants are not indicted under the prohibition laws, it is needless to go into this discussion. The Saint also represents Heaven as pacifistic (312–313); but Mr. Cabell wrote after the Armistice, and pacifism is not, legally speaking, obscene or lewd, whatever else it undoubtedly is.

The travels of Jurgen now draw near to their end, the rest of the book simply rounding out the ideas suggested. Returning to earth, he meets once more the earth goddess Sereda, and the pith of their talk is the conclusion, not that “there is no meaning in anything”,—that, both agree, nobody really could face,—but that the lower god, Koshchei, who made things as they are, “is in turn the butt of some larger jest, * * * that all of us take part in a moving and a shifting and a reasoned use of things * * * a using such as we do not comprehend and are not fit to comprehend” (317). The quest of Jurgen ends, fitly enough, with a return to this lower power (329), this power that made things as they are, but is controlled, however rebellious, by a higher force beyond him (333).

We then have a return, in pageant form, of the women with whom, in this year of pilgrimage just ended (319), Jurgen has foregathered. First there is Guenevere (335) who is now ready to be his wife, Arthur being gone into Avalon and Lancelot being turned monk (335); Anaitis follows (340), then Helen of Troy (345). But all of them he refuses. “For I am transmuted by time’s handling. I have become the lackey of prudence and half measures” (348). Then appears to him his wife (350) who disposes of Koshchei “casually, for she believed him to be merely Satan” (353). After ordering Jurgen to be sure to be home in time for supper and to stop on the way to get a half pound of butter, she passes out “neither as flame nor mist, but as the voice of judgment” (355). Jurgen follows her (356), but on the way he sees Dorothy, Dorothy as she is and not as she had lived in either memory or imagination (364). He arrives home recollecting that he had forgotten to do the errand his wife told him to perform, but reflecting that after all things were just about as well with him as could be. He has his wife, he has his business, and the god of things as they are has probably 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—Then Jurgen sighed and entered his snug home” (368).