R351100A. Paracelsus.
The Monthly Repository, November 1835, pp. 716–727.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 352–357.
This poem is what few modern publications either are, or affect to be; it is a work. It is the result of thought, skill, and toil. Defects and irregularities there may be, but they are those of a building which the architect has erected for posterity, and not the capricious anomalies of the wattled pleasure house, which has served its turn when the summer day’s amusement is over, and may be blown about by the next breeze, or washed away by the next torrent, to be replaced by another as fantastic and as transient.
It was not written, nor is it to be read, extempore. This circumstance has sorely puzzled the critics, especially the Weeklies, to whom by common consent the periodicals of a larger orbit seem to have abandoned the task of illumining the world of literature; of measuring its times and seasons, and chronicling its productions. They cannot comprehend how the perusal of poetry should be a thoughtful operation. That a drama should be a study, is to their understandings a monstrosity. They would as soon think of making subjects for a surgeon of the figures of a phantasmagoria. Accustomed only to poems that come like shadows, so depart, they are startled out of their critical senses by one which boldly steps into the world like a thing of soul and substance, actually come to claim and maintain its place amongst realities. Put out of their track, neither feeling safe in praise nor in condemnation, they give a short dissatisfactory growl, and turn aside to hunt other game, which indeed is sufficiently abundant, and which they can chase, catch, and worry, selon les regles of their art, or, more correctly, according to the custom of their tribe. They stare at “Paracelsus” as did the doctors of his own day. And thus far, by implication, though not in purpose, their verdict is already given in favour of its being a work of genius, or else a worthless abortion; the world may find out which: and when the world has found it out, the critics will discover the reasons, and set them forth in learned dissertations.
A lasting poem must have a great purpose, moral, political, or philosophical. Aimlessness is fatal; and even an erring aim is perilous. The world’s heart is only to be won by love and worth. It will only enshrine and cherish there for perpetuity the imagi- [p. 717→] nation which intelligence has directed to its good and glory. The bagatelles which it may willingly let live for a day, may have no aim beyond their own disportings; but a settled purpose, and the bending up of each mental agent to the feat, must characterize the productions which it will “not willingly let die.” The author of “Paracelsus” has essayed the solution of one of those great enigmas, which human life in its different phases presents. His “Paracelsus” is, not a personification indeed, but an individualization of humanity, in whom he exhibits its alternate conditions of aspiration and attainment. Truly here is something for the mind to grapple with, but the labour is only of that species which accords with the proper enjoyment of poetry, and which raises that enjoyment to its due degree of loftiness and intensity.
Paracelsus left that sort of mingled reputation which exactly suited the author’s purpose. It is neither too bad for a blessing nor too good for a curse. He had a right to assume that it might yet struggle into brightness, through all the clouds of obloquy by which it has been so long overshadowed. What says Dr. Uwins of him, in his very judicious and instructive outline of the history of medicine, recently delivered as an introductory lecture to his class?* “At the close of the fifteenth century Paracelsus was born. He was a native of Switzerland, and soon became conspicuous as a bold innovator, ridiculing all that had gone before him, and making of medicine a sort of alchemic art. His converts were many; but the most learned and respectable physicians of the time continued to abide by the doctrines of Galen.” Yet Galen had not the infallibility of inspiration or of science. “The simplicity of Hippocrates,” says Dr. Uwins, “he conspicuously interlarded with his own theories.” The history of his influence in medicine is not unlike that of Aristotle amongst the school-men; in the time of Paracelsus it had become a mental tyranny, which a man might deserve well of the world for vigorously assailing. The man who first employed the stupendous powers of mercury and opium in his prescriptions, producing effects at which the learned and the illiterate alike stood amazed, crying out on miracle or magic, had some right to raise a standard of rebellion in his own province; while the demurring of “learned and respectable physicians,” was only what happened a century afterwards to Harvey, with his discovery of the circulation of the blood. Not that we demur, for an instant, to the estimate of so able a judge on these matters as Dr. Uwins, or have any idea of doing battle for the medical glory of Paracelsus. We only show cause on behalf of the poet’s selection. Further argument might be found in any biographical dictionary. The poem adheres to the broad outline of ascertained facts, of which it is the exposition, and out of which it constructs a beautiful and universal theory. Aureolus Paracel- [p. 718→] sus did start in life with an eager, pure, and elevated devotion to knowledge. He did spend many years in the East, making rich and varied acquisitions for the attainment of his purpose. In his re-appearance, and in his professorship at Basil, he did, by the success of his practice and the boldness of his speculations, first excite astonishment, then attract reverence, confidence, and fanatical regard, and eventually draw down upon himself a fierce and stormy persecution. In the circumstances of his exile and death, and in the peculiarities of his opinions, the poet has scarcely, if at all, deviated from fact, but made historical truth the germ of those higher truths of poetry and philosophy, of which, in this work, he conceived, and has, we think, realized the developement.
________
*At the free Hospital, Greville Street, Hatton Garden; published in Dr. Ryan’s “Medical Journal” for October.
________
“Paracelsus” is not a drama; and although generally in form a dialogue, is often in spirit a monologue, the other speakers being introduced as subservient to the delineation, by Paracelsus himself, of the several states of his mental being, which in their succession make up the history of his character, both in its individuality and as the symbolic representation of human nature. There is no action, there is no direct exhibition of transition: results only are presented. Each of the five acts or parts into which the poem is distributed, is the delineation, or at least is intended to be so, of a mental and moral condition, every one of which is markedly distinguished from the rest, while yet there is a faithful preservation of individual identity, and sufficient indication of the necessary connexion of cause and effect, and of the various agencies and influences which had continued their powerful and ceaseless operations during the unrecorded intervals.
Part the First, entitled “Paracelsus aspires,” is a conversation between Paracelsus and Festus, his fellow-student and bosom friend, and Michal the betrothed of Festus, in a garden in the environs of Würtzburgh, on an autumnal evening of the year 1507; Paracelsus being about to set forth the following morning on his long and strange pilgrimage. He believes himself destined to the acquisition of Knowledge, infinitely more precious to the human race than any treasured in the annals of learning; than any to be demonstrated by the logical apparatus of the geometer and the metaphysician; or to be extorted by the powers of magic from the meaner spirits of the invisible world. He maintains that truth is not to be found without us, but within us. That it emanates from the soul outwards, as some propitious influence, some happy chance, opens its way through the covering with which “the gross flesh hems in perfect and true perception.” So his enterprise is to learn, by communicating with humanity under all the diversified modifications of various regions, the laws by which the light of our own spirits is shrouded from us, and by which it may be set free to shed its beams on our being and our destiny. The nature, the feasibility, the moral lawfulness, of the design are discussed between him and his friends, as they [p. 719→] seem oftentimes to have been discussed before; the argument not only winning the reader’s interest in what is to follow, but eliciting a review of the youth and early impulses of Paracelsus; and being beautifully tempered by emotions of tenderness, of melancholy foreboding, and of bold hopefulness, in the several characters. The genius of Paracelsus prevails; his friends at last express, in answer to his appeal, their faith that he will realize his high purposes; and he departs strong and expectant.
Part Second, “Paracelsus attains.” Fourteen years have elapsed; years of ceaseless wandering, and toil, and observation, and inquiry, and multifarious attainment; Paracelsus is brought to a pause, and reviews his career, and estimates his condition, in a soliloquy which is nobly conceived, and not less nobly executed. He has learned much; but some deeply seated error makes his career essentially a failure. To the darkening melancholy of his retrospect there comes an harmonious interruption in the chauntings of Aprile, the poet, a human embodiment of the principle of love, as Paracelsus is of the desire for knowledge. He, too, has been an adventurer for the well-being of humanity; he has failed, and is the martyr of his own devotedness. From his death-song, which he breathes in the arms of Paracelsus, the latter learns the extent of his own mistake, in having hitherto looked exclusively to the merely intellectual powers as the agencies of man’s exaltation and happiness, and attains the conviction that to love must, not less than to know, characterize the emancipator of the human race from the worst evils of their destiny.
Part Third, (1526,) Paracelsus has returned from the far East to Europe, determined, in the spirit of his last and great attainment, forthwith to disseminate whatever truths he has ascertained, and apply them to the purposes of philanthropy. The continent rings with his reputation. His cures are deemed miraculous. His doctrines are received as oracular. He is triumphantly installed as Professor of Medicine at Basil, and regarded as the herald of an advance in all that relates to man’s physical condition, analogous to the great reformation in religion then achieving by Luther and his associates. A similar excitement prevails. The author presents him to us in the evening, after one of those ebullitions of popular admiration which generally attended his lectures. Only Festus is with him, in his chamber. It is the first time they have met since the aspirant left Würtzburgh to commence his career and fulfil his mission. Their conversation continues through the night. Paracelsus lays bare his heart, not with the scientific coolness of a demonstrator repeating a dissection, but in its living anatomy. Many parts of this dialogue are dramatic in a high degree, and remind us of those tones or looks by which Kean, as if by sudden inspiration, would burn into the very soul. Paracelsus is not what he purposed, and was [p. 720→] made to be. Discoverer, philanthropist, reformer, he yet cannot help man as he would, and turns with loathing from the paltry honours which the world, and even his friend, thinks are amazing success and glory. He feels their hollowness; he foresees their speedy reversal. The anticipated misanthropy of baffled benevolence is upon him in its bitterness. He would look on men with the eyes of intelligent love, and be gladdened by a responsive gaze; but he cannot bear the blindness of his disciples’ admiration, and of his foes’ hostility. Festus departs, in sadness and sore perplexity, with the implied promise of being recalled should the spirit of Paracelsus ever recover its pristine trust, and hope, and energy.
“Paracelsus aspires.” Such is the title of the fourth part as of the first. Two short years, and Festus is summoned to his side. The tide has turned at Basil. The popular professor is hunted out as a disgraced quack, whom every reptile may insult, and every dunce despise. Paracelsus is in the world’s martyrology of those whom society brands and blasts for their benevolence; whom it cannot forgive for advancing with a quicker pace, and for attempting to quicken its own march; on whose devoted heads it pours all the vials of envy, hatred, contempt, and deadly persecution. In the tumult of his soul there dimly shines the star of a renovated hope. Hitherto he has aimed at being something apart from humanity: he would be a benefactor, but not himself identified with the benefited. He has not realized men’s feelings, noted how even their prejudices and hatreds belong to the working out of the capabilities of their nature, made himself as one of them, without intolerances and superiorities, and seen the great laws of physical and moral being evolving the progressive tendencies of the entire human race. This has he now to learn, and after it his spirit gropes and plunges, like a man in danger of drowning in a dark and stormy sea. However impressive in itself, and masterly in execution, we doubt whether the author’s purpose be sufficiently distinct in this part. He rather describes the mind of his hero in its state of transition than in that of aspiration.
Part Five, “Paracelsus attains.” Thirteen more years have passed away. Festus is by the deathbed of Paracelsus, in a cell in the hospital of St. Sebastian at Salzburgh, watching for a moment of consciousness, and wrestling with God on the destiny of his friend. The opening of this scene is deeply affecting; but we continue to abstain from extract that we may have room for a considerable portion of the conclusion. Paracelsus revives; he apprehends that the presence of Festus is an intimation to him of his “last mission;” he calls for the robes in which he had been accustomed to lecture, rising with supernatural energy from his bed; [p. 721→]
This couch shall be my throne: I bid this cell
Be consecrate; this wretched bed become
A shrine; for here God speaks to men through me.
Our quotation must commence with his delineation of the happiness of the Spirit of the Universe, in its harmonious modifications:
Nay, dare I say,
In every pore of this fast-fading frame
I felt, I knew what God is, what we are,
What life is—how God tastes an infinite joy
In infinite ways—one everlasting bliss,
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds; in whom is life for evermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes; where dwells enjoyment there is He!
With still a flying point of bliss remote—
A happiness in store afar—a sphere
Of distant glory in full view; thus climbs
Pleasure its height for ever and for ever!
The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
And the earth changes like a human face;
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks—
Winds into the stone’s heart—outbranches bright
In hidden mines—spots barren river-beds—
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask—
God joys therein! The wroth sea’s waves are edged
With foam, white as the bitten lip of Hate,
When in the solitary waste strange groups
Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like,
Staring together with their eyes on flame:
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride!
Then all is still: earth is a wintry clod;
But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
Over its breast to waken it; rare verdure
Buds here and there upon rough banks, between
The wither’d tree-roots and the cracks of frost,
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms,
Like chrysalids impatient for the air;
The shining dorrs are busy; beetles run
Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
Above, birds fly in merry flocks—the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain; and God renews
His ancient rapture! Thus He dwells in all,
From life’s minute beginnings, up at last
To man—the consummation of this scheme
Of being—the completion of this sphere [p. 722→]
Of life: whose attributes had here and there
Been scatter’d o’er the visible world before,
Asking to be combin’d—dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole—
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make—
* * * * * * *
And man appears at last: so far the seal
Is put on life: one stage of being complete,
One scheme wound up; and from the grand result
A supplementary reflux of light,
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle: not alone
The clear dawn of those qualities shines out,
But the new glory mixes with the heaven
And earth. Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things—the winds
Are henceforth voices, wailing, or a shout,
A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh—
Never a senseless gust now man is born.
After some varied and most poetical illustration, the author continues:
And this to fill us with regard for man,
Deep apprehension of his passing worth,
Desire to work his proper nature out,
To ascertain his rank and final place.
For all these things tend upward—progress is
The law of life—man is not man as yet:
Nor shall I deem his object served, his end
Attain’d, his genuine strength put fairly out,
While only here and there a star dispels
The darkness—here and there a towering mind
O’erlooks its crawling fellows: when the host
Is out at once to the despair of night,
When all mankind is perfected alike,
Equal in full-blown powers—then, not till then,
Begins the general infancy of man;
For wherefore make account of feverish starts
Of restless members of a dormant whole—
* * * * * *
When all the race is perfected alike
As man, that is: all tended to mankind
And, man produced, all has its end thus far;
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God, Prognostics told
Man’s near approach; so in man’s self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendour ever on before,
In the eternal circle life pursues:
For men begin to pass their nature’s bound,
To have new hopes and cares which fast supplant [p. 723→]
Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great
For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade
Before unmeasur’d thirst for good; while peace
Rises within them ever more and more.
Such men are even now upon the earth—
Serene amid the half-form’d creatures round,
Whom they should save and join with them at last:
Such was my task, and I was born to it—
Free, as I said but now, from much that chains
Spirits high-dower’d, but limited and vex’d
By a divided and delusive aim—
* * * * * * *
Yet, constituted thus, and thus endow’d,
I fail’d: I gazed on power till I grew blind.
Power: I could not take my eyes from that—
That only was to be preserved, increased
At any risk; display’d, struck out at once—
The sign, and note, and character of man.
I saw no use in the past: only a scene
Of degradation, ugliness, and tears;
The record of disgraces best forgotten;
A sullen page in human chronicles
To be erased: I saw no cause why man
Should not be all-sufficient even now;
Or why his annals should be forced to tell
That once the tide of light about to break
Upon the world was seal’d within its spring,
Although my own name led the brightness in:
I would have had one day, one moment’s space,
Change man’s condition, push each slumbering claim
To mastery o’er the elemental world
At once to full maturity: then roll
Oblivion o’er its work, and hide from man
What night had usher’d morn. No so, dear child
Of after-days, wilt thou reject the Past,
Big with deep warnings of the proper tenure
By which thou hast the earth: for thee the Present
Shall have distinct and trembling beauty, seen
Beside its shadow—whence, in strong relief,
Its features shall stand out: nor yet on thee
Shall burst the future, as successive zones
Of several wonder open on some spirit
Flying secure and glad from heaven to heaven;
But hope, and fear, and love, shall keep thee man!
All this was hid from me: as one by one
My dreams grew dim, my wide aims circumscribed—
As actual good within my reach decreased,
While obstacles sprung up this way and that,
To keep me from effecting half the sum,
Small as it proved: as objects, mean within
The primal aggregate, remain’d alone
Of all the company, and, even the least, [p. 724→]
More than a match for my concentred strength …
What wonder if I saw no way to shun
Despair? for power seem’d shut from man for ever.
In this conjuncture, as I pray’d to die,
A strange adventure made me know One Sin
Had spotted my career from its uprise;
And as the poor melodious wretch disburthen’d
His heart, and moan’d his weakness in my ear,
I learn’d my own deep error: love’s undoing
Taught me the worth of love in man’s estate,
And what proportion love should hold with power
In his right constitution: love preceding
Power—with much power always much more love;
Love still too straiten’d in its present means,
And earnest for new power to set it free.
I learn’d this, and supposed the whole was learn’d:
And thus, when men received with stupid wonder
My first revealings—would have worshipp’d me—
And I despised and loathed their proffer’d praise;
When, with awaken’d eyes, they took revenge
For past credulity, in casting shame
On my real knowledge—and I hated them—
It was not strange I saw no good in man,
To overbalance all the wear and waste
Of faculties, display’d in vain, but born
To prosper in some better sphere: and why?
In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love’s faint beginnings in mankind—
To know even hate is but a mask of love’s;
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success. To sympathize—be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, struggles
Dimly for truth—their poorest fallacies,
And prejudice, and fears, and cares, and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, for all
Their error; all ambitious, upward tending,
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him:
All this I knew not, and I fail’d; let men
Regard me, and the poet dead long ago
Who loved too rashly; and shape forth a third,
And better temper’d spirit, warn’d by both;
As from the over-radiant star too mad
To drink the light springs, beamless thence itself—
And the dark orb which borders the abyss,
Ingulf’d in icy night—might have its course
A temperate and equidistant world:
Meanwhile, I have done well, though not all well.
As yet men cannot do without contempt—
’Tis for their good, and therefore fit awhile
That they reject me, and speak scorn of me; [p. 725→]
But after, they will know me well: I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
But ’tis but for a time; I press God’s lamp
Close to my breast—its splendour, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.
You understand me? I have said enough?
Fest. Now die, dear Aureole!
Par. Festus, let my hand—
This hand lie in your own—my own true friend!
Aprile! hand in hand with you, Aprile!
Fest. And this was Paracelsus!
Having endeavoured to convey some notion of the purpose and plan of this masterly poem, we will add a few words on the execution, only premising that the character of Festus is itself a study. Though subordinate he is not insignificant. He is no mere man of straw, or walking gentleman, introduced to break a long soliloquy. True to his own conceptions of right and wrong, and yet faithful to the extraordinary being who never fails to command his reverence and puzzle his comprehension, he is an embodied commentary on Paracelsus, which might very well be adopted by a respectable critic, and save trouble. Michal is a lovely sketch. Aprile only appears to die like the swan in melody; but the melody is very exquisite. We must extract the following love-dream:
Apr. I would love infinitely, and be loved.
First: I would carve in stone, or cast in brass,
The forms of earth. No ancient hunter lifted
Up to the gods by his renown; no nymph
Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland tree,
Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star,
Should be too hard for me; no shepherd-king,
Regal for his white locks; no youth who stands
Silent and very calm amid the throng,
His right hand ever hid beneath his robe
Until the tyrant pass; no law-giver;
No swan-soft woman, rubbed with lucid oils,
Given by a god for love of her—too hard!
Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man,
Would I express and clothe in its fit form,
Or show repressed by an ungainly form,
Or blend with others struggling in one form.
Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty spirit
With a fit frame to execute his will—
Even unconsciously to work his will—
You should be moved no less beside some strong,
Rare spirit fettered to a stubborn body,
Endeavouring to subdue it, and inform it
With its own splendour! All this I would do,
And I would say, this done, “His sprites created, [p. 726→]
God grants to each a sphere to be his world,
Appointed with the various objects needed
To satisfy his own peculiar wants;
So, I create a world for these my shapes
Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!”
And, at the word, I would contrive and paint
Woods, valleys, rocks, and plains, dells, sands, and wastes,
Lakes which when morn breaks on their quivering bed
Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun;
And ocean-isles so small, the dog-fish tracking
A dead whale, who should find them, would swim thrice
Around them, and fare onward—all to hold
The offspring of my brain. Nor these alone—
Bronze labyrinths, palace, pyramid, and crypt,
Baths, galleries, courts, temples, and terraces,
Marts, theatres, and wharfs—all filled with men!
Men everywhere! And this performed, in turn,
When those who looked on pined to hear the hopes,
And fears, and hates, and loves which moved the crowd,
I would throw down the pencil as the chisel,
And I would speak: no thought which ever stirred
A human breast should be untold; all passions,
All soft emotions, from the turbulent stir
Within a heart fed with desires like mine—
To the last comfort, shutting the tired lids
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon away
Beneath the tent-tree by the way-side well:
And this in language as the need should be,
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow,
Now piled up in a grand array of words.
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
Mysterious motions of the soul, no way
To be defined save in strange melodies.
Last, having thus revealed all I could love,
Having received all love bestowed on it,
I would die: having preserved through my course
God full on me, as I was full on men.
He would approve my prayer—“I have gone through
The loveliness of life, create for me
If not for men—or take me to thyself,
Eternal, infinite Love!”
There is another description of like beauty, of love working with bounded means. A few lyrics are interspersed, which are distinguished by a luscious sweetness of imagery and versification. But we have cited enough to show the intense poetical sense which the author combines with strong powers of thought. One beauty, of which there are many instances, cannot be exhibited in extract; it is, the touching allusiveness, towards the close of the poem, to the scenery and circumstances of the early life of Paracelsus, as [p. 727→] indicated at the commencement. In many instances, too, there is an exquisite adaptation of metaphorical illustration to sentiment and character; so exquisite, that we cannot imagine how a few violations of this harmony which occur, should have escaped the author’s correction, or ever have flowed from his pen at all. The argument in the first part of the poem, and some subsequent passages, would bear condensation: and be improved, even in clearness, by the avoidance of an amplification and repetition, which is rhetorical rather than poetical.
Our task has been performed rather as expositors than as judges. To take up a book, and that book a poem, with real mental matter in it, is a novelty which calls more for announcement than for criticism. Would that we had oftener occasion for the implied praise and admiration which belong to the record of such a fact. But few writers will aspire to earn it, so long as the many, who read only to be passively amused, merely gaze on their volumes with drowsy attention and “lack-lustre eye,” waiting for the expected excitement. Yet, though possessing little of that species of stimulus which gains sudden popularity, there is abundance of a higher and stronger stimulus in this poem. We now leave it to speak for itself, and fancy it coming into the world, as Brutus did into the rostrum, with the appeal, “Censure me in your judgments; and awake your senses that you may the better judge.”
[William Johnson Fox]
Reviewed:
Paracelsus (RB), London: Effingham Wilson, 1835.
___________________
