R430701A. The Return of the Druses.
The Athenæum, 1 July 1843, pp. 608–609.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 399–401.
This is a five-act drama,—the scene is laid in an island of the Southern Sporades, supposed to be inhabited by a party of Druse Christians, who, flying from Lebanon, before the arms of Osman, had planted their faith amid the sea, and called in the Knights of Rhodes to garrison their colony and help them to guard the sacred deposit for posterity. The policy of the Prefect appointed by the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, who had aimed at the absolute subjugation of the islanders by the massacre of their sheikhs, has prepared the latter for revolt; and during the temporary absence of the Prefect (who, to escape the consequences to himself of his tyrannous proceedings, has made a bargain for the sale of his office to the Patriarch), the aid of the Venetians has been secured; and the play opens when the Prefect, the Patriarch, and the fleet of the Republic are severally expected at the island. The plan of the revolt has been arranged by Djabal, a child, saved from the massacre of the sheikhs and their families; who, grown to manhood, with the secret of his wrongs at his heart, had wandered through the world, seeking to secure the means of vengeance, and presented himself to his countrymen when these were ripe. The difficulty, however, was to appear in a character of sufficient authority to rouse the oppressed Christians to instant and unanimous action; and for this purpose, he has called in the aid of religious deception, as helping him to the only motive strong enough to insure the political redress to which his life is devoted. A tradition had been preserved among his people, that their Khalif, who perished long ago “on red Mokattam’s brow,” was, in the day of their extreme need, to reappear in the flesh, and lead them back in triumph to their ancient home, beside the hill of Cedars. The island Druses had, accordingly, like the Jews, been long looking out for a promised Messiah, when Djabal presented himself amongst them as the returned Hakeem,—veiled in the flesh, to work out their deliverance, and when the blow which was to free them from their tyrant should have been struck, to be transfigured before their eyes, and lead them back, in his divine character, to Lebanon. Our readers will see that these are powerful dramatic elements; and, in many respects, the author has used them with great poetical skill. The interest and action are, of course, complicated by the introduction of other characters and episodes,—the principal of which are the heroine Anael,—and the love betwixt her and Djabal. Anael, who had been secreted by her brother, Khalil, from the licentious pursuit of the Knight-Prefect, in the abode where Djabal found them when seeking partizans amongst the islanders,—had made a vow, in the spirit of a Grecian maiden, to love “only one who should revenge the Druses;” and Djabal, coming to her at once an avenger and almost a god, had both fulfilled its condition and dazzled her with his assumed glory. Out of this double character in which he wooed her, the author has extracted a means of interest finely conceived,—but not quite so finely managed. In Djabal’s heart, a fear springs up, that Anael’s love is rather for the Hakeem than for the wandering sheikh, and that the knowledge of his imposture would change it to contempt: and his nature is shaken between the struggle of a generous impulse to confess to her his secret, and the fear of ruining the conspiracy by its betrayal. On the other hand, the heart of Anael has had certain revelations, which lead her to fear that she loves the man more than the Khalif—that the bright transformation to which he is destined before her eyes is a change for the worse—and hence she is disturbed by an apprehension, that her love is not such a love as he expects, and she ought to entertain for a prophet. It must be confessed that the means by which she arrives at this secret of her nature are of a rather questionable description, and our author has not been poetically felicitous in their adoption. There is a certain Christian knight, a model of chivalry, who has fallen in Anael’s way; and she, in analyzing her feelings, finds that Loÿs de Dreux makes an impression upon her so nearly similar to that which, barring his spiritual character, Djabal creates, that her mind is reduced to a state of great uncertainty and disturbance. Certainly, although this desecration of his heroine, we believe, is not exactly what the author intends, he has so managed this portion of his scheme, that there is more than one scene in which she seems greatly at a loss to know which of the candidates for her favour she prefers, and so, consequently, is the reader, as to which she is likely finally to choose. The following passage will at once describe, in the author’s own language, this rather complicated condition of things, and give a good specimen of the poetry of his drama:—
Enter Anael and Maani, who is assisting to array her in the ancient dress of the Druses.
An. Those saffron-vestures of the tabret-girls!
Comes Djabal, think you?
Maä. Doubtless Djabal comes.
An. Dost thou snow-swathe thee kinglier, Lebanon,
Than in my dreams?—Nay, all the tresses off
My forehead—look I lovely so? He says
That I am lovely.
Maä. Lovely! nay that hangs
Awry.
An. You tell me how a khandjar hangs!
The sharp side, thus, along the heart, see, marks
The maiden of our class. Are you content
For Djabal as for me?
Maä. Content, my child.
An. Oh, mother, tell me more of him. He comes
Even now—tell more, fill up my soul with him!
Maä. And did I not....yes, surely....tell you all?
An. What will be changed in Djabal when the change
Arrives? Which feature? Not his eyes!
Maä. ’Tis writ,
Our Khalif’s eyes rolled fire and clove the dark
Superbly.
An. Not his eyes! His voice perhaps?
Yet that’s no change; for a grave current lived
—Grandly beneath the surface ever lived,
That, scattering, broke as in live silver spray
While....ah, the bliss....he would discourse to me
In that enforced, still fashion, word on word!
’Tis the old current that must swell thro’ that,
For what least tone, Maäni, could I lose?
’Tis surely not his voice will change?
—If Hakeem
Only stood by! If Djabal, somehow, passed
Out of the radiance as from out a robe;
Possessed, but was not it!
He lived with you?
Well—and that morning Djabal saw me first
And heard my vow never to wed but one
Who saved my people first—that day .... proceed!
Maä. Once more, then: from the time of his return
In secret, changed so since he left the Isle
That I, who screened our Emir’s last of sons,
This Djabal, from the Prefect’s massacre
—Who bade him ne’er forget the child he was,
—Who dreamed so long the youth he had become—
I knew not in the man that child; the man
Who spoke alone of hopes to save our tribe,
How he had gone from land to land to save
Our tribe—allies were sure, nor foes to dread;
And much he mused, days, nights, alone he mused;
But never till that day when, pale and worn,
As by a persevering woe, he cried,
“Is there not one Druse left me?”—and I showed
The way to Khalil’s and your hiding-place
From the abhorred eye of the Prefect here,
So that he saw you, heard you speak—till then,
Never did he announce—(how the moon seemed
To ope and shut the while above us both!)
His mission was the mission promised us—
The cycle had revolved—all things renewing,
He was lost Hakeem clothed in flesh to lead
His children home anon, now veiled to work
Great purposes—the Druses now would change.
An. And they have changed! And obstacles did sink,
And furtherances rose! And around his form
Played fire, and music beat her angel wings!
My people, let me more rejoice, oh, more
For you than for myself! Did I but watch
Afar the pageant, feel the Khalif pass,
One of the throng, how proud were I—tho’ ne’er
Singled by Djabal’s glance! But to be chosen
His own from all, the most his own of all,
To be exalted with him, side by side,
Lead the exulting Druses, meet .... ah, how
Worthily meet the maidens who have watched
Ever beneath the cedars—how deserve
This honour in their eyes? So bright are they
That saffron-vestured sound the tabrets there—
The girls who throng there in my dreams! One hour
And all is over: how shall I do aught
That may deserve next hour’s exalting?—How?—
[Suddenly to Maäni.]
Mother, I am not worthy him! I read it
Still in his eyes! He stands as if to tell me
I am not, yet forbears! Why else revert
To one theme ever?—how mere human gifts [p. 609→]
Suffice him in myself—whose worship fades,
Whose awe goes off ever at his approach,
As now, that as he comes....
[As Djabal enters.] Oh, why is it
I cannot kneel to you?
Dja. Rather ’tis I
Should kneel to you, my Anael!
An. Even so!
For never seem you .... shall I speak the truth?....
Never a God to me! ’Tis the Man’s hand,
Eye, voice! Oh, do you veil these to our people,
Or but to me? Them, let me think, to them!
And brightness is their veil, shadow—my truth!
You mean that I should never kneel to you
—So I will kneel!
Dja. [Preventing her.] No—no! [Feeling the khandjar as he raises her.]
Ha, have you chosen....
An. The khandjar with our ancient garb. But, Djabal,
Change not, be not exalted yet—give time
That I may plan more, perfect more. My blood
Beats—beats!
[Aside.] O must I then—since Loÿs leaves us
Never to come again, renew in me
Those doubts so near effaced already—must
I needs confess them now to Djabal?—Own
That when I Loÿs saw and Loÿs heard,
My faith fell, and the woeful thought flashed first
That each effect of Djabal’s presence, taken
For proof of more than human attributes
In him by me whose heart at his approach
Beat fast, whose brain while he was by swam round,
Whose soul at his departure died away,
—That every such effect might have been wrought
In others’ frames, tho’ not in mine, by Loÿs
Or any merely mortal presence? Doubt
Is fading fast; shall I reveal it now?
And yet to be rewarded presently
With doubt unexpiated, undisclosed!
Dja. [Aside.] Avow the truth? I cannot! In what words
Avow that all she loves in me is false?
—Which yet has served that flower-like love of hers
To climb by, like the clinging gourd, and clasp
With its divinest wealth of leaf and bloom:
Could I take down the prop-work, in itself
So vile, yet interlaced and overlaid
With painted cups and fruitage—might these still
Bask in the sun, unconscious their own strength
Of matted stalk and tendril had replaced
The old support thus silently withdrawn!
But no; the beauteous fabric crushes too.
’Tis not for my sake but for Anael’s sake
I leave her soul this Hakeem where it leans!
And yet—a thought comes: here my work is done
At every point; the Druses must return—
Venice is pledged to that: ’tis for myself
I stay now, not for them—to stay or spare
The Prefect who imports it save myself?
What would his death be but my own reward?
Then, mine I will forego. It is foregone!
Let him escape with all my House’s blood!
Ere he can land I will have disappeared,
And Hakeem, Anael loved, shall, fresh as first,
Live in her memory, keeping her sublime
Above the world. She cannot touch that world
By ever knowing what I truly am,
Since Loÿs,—of mankind the only one
Able to link my present with my past,
That life in Europe with this Island life,
Thence able to unmask me,—I’ve disposed
Safely at last at Rhodes.—
From this point of the drama, the author’s intentions are not quite clear. Impelled, as it would seem, by a wish to prove her faith in Djabal’s mission, and do something in testimony of her attachment to his supernatural character, Anael with her own hand stabs the Prefect—a portion of the plot which the pretending Khalif had reserved for himself. Djabal finds her with the blood upon her hand; and then, in the excitement of the moment, comes a confession of his imposture. Then we have Anael’s struggle between the sense of his degradation and the joy of his restoration to the level of her woman’s heart; and, urging him to make confession to the people on whom he has imposed, she offers to share his shame. Djabal, however, refuses to abandon his deception till its object shall have been achieved; and Anael, therefore, denounces his fraud,—with what object we can only conjecture from what follows. Called upon by his own adherents to show his power upon the unknown blasphemer of that power, he is confronted with Anael, who is brought in veiled: and who, on the veil being removed, hails him, before them all, as Hakeem, and falls dead! Why, or by what instrument, she dies, is no way explained. The presumption seems to be, that her denunciation had been made with the view of confirming his authority, by seeming, afterwards, to perish before his eyes, the victim of her own sacrilege,—and that she had previously secured the means of her unexplained death. If this be not the author’s meaning, we have no clue to what is. If it be, the catastrophe is managed in a manner bungling and obscure,—and might readily be mended. The end of all is, that Djabal, retaining his character of Hakeem, thus awfully confirmed, but announcing his mission as ended, delegates the “leading home” to Khalil, under the escort of the good Knight Loÿs, and the protection of the Venetians; and, advancing at their head a few steps, on the way back to the Cedars, falls dead before their eyes,—supposed, of course, to have fulfilled the tradition, and returned to his slumber of ages!
[Thomas Kibble Hervey]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. IV. The Return of the Druses (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1843.
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