CHAPTER IX.
ABSURDITIES WHICH FOLKS WITHOUT TASTE CALL POETRY.
The pieces written by Ursus were interludes--a kind of composition outof fashion nowadays. One of these pieces, which has not come down to us,was entitled "Ursus Rursus." It is probable that he played the principalpart himself. A pretended exit, followed by a reappearance, wasapparently its praiseworthy and sober subject. The titles of theinterludes of Ursus were sometimes Latin, as we have seen, and thepoetry frequently Spanish. The Spanish verses written by Ursus wererhymed, as was nearly all the Castilian poetry of that period. This didnot puzzle the people. Spanish was then a familiar language; and theEnglish sailors spoke Castilian even as the Roman sailors spokeCarthaginian (see Plautus). Moreover, at a theatrical representation, asat mass, Latin, or any other language unknown to the audience, is by nomeans a subject of care with them. They get out of the dilemma byadapting to the sounds familiar words. Our old Gallic France wasparticularly prone to this manner of being devout. At church, undercover of an _Immolatus_, the faithful chanted, "I will make merry;" andunder a _Sanctus_, "Kiss me, sweet."
The Council of Trent was required to put an end to these familiarities.
Ursus had composed expressly for Gwynplaine an interlude, with which hewas well pleased. It was his best work. He had thrown his whole soulinto it. To give the sum of all one's talents in the production is thegreatest triumph that any one can achieve. The toad which produces atoad achieves a grand success. You doubt it? Try, then, to do as much.
Ursus had carefully polished this interlude. This bear's cub wasentitled "Chaos Vanquished." Here it was:--A night scene. When thecurtain drew up, the crowd, massed around the Green Box, saw nothing butblackness. In this blackness three confused forms moved in the reptilestate--wolf, a bear, and a man. The wolf acted the wolf; Ursus, thebear; Gwynplaine, the man. The wolf and the bear represented theferocious forces of Nature--unreasoning hunger and savage ignorance.Both rushed on Gwynplaine. It was chaos combating man. No face could bedistinguished. Gwynplaine fought infolded, in a winding-sheet, and hisface was covered by his thickly-falling locks. All else was shadow. Thebear growled, the wolf gnashed his teeth, the man cried out. The man wasdown; the beasts overwhelmed him. He cried for aid and succour; hehurled to the unknown an agonized appeal. He gave a death-rattle. Towitness this agony of the prostrate man, now scarcely distinguishablefrom the brutes, was appalling. The crowd looked on breathless; in oneminute more the wild beasts would triumph, and chaos reabsorb man. Astruggle--cries--howlings; then, all at once, silence.
A song in the shadows. A breath had passed, and they heard a voice.Mysterious music floated, accompanying this chant of the invisible; andsuddenly, none knowing whence or how, a white apparition arose. Thisapparition was a light; this light was a woman; this woman was a spirit.Dea--calm, fair, beautiful, formidable in her serenity andsweetness--appeared in the centre of a luminous mist. A profile ofbrightness in a dawn! She was a voice--a voice light, deep,indescribable. She sang in the new-born light--she, invisible, madevisible. They thought that they heard the hymn of an angel or the songof a bird. At this apparition the man, starting up in his ecstasy,struck the beasts with his fists, and overthrew them.
Then the vision, gliding along in a manner difficult to understand, andtherefore the more admired, sang these words in Spanish sufficientlypure for the English sailors who were present:--
"Ora! llora! De palabra Nace razon. De luz el son."[13]
Then looking down, as if she saw a gulf beneath, she went on,--
"Noche, quita te de alli! El alba canta hallali."[14]
As she sang, the man raised himself by degrees; instead of lying he wasnow kneeling, his hands elevated towards the vision, his knees restingon the beasts, which lay motionless, and as if thunder-stricken.
She continued, turning towards him,--
"Es menester a cielos ir, Y tu que llorabas reir."[15]
And approaching him with the majesty of a star, she added,--
"Gebra barzon; Deja, monstruo, A tu negro Caparazon."[16]
And she put hot hand on his brow. Then another voice arose, deeper, andconsequently still sweeter--a voice broken and enwrapt with a gravityboth tender and wild. It was the human chant responding to the chant ofthe stars. Gwynplaine, still in obscurity, his head under Dea's hand, andkneeling on the vanquished bear and wolf, sang,--
"O ven! ama! Eres alma, Soy corazon."[17]
And suddenly from the shadow a ray of light fell full upon Gwynplaine.Then, through the darkness, was the monster full exposed.
To describe the commotion of the crowd is impossible.
A sun of laughter rising, such was the effect. Laughter springs fromunexpected causes, and nothing could be more unexpected than thistermination. Never was sensation comparable to that produced by the rayof light striking on that mask, at once ludicrous and terrible. Theylaughed all around his laugh. Everywhere--above, below, behind, before,at the uttermost distance; men, women, old gray-heads, rosy-facedchildren; the good, the wicked, the gay, the sad, everybody. And even inthe streets, the passers-by who could see nothing, hearing the laughter,laughed also. The laughter ended in clapping of hands and stamping offeet. The curtain dropped: Gwynplaine was recalled with frenzy. Hence animmense success. Have you seen "Chaos Vanquished?" Gwynplaine was runafter. The listless came to laugh, the melancholy came to laugh, evilconsciences came to laugh--a laugh so irresistible that it seemed almostan epidemic. But there is a pestilence from which men do not fly, andthat is the contagion of joy. The success, it must be admitted, did notrise higher than the populace. A great crowd means a crowd of nobodies."Chaos Vanquished" could be seen for a penny. Fashionable people nevergo where the price of admission is a penny.
Ursus thought a good deal of his work, which he had brooded over for along time. "It is in the style of one Shakespeare," he said modestly.
The juxtaposition of Dea added to the indescribable effect produced byGwynplaine. Her white face by the side of the gnome represented whatmight have been called divine astonishment. The audience regarded Deawith a sort of mysterious anxiety. She had in her aspect the dignity ofa virgin and of a priestess, not knowing man and knowing God. They sawthat she was blind, and felt that she could see. She seemed to stand onthe threshold of the supernatural. The light that beamed on her seemedhalf earthly and half heavenly. She had come to work on earth, and towork as heaven works, in the radiance of morning. Finding a hydra, sheformed a soul. She seemed like a creative power, satisfied butastonished at the result of her creation; and the audience fancied thatthey could see in the divine surprise of that face desire of the causeand wonder at the result. They felt that she loved this monster. Did sheknow that he was one? Yes; since she touched him. No; since sheaccepted him. This depth of night and this glory of day united, formedin the mind of the spectator a chiaroscuro in which appeared endlessperspectives. How much divinity exists in the germ, in what manner thepenetration of the soul into matter is accomplished, how the solar rayis an umbilical cord, how the disfigured is transfigured, how thedeformed becomes heavenly--all these glimpses of mysteries added analmost cosmical emotion to the convulsive hilarity produced byGwynplaine. Without going too deep--for spectators do not like thefatigue of seeking below the surface--something more was understood thanwas perceived. And this strange spectacle had the transparency of anavatar.
As to Dea, what she felt cannot be expressed by human words. She knewthat she was in the midst of a crowd, and knew not what a crowd was. Sheheard a murmur, that was all. For her the crowd was but a breath.Generations are passing breaths. Man respires, aspires, and expires. Inthat crowd Dea felt herself alone, and shuddering as one hanging over aprecipice. Suddenly, in this trouble of innocence in distress, prompt toaccuse the unknown, in her dread of a possible fall, Dea, serenenotwithstanding, and superior to the vague agonies of peril, butinwardly shuddering at her isolation, found confidence and support. Shehad seized her thread of safety in the universe of shadows; she put her
hand on the powerful head of Gwynplaine.
Joy unspeakable! she placed her rosy fingers on his forest of crisphair. Wool when touched gives an impression of softness. Dea touched alamb which she knew to be a lion. Her whole heart poured out anineffable love. She felt out of danger--she had found her saviour. Thepublic believed that they saw the contrary. To the spectators the beingloved was Gwynplaine, and the saviour was Dea. What matters? thoughtUrsus, to whom the heart of Dea was visible. And Dea, reassured,consoled and delighted, adored the angel whilst the people contemplatedthe monster, and endured, fascinated herself as well, though in theopposite sense, that dread Promethean laugh.
True love is never weary. Being all soul it cannot cool. A brazier comesto be full of cinders; not so a star. Her exquisite impressions wererenewed every evening for Dea, and she was ready to weep with tendernesswhilst the audience was in convulsions of laughter. Those around herwere but joyful; she was happy.
The sensation of gaiety due to the sudden shock caused by the rictus ofGwynplaine was evidently not intended by Ursus. He would have preferredmore smiles and less laughter, and more of a literary triumph. Butsuccess consoles. He reconciled himself every evening to his excessivetriumph, as he counted how many shillings the piles of farthings made,and how many pounds the piles of shillings; and besides, he said, afterall, when the laugh had passed, "Chaos Vanquished" would be found in thedepths of their minds, and something of it would remain there.
Perhaps he was not altogether wrong: the foundations of a work settledown in the mind of the public. The truth is, that the populace,attentive to the wolf, the bear, to the man, then to the music, to thehowlings governed by harmony, to the night dissipated by dawn, to thechant releasing the light, accepted with a confused, dull sympathy, andwith a certain emotional respect, the dramatic poem of "ChaosVanquished," the victory of spirit over matter, ending with the joy ofman.
Such were the vulgar pleasures of the people.
They sufficed them. The people had not the means of going to the noblematches of the gentry, and could not, like lords and gentlemen, bet athousand guineas on Helmsgail against Phelem-ghe-madone.