Reviews. Wilde Oscar

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СКАЧАТЬ the highest degree imaginative; and taking its inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in picturesque and fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted that there is a conventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of art, and that certain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by too constant use; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognise in the Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together one strong dominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity. Indeed, it is only in the more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can find any parallel to the Corsican voceri with their shrill intensity of passion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate. And yet, ardent as the feeling is, the form is nearly always beautiful. Now and then, in the poems of the extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism, but, as a rule, the sense of beauty prevails.

      Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and loveliness of lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by which mirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even where there are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born of fancy not of affectation. Herrick himself might have envied that wonderful love-song of Provence:

      If thou wilt be the falling dew

      And fall on me alway,

      Then I will be the white, white rose

      On yonder thorny spray.

      If thou wilt be the white, white rose

      On yonder thorny spray,

      Then I will be the honey-bee

      And kiss thee all the day.

      If thou wilt be the honey-bee

      And kiss me all the day,

      Then I will be in yonder heaven

      The star of brightest ray.

      If thou wilt be in yonder heaven

      The star of brightest ray,

      Then I will be the dawn, and we

      Shall meet at break of day.

      How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings her babe to sleep!

      Gold and pearls my vessel lade,

      Silk and cloth the cargo be,

      All the sails are of brocade

      Coming from beyond the sea;

      And the helm of finest gold,

      Made a wonder to behold.

      Fast awhile in slumber lie;

      Sleep, my child, and hushaby.

      After you were born full soon,

      You were christened all aright;

      Godmother she was the moon,

      Godfather the sun so bright.

      All the stars in heaven told

      Wore their necklaces of gold.

      Fast awhile in slumber lie;

      Sleep, my child, and hushaby.

      Or this from Roumania:

      Sleep, my daughter, sleep an hour;

      Mother’s darling gilliflower.

      Mother rocks thee, standing near,

      She will wash thee in the clear

      Waters that from fountains run,

      To protect thee from the sun.

      Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour,

      Grow thou as the gilliflower.

      As a tear-drop be thou white,

      As a willow tall and slight;

      Gentle as the ring-doves are,

      And be lovely as a star!

      We hardly know what poems are sung to English babies, but we hope they are as beautiful as these two. Blake might have written them.

      The Countess Martinengo has certainly given us a most fascinating book. In a volume of moderate dimensions, not too long to be tiresome nor too brief to be disappointing, she has collected together the best examples of modern Folk-songs, and with her as a guide the lazy reader lounging in his armchair may wander from the melancholy pine-forests of the North to Sicily’s orange-groves and the pomegranate gardens of Armenia, and listen to the singing of those to whom poetry is a passion, not a profession, and whose art, coming from inspiration and not from schools, if it has the limitations, at least has also the loveliness of its origin, and is one with blowing grasses and the flowers of the field.

      Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs. By the Countess Evelyn Martinengo Césaresco. (Redway.)

      THE CENCI

      (Dramatic Review, May 15, 1886.)

      The production of The Cenci last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington, may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this century, and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks of all for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley’s play under the conditions he himself desired for it. For The Cenci was written absolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley’s own wishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetime at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O’Neill in the principal parts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefully the æsthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama is disinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merely mouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terror and for pity. ‘I have endeavoured,’ he says, ‘as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conception of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind..

      ‘I have avoided with great care the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice’s description of the chasm appointed for her father’s murder should be judged to be of that nature.’

      He recognised that a dramatist must be allowed far greater freedom of expression than what is conceded to a poet. ‘In a dramatic composition,’ to use his own words, ‘the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other respects I have written more carelessly, that is, without an over-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the familiar language of men.’

      He knew that if the dramatist is to teach at all it must be by example, not by precept.

      ‘The highest moral purpose,’ he remarks, ‘aimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement of them.’ He fully realises that it is by a conflict between our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatest dramatic effects are produced. ‘It is in the restless and anatomising casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is in the СКАЧАТЬ