Heroes and Hero Worship
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Thomas Carlyle >> Heroes and Hero Worship
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On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at once of one of
the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had hitherto
realized for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is another than
Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than "Bastard Christianism" half-
articulately spoken in the Arab Desert, seven hundred years before!--The
noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among men, is sung, and emblemed forth
abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the one sense and in the other,
are we not right glad to possess it? As I calculate, it may last yet for
long thousands of years. For the thing that is uttered from the inmost
parts of a man's soul, differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer
part. The outer is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes
away, in swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day
and forever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this
Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts,
his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel
that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint Helena is charmed
with the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a
vesture the most diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the
heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole secret of
continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth of sincerity, is like an
antique Prophet too; his words, like theirs, come from his very heart. One
need not wonder if it were predicted that his Poem might be the most
enduring thing our Europe has yet made; for nothing so endures as a truly
spoken word. All cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer
arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison to an unfathomable
heart-song like this: one feels as if it might survive, still of
importance to men, when these had all sunk into new irrecognizable
combinations, and had ceased individually to be. Europe has made much;
great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies of opinion and
practice: but it has made little of the class of Dante's Thought. Homer
yet _is_ veritably present face to face with every open soul of us; and
Greece, where is _it_? Desolate for thousands of years; away, vanished; a
bewildered heap of stones and rubbish, the life and existence of it all
gone. Like a dream; like the dust of King Agamemnon! Greece was; Greece,
except in the _words_ it spoke, is not.
The uses of this Dante? We will not say much about his "uses." A human
soul who has once got into that primal element of _Song_, and sung forth
fitly somewhat therefrom, has worked in the _depths_ of our existence;
feeding through long times the life-roots of all excellent human things
whatsoever,--in a way that "utilities" will not succeed well in
calculating! We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gaslight it
saves us; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. One remark I may
make: the contrast in this respect between the Hero-Poet and the
Hero-Prophet. In a hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians at
Grenada and at Delhi; Dante's Italians seem to be yet very much where they
were. Shall we say, then, Dante's effect on the world was small in
comparison? Not so: his arena is far more restricted; but also it is far
nobler, clearer;--perhaps not less but more important. Mahomet speaks to
great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted to such; a dialect
filled with inconsistencies, crudities, follies: on the great masses alone
can he act, and there with good and with evil strangely blended. Dante
speaks to the noble, the pure and great, in all times and places. Neither
does he grow obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as a pure star,
fixed there in the firmament, at which the great and the high of all ages
kindle themselves: he is the possession of all the chosen of the world for
uncounted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive Mahomet. In this
way the balance may be made straight again.
But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their effect on the world, by
what _we_ can judge of their effect there, that a man and his work are
measured. Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man _do_ his work; the
fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will grow its own fruit;
and whether embodied in Caliph Thrones and Arabian Conquests, so that it
"fills all Morning and Evening Newspapers," and all Histories, which are a
kind of distilled Newspapers; or not embodied so at all;--what matters
that? That is not the real fruit of it! The Arabian Caliph, in so far
only as he did something, was something. If the great Cause of Man, and
Man's work in God's Earth, got no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then
no matter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold piasters pocketed, and
what uproar and blaring he made in this world,--_he_ was but a
loud-sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he _was_ not at all. Let us
honor the great empire of _Silence_, once more! The boundless treasury
which we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up and present before men!
It is perhaps, of all things, the usefulest for each of us to do, in these
loud times.--
As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the
Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner
Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our
Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humors, ambitions,
what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had.
As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in Shakspeare and Dante,
after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in Faith and in
Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul;
Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body.
This latter also we were to have; a man was sent for it, the man
Shakspeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last
finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or swift
dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign Poet, with
his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of
it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce
as the central fire of the world; Shakspeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as
the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice;
we English had the honor of producing the other.
Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. I
think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this
Shakspeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for
deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods and
skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough for this
man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English Existence,
which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own
accord? The "Tree Igdrasil" buds and withers by its own laws,--too deep
for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of
it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas Lucy but comes at the
hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not sufficiently considered: how
everything does co-operate with all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but
is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems; no thought, word or
act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, and works sooner or later,
recognizably or irrecognizable, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation
of sap and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the
lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of
the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of
Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven!--
In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its
Shakspeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is
itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian
Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical
Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always
is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And
remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished,
so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shakspeare, the
noblest product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appearance
nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else might
be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parliament.
King Henrys, Queen Elizabeths go their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts
of Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they
make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's, on the hustings or
elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into being? No dining at
Freemason's Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and
infinite other jangling and true or false endeavoring! This Elizabethan
Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation,
preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature;
given altogether silently;--received altogether silently, as if it had been
a thing of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless
thing. One should look at that side of matters too.
Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a
little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best
judgment not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly
pointing to the conclusion, that Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets
hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left
record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such
a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters
of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength;
all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a
tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the constructing of
Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other "faculties" as they are
called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's _Novum
Organum_ That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It
would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of
Shakspeare's dramatic materials, _we_ could fashion such a result! The
built house seems all so fit,--every way as it should be, as if it came
there by its own law and the nature of things,--we forget the rude
disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as
if Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more
perfect than any other man, we may call Shakspeare in this: he discerns,
knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials
are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a
transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate
illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great
intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed,
will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will
give of it,--is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the
man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which
unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true _beginning_, the true
sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight
that is in the man. He must _understand_ the thing; according to the depth
of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him
so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that
confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, _Fiat
lux_, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as
there is light in himself, will he accomplish this.
Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting,
delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakspeare is great.
All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled,
I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thing he looks
at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic
secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns
the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is
this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently? The _word_ that will
describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the
thing. And is not Shakspeare's _morality_, his valor, candor, tolerance,
truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can
triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world. No
_twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own
convexities and concavities; a perfectly _level_ mirror;--that is to say
withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and
men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes
in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a
Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving,
just, the equal brother of all. _Novum Organum_, and all the intellect you
will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor
in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness,
almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of
Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object;
you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare: "His characters are like
watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour
like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible."
The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things;
what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped up in these often
rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that
something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can
laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other
genially relate yourself to them;--you can, at lowest, hold your peace
about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour
come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it
is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect
enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that,
perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so,
whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what
extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a singing-master,
on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables
him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there
(for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not
hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the
gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort
soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, _See_. If
you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together,
jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet;
there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in
action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster
used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's _not
a dunce_?" Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every
man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry
needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other
entirely fatal person.
For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct
measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I should say
superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What
indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct,
things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he
has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of
a man's "intellectual nature," and of his "moral nature," as if these again
were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps
prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way,
if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for
us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part,
radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever
in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's
spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one
and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and
so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all
indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if
we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we
call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one
vital Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical
of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings;
his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the
opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is _one_;
and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.
Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider
it,--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly
immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can
call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathize with it: that
is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have not the justice to put down
his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the
dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of them,
will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the
bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such
can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day
merely.--But does not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so:
it knows where the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very frequent
everywhere in the world, what more does he know but this and the like of
this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if the Fox had not a certain
vulpine _morality_, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at
the geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his
own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth;
and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine
gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that
his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the
same internal unity of vulpine life!--These things are worth stating; for
the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this
time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candor will
supply.
If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, I have
said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare's intellect than
we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is
more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks
of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature
herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shakspeare's Art is not
Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance.
It grows up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who
is a voice of Nature. The latest generations of men will find new meanings
in Shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human being; "new harmonies
with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas,
affinities with the higher powers and senses of man." This well deserves
meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul,
that he get thus to be _a part of herself_. Such a man's works, whatsoever
he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow up
withal unconsciously, from the unknown deeps in him;--as the oak-tree grows
from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape themselves; with
a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws, conformable to all Truth
whatsoever. How much in Shakspeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent
struggles known to himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable
at all: like _roots_, like sap and forces working underground! Speech is
great; but Silence is greater.
Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not blame
Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true
battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakspeare greater
than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had
his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly in
what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life;--as what
man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless notion,
our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free
and off-hand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; with no man
is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such
tragedy-writing, and not fall in with sorrows by the way? Or, still
better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so
many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never
suffered?--And now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness,
his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You would say, in no point does
he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that
pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakspeare; yet he is always in measure
here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially "good hater." But his
laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps all manner of
ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in
all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. And
then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at
mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who _can_ laugh, what
we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character
only _desiring_ to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so.
Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not "the crackling of thorns
under the pot." Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare does not
laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts;
and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the
poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on
well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like
sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.
We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works; though perhaps
there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for instance,
all his plays reviewed as _Hamlet_, in _Wilhelm Meister_, is! A thing
which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his
Historical Plays, _Henry Fifth_ and the others, which is worth remembering.
He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said,
he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shakspeare. There
are really, if we look to it, few as memorable Histories. The great
salient points are admirably seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of
rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says, epic;--as indeed all
delineation by a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things
in those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That
battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its
sort, we anywhere have of Shakspeare's. The description of the two hosts:
the worn-out, jaded English; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the
battle shall begin; and then that deathless valor: "Ye good yeomen, whose
limbs were made in England!" There is a noble Patriotism in it,--far other
than the "indifference" you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakspeare. A true
English heart breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business; not
boisterous, protrusive; all the better for that. There is a sound in it
like the ring of steel. This man too had a right stroke in him, had it
come to that!
But I will say, of Shakspeare's works generally, that we have no full
impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works are
so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in
him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect,
written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note of
the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like
splendor out of Heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of
the thing: you say, "That is _true_, spoken once and forever; wheresoever
and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be recognized as
true!" Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is
not radiant; that it is, in part, temporary, conventional. Alas,
Shakspeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse: his great soul had to
crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him,
then, as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions. The
sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before us; but his Thought as he
could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that were
given. _Disjecta membra_ are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man.
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