For the Blood Is the Life. Francis Marion Crawford
so we are cast in this imperishable essence of the soul. But we are still fated to receive impressions, all true, and therefore commonplace and detestable, because when one sees nothing but fact one ceases to fabricate fiction. Moreover, the knowledge that we cannot write down what we think and sell it to newspapers and poetry-mongers for money is saddening to industriously-minded little poets like myself. The poet is accustomed in his lifetime to earn his living by forcing words to fit the bed of Procrustes, squeezing the poor sensitive feet into the iron boots of verse, ramming down the whole into couplets — very like strings of sausages in which mauled and chopped meat is forced into skins and tied up into appropriate lengths for quotation — I mean for the breakfast of an average strong man, and then hung up in long strings in the bookseller's window to attract the hungry. Words are words, even in verse — and pig is pig, even in sausages, but I doubt whether the pig would recognise himself after the transmigration. It is the proud privilege of the pig to be made into sausages after his death, and if he is a lucky pig his sausage form may even serve as an ornament and be decorated with laurels in the porkbutcher's shop at Christmas-tide, which is better luck than happens to most poets. For the poet eats himself up in his lifetime, and misses his daily search for rhymes, as well as the daily price of them, when he is dead; just as an Italian donkey on Sunday misses being kicked up hill with a load on his back before dinner; just as a business man who takes a holiday misses the delight of doubling himself up all day upon his desk and letting the delightful, crabbed, money-getting figures tickle his nose and his heart from morning till night. The poet after death is like the business man on a holiday, the Italian ass on Sunday and the pig before he has been made into sausages — he has no raison d'etre, no reason for existing, he is out of his sphere, lost in the labyrinths of everyday fact, uncomfortable as an antelope strolling on the Boulevard des Italiens, as a tragedian in the solitudes of the steppes, as a cat in a country where the houses have no roofs, so nice and romantic to howl upon at night. No one pays me for howling now, nor if any one would, could I find a roof. Perhaps I could not even find a subject for my lamentations, except the absence of such a subject, which indeed is a very serious matter for a poet."
" How can you speak of poetry in such a way — you who wrote such exquisite things ? " asked Diana.
"You may be sure," answered Heine, with that wonderful smile which drew strange angles about his sensitive mouth, "that if it were still in my power to make verses I would not laugh at my old trade. But the grapes which hang too high are eternally green — as perpetually sour as unrealised hope."
"Which is very sour indeed," remarked Augustus. " Nevertheless, you must have realised most of your hopes during your lifetime. You were brilliantly successful."
"In exile," answered the poet, sadly.
"In a perfectly voluntary exile, I believe?" returned Augustus.
"No — a fatal exile," said Heine, almost passionately. " In Germany I was a Frenchman, in France I was a German — among Jews a Christian, among Christians a Jew, with Catholics a Protestant, with Protestants a Catholic. I was always in contradiction with my surroundings, I was in a perpetual exile. Had I been made like some people, full of raw' fighting instincts, I would have fought. As it was, I was unhappy, sick in soul and ill in body, and so I became a poet and wrote verses. You say they were good? Yes, I believe they were, for I took pleasure in writing them; but had I possessed Mr. Chard's sanguine constitution I would have been a leader of men instead of a writer of lyrics. I used to think I might play a political part — indeed, I often fancied that I did. Since I died I have learned what stuff is needed to play a part in the world of nations."
"Broad shoulders and a rough fist," said Augustus. "Soldiering is girl's play compared with it."
"You may well say that. Broad shoulders, a rough fist and a hard heart. I think my heart was never very hard. Even when I abused people it did not hurt them much. My shoulders are not broad and my fist — you see," said the poet, glancing with a pathetic pride at his delicate fingers, "I have the hand of a woman, I was not made for a politician."
"It is strange," said Gwendoline, "that great poets so often believe themselves to be statesmen, or have opportunities of becoming statesmen thrust upon them."
"Yes," replied Heine, "there was Goethe, to begin with. Dante was another. Milton had the strongest political tastes. Victor Hugo was a type of the politician-poet. Horace refused to he political private secretary to Augustus. Catullus began as a writer of political squibs against Caesar. Mickievicz was a furious patriot. Even Byron aspired to political fame and sacrificed his life heroically for an idea. Perhaps I should say for a principle, I do not like the word idea."
"If you will pardon me, I think that is one of your amiable eccentricities," remarked Augustus. "The great fights — or the great struggles of history, have either been fought for material advantage or for ideas. It seems to me nobler to fight for an idea than to fight for money — or for what practically results in money."
"By all means," answered Heine. "In my mind the word idea is associated with certain philosophical theories which I consider absurd, but if you use the word in the sense of a principle, and enthusiasm for that principle, I agree with you. That is what the sickness of modern times means. It is too long since the world has fought for a pure principle. Individual nations have had their struggles, chiefly internal, about what they considered right or wrong, but it is long since the joint enthusiasm of all humanity has been roused to shed blood and spend it in attacking and defending a purely moral cause. At present the thinking world is divided into two very distinct classes — those who say that principles are worth fighting for, and those who say that there should be no fighting and that the principles will take care of themselves. Neither party has the full sympathy of the masses."
"I always think," said Lady Brenda, "that the world depends entirely on the thinking people. The masses are not of so much importance. They always follow, you know."
"You and I, madam," replied the poet, "may design a very good pyramid, as big and symmetrical as the pyramid of Cheops. But however perfect the design may be, we cannot build it unless the masses help us. Without the concurrence of the masses the noblest political schemes must fail."
"Their failure does not make them any the less noble," objected Lady Brenda.
"No. But it makes them less useful and therefore less important. The successful people are those who induce many to follow them, and that can only be done by presenting the many with ideas which they can understand. The thoughts of great poets are generally noble, but not easily understood by the masses. The poet, however, aims at elevating the people to his own level, and being carried away by the grandeur of his plans he thinks it a simple matter to make a poetic commonwealth of the whole world. He is of course disappointed; he dies fancying his life a failure, and after he is dead he is surprised to find that nobody ever thought anything of his political capabilities, whereas he has earned immortality by his verses. The great man of the future will be he who shall discover the idea — as you call it — for which mankind shall be willing to take up arms. If his idea succeeds he will be a very great man and will probably be murdered, like a gentleman; if he fails he will be the last of humanity and will most likely be hanged, like a thief. After all, it is better to be a poet. If people only knew and understood how much better it is to live out one's life naturally! There is so little of it, and the remembrance of that little must serve one so long! "
"It is certainly best to be a poet," said Diana, leaning back in her chair and looking from the moon to the dark water, and dreamily again from the water to the silver shield above. " But it is not everybody who can. They say there is but one good poet in a thousand million human beings."
"The proportion is truly discouraging," answered Heine. "It is even worse when you reflect that there is not more than one good poet in a thousand million poets of all kinds, any more than you will find two wise men in a milliard of puckery, peppery, self-satisfied scientists. It must therefore be difficult to be very wise or to be a very good poet — but be careful never to tell people so, for as yet nobody has found it out."
"It cannot hurt people if they try to be either," said Lady Brenda.
"The ultimate disappointment of being convinced of failure in the nine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine