Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

upon the Grand Platz and surrounded by chestnut and sycamore trees. The King was with the army on the distant Thuringian slopes; but it was known through all the city that the Queen was still in the palace and had refused to leave; and in the hearts of the citizens, wherever a few met together, or in the homes where they spoke of this, despair and anguish were soothed into gratitude and trust.

But gradually as the evening drew on matters became worse. The terrible cannonade, it is true, ceased; but a party of French chasseurs, followed by infantry, occupied the market-place, and the work of plunder was systematically begun. The crash of doors burst in, and the shrieks of the inhabitants, were heard on every side. At seven o'clock in the summer evening houses were in flames in front of the palace, and the light was SO intense that people could read handwriting, both in the palace-court and in the market-place.

Then, suddenly, a most wonderful thing occurred. The great iron gates of the courtyard, which had remained closed, were thrown open, and a state carriage, gorgeously caparisoned and drawn by six white horses, accompanied by servants in full liveries, issued forth in the evening light, amid the added glare of the flaming houses. It passed on its stately way

through the crowded, agitated Platz, the lawless soldiers standing back astonished and abashed, till it reached the great hotel of the Three Kings, where a marshal of France, a brotherin-law of the Emperor, had taken up his quarters for the night an hour before. It did not remain long; but in a few moments it was known throughout the city that the Queen's intercession had prevailed, that orders had been given to extinguish the conflagration, and that the pillage would immediately cease.

The people, young and old, swarmed into the streets. From by-lane and causeway and boulevard, rich and poor, without distinction, child and old man and grand-dame, crowded around the stately carriage with the white. horses, wherein sat a beautiful woman of middle age, serene and stately, but very pale with long watching and with grief. Sobs, and words of blessing, and cries of love and joy, resounded on every side; but amid that countless throng there was no heart so full of a strange pride and gratitude to God as was that of an unknown stranger, by chance in the city, standing unnoticed in the dark shadows of the palace-groves. I knew her: I had known longer than they all; for it was the Princess Cynthia of the old, unforgotten, boyish days.

J. H. SHORTHOUSE.

27

OMAR KHAYYAM.

EDWARD FITZGERALD'S version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam has won its way slowly but surely to such high favour, that it may well seem superfluous to say anything more about the astronomer-poet of medieval Khorassan. Yet this unique and beautiful poem does not in truth show the real Khayyam. Unquestionably among the fine things in modern English verse, these quatrains give no accurate representation of the original in any of their versions; as indeed the variations of successive editions do themselves tend to show. The Persian rubaiyat are by no means the coherent strain of contemplative philosophy which Fitzgerald's work affords, being rather a not too harmonious "song-circle" (as the Germans say) in which the real intention of the poet, if indeed he had one, cannot be clearly ascertained. Omar is no more coherent than Martial, as any one will see who looks into Mr. Whinfield's version in Trübner's series here is the epigram of a scoffer, there the ejaculation of a pious inquirer: the carol of the winebibber is followed by a stanza of tender love. In Fitzgerald, on the other hand, we are not sure whether we are reminded most of Horace or of Ecclesiastes of the flighty Persian freethinker, eclectic and unsystematic, we see little or nothing.

It is not the intention of the present paper to shock the admirers of Mr. Fitzgerald by an attempt to compete with his poetical treatment. He has obtained and most justly obtained the reputation of a genuine poet; but those who desire to see how much of this fame is founded on his own great powers, and how much is due to the perhaps inferior credit of a good translator, may satisfy their minds by consulting the aforesaid version of

Mr. Whinfield. The few stanzas which are versified in English below, are, with one exception, taken from other quatrains than those used by Fitzgerald, and are only offered as illustrative of the real Khayyam in his disjointed manner. Yielding to every passing impulse he will be seen to be little more than a casual writer of epigrams: the only thread running at all thoroughly through his tetrastichs being a uniformity of metre, and a plea for peace and freedom in a rough polemic age.

To understand this unparalleled figure in the usually conventional literature of the East we have to take note of the time in which, and by which, he was produced. It was the period of the First Crusade. The orthodox creed of the early Moslem Arabs was cooling down into culture and cant. The Persians, on the other hand, had not accepted it. Five centuries earlier, when first subdued by the followers of Islam, they had possessed in the Zoroastrian dogma a highly-organised creed of their own which only yielded slowly before the fierce persuasions of the Crescent.

Then arose the schism of the Shias, or followers of Ali, which spread among them from the first century of the Hegira, both by reason of their vicinity to Kufa and Karbela, and because the Shias were enemies of the elective Caliphs to whom the Persians were also hostile. About a hundred years later fresh secessions occurred, originating in political ambition, but coloured by religious eccentricity and destined to cause fresh heresy. The descendants of Abbas (the Prophet's uncle) founded a Caliphate, or Papacy, at Bagdad; and the son of Jafar Sadik, counted the sixth Imam, set on foot the almost atheistical sect of the Ismailis.

When the Seljukians obtained influence at Bagdad they had already founded the shortlived Empire known to medieval Europe as that of the Saracens, and, in many of the provinces such as Khorassan, and farther west, had found Sunni orthodoxy in full vogue. Thus, when they Thus, when they embraced Islam, they naturally adopted the form of that faith which was at once popular with the conquered people and established at Bagdad. But that was by no means the case in the lands which they wrested in Persia proper from the tribes of Ghor. Not only were the heresies of the Shias and the Ismailis popular among the Persians, but at the same epoch they were influenced by other innovations. This was the period of the Ikhwan-us-Safa, the Encyclopædists of Basra, as it was also the climacteric of the Sufis, with opinions supposed to have grown out of Greek philosophy, and largely imbued with the tentative Pantheism originated by the school of Epicurus.

It is not certain what was the ethnic origin of our poet, whether his extraction was Arab or Iranian. From his name it is inferred that he was a member of the hereditary guild of tentmakers; for khaima means a tent in Perso-Arabic, and khayyam is a conjugation of intensity or frequency from it.

But he studied science and letters in the time of Togrul Beg, the same school also affording instruction to two other men who were to obtain a more mundane notoriety. One was Hassan Sabah, he who, under the title of Sheikh-ul-Jabal, afterwards became infamous as the founder of the truculent order of Assassins. The second was one who seemed far the most successful, though history has not remembered him so well. Sultan Togrul was succeeded by his able and magnanimous nephew, Alp Arslan, A.D. 1063. In this reign the second of Khayyam's schoolfellows, of whom mention has just been made, became Minister, and his civil administration proved as useful to the Saracen Empire as the military ability of his master. After

reducing the Caliph to insignificance at Bagdad, and successfully encountering the Emperor Romanus, Alp Arslan, the Saracen Cœur-de-Lion, was assassinated at Merv on December 25th, 1072. His vast dominions, of which the western boundary was the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern the Chinese Wall, devolved upon his son Malik Shah, and the Minister continued in power, with the title of Nizam-ul-Mulk, for nearly thirty years.

It is natural to inquire what so permanent and powerful a Minister did for the friends of his youth; and it is curious to find that he did so very little. The post of Chaubdar (macebearer or bedell) to the Sultan was obtained for Hassan, and Khayyam was provided with a small pension and permission to live in a garden-house in the suburbs of his native town of Naishapur. The result of this moderation, as the Minister doubtless called his treatment of his schoolfellows, was unhappy, though in his Testament he declares that Omar refused all other rewards. Hassan soon went off to Syria, joined the Ismaili heretics, and established the robber-hold of AllahMut among the mountains of North ern Persia, which was the centre of the sinister but short-lived power of the Assassins. The Nizam endeavoured to put an end to the order, but paid for his endeavours with his life. Meanwhile, in his milder way, Khayyam also broke with orthodoxy, lived on in his humble retreat a contented but settled despiser of the world, survived his niggardly Maecenas for nearly thirty years, and became the means to which that once mighty statesman is alone indebted for the remembrance of posterity. Man does not seem a very ideal being, yet we catch here and there a mark of the might of spiritual over material greatness.

We have now before us the elements of that society on which the criticism of Khayyam was to act as a partial solvent. Station and power were great but insecure: in the higher

places ruled pride and persecution : rank and command were with battles of the warrior and garments rolled in blood: the ferocious egotism of the natural man was accentuated, and gentle manners driven into the shade. We must picture to ourselves the poet in his garden, looking out on the wellwatered valley below Meshed, with vines and fruit-plots around, and a bright sky overhead assuaged by shadowy plane-trees, while streams lapsed softly through the meadowgrass. It was a retreat, yet with loopholes, for the neighbourhood of the town afforded some choice of society. Omar's hospitality was open to pleasant persons of both sexes-to all, indeed, but zealots. He was not one to confuse belief with faith: heterodoxy is as bad in his eyes as orthodoxy ; you will you may do what you will if be cheerful and undogmatic. He is the slave of freedom.

"To drink and revel and laugh is all my art, To smile at faith and unfaith my Faith's part :

I asked the bride what gift would win her love,

She answered, 'Give me but a cheerful heart.""

That he is ambitious, in the vulgar sense of sighing for the perishable advantages of wealth and station, no one can believe he may desire to influence his fellow creatures, but it is as a friend rather than as a master. For personal comfort, he looks not to luxury, but to love: not to the blind assurance of the bigot, but to the confidence of innocence and goodness.

"If in your heart the light of Love you plant (Whether the mosque or synagogue you haunt),

If in Love's court its name be registered, Hell it will fear not, Heaven it will not want.'

[ocr errors]

It has been thought that Khayyam was a Sufi, and only used the language of pleasure as a symbol for pantheistic aspiration. But he can be outspoken; and such questions as the following are neither equivocal nor ambiguous.

29

"This is the time for roses and repose Beside the stream that through the garden flows,

A friend or two, a lady rosy-cheeked, With wine-and none to hear the clergy prose. "Unless girls pour the wine the wine is naught, Without the music of the flute is naught:

Look as I may into the things of life, Mirth is the only good-the rest is naught. "The red wine in a festal cup is sweet,

With sound of lute and dulcimer is sweet:

A saint, to whom the wine-cup is not known,

He too-a thousand miles from us-is sweet."

Not but what he has his pious hours; for to nothing but true piety can we ascribe such thoughts as these. "Thou hast no way to enter the Dark Court, For not to mortals does it yield resort :

[ocr errors]

There is no rest but on the lap of earthWoe! that its riddle is so far from short!

Ah, brand! ah, brand! if all that thou canst earn

Be but to help the fires of Hell to burn,

Why wilt thou cry, 'Have mercy, Lord,

on me!'

Is it from such as thee that He will learn? "Of thy Creator's mercy do not hold Doubt, though thy crimes be great and manifold,

Nor think that, if thou die in sin to-day, He from thy bones His mercy will withhold.'

""

Yet, convinced as he is of the need of pardon, and not always sure (in his human diffidence) that his Lord is anything but a magnified Sultan, who exercises man with wilful and arbitrary caprice, he preserves his dignity in face of the appalling possibility.

"Although God's service has not been my care, Nor for His coming was my heart made fair, I still have hope to find the mercy-seat, Because I never wearied Him with prayer. "Am I a rebel? then His power is-Where? Is my heart dark? His light and glory— Where?

Doth He give Heaven for our obedience? 'Tis due. But then, His loving-kindness— Where?"

These speculations bring him to the old conclusion.

[ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

But that's what I could never understand:

If there were Hell for those who drink, then Heaven

Would be no fuller than one's hollow hand.

"With wine and music if our lives have glee, If grass beside the running brook wave free, Better than this esteem no quenched Hell: This is thy Heaven-if Heaven indeed there be.'

He is not sure whether, even on this side of the grave, perfect bliss is to be had; and in such uncertainty it would be folly to strive. But he is quite sure of the wisdom of savouring to the utmost the passing moment; and, like Horace, he makes the precariousness of joy a reason for enjoyment.

"Since life flies fast, what's bitter and what's sweet?

When death draws near, what matter field or street?

Drink wine; for after thee and me, the

moon

Her alternating course will oft repeat.

"I dreamed of an old man, who said, and frowned,

[ocr errors]

"The rose of bliss in sleep was never found; Why then anticipate the work of death? Drink rather sleep awaits thee in the ground.'

Ah, comrades! strengthen me with cups of
wine

Until my faded cheeks like rubies shine,
And bathe me in it after I am dead,
And weave my shroud with tendrils of the
vine."

But these contemplations, these delights could not always be taken, or did not always suffice. Post prandia Callirhoe like his European prototypes the Persian philosopher found woman essential to his scheme. His Paradise must never want an Eve with whom he could share alike his joys and his troubles.

"Clouds come, and sink upon the grass in rain,

Let wine s red roses make our moments fain; And let the verdure please our eyes today,

Fr: grass from our dust shall give joy again.

66

"Sweetheart, if Time a cloud on thee have

flung,

To think the breath must leave thee, now so young,

Sit here, upon the grass, a day or two, While yet no grass from thy dust shall have sprung

Long before thee and me were Night and
Morn:

For some great end the sky is round us
borne :

Upon this dust, ah, step with careful foot, Some beauty's eyeball here may lie forlorn. "This cup once loved, like me, a lovely girl, And sighed, entangled in a scented curl:

This handle, that you see upon its neck, Once wound itself about a neck of pearl."

It is to be feared that, like Anacreon, the Eastern poet found that, as old age drew on, the ladies turned to younger loves.

"Ah! that the raw should have the finished cake,

The immature the ripest produce take,

And eyes, that make the heart of man to beat,

Shine only for the boys' and eunuchs' sake."

But the things of Fate approach: no epicurism can do much to strip necessity of its stern aspect. Sin is sin, and the soul in the solitude of the dark valley turns to the inevitable with vague but trustful hope.

"His mercy being gained, what need we fear? His scrip being full, no journey makes me

fear:

If, by His clemency, my face be white, In no degree the Black Book will I fear.

"I warred in vain with Nature-what's the cure?

I suffer for mine actions-what's the cure?
I know God's mercy covers all my sin;
For shame that He has seen it-what's the
cure?

Yet, even here, science brings a message that is not unconsoling. He may pass, as an individual; but the moon will shine on others, and the grass be fair and odorous, and the very body that has known so much joy when it was his, will contribute to other joys hereafter.

"Is it not a shame, because on every side
Thy curious eyes are circumscribed and tied,
Pent in this dark and temporary cell,
In its poor bounds contented to abide?

« VorigeDoorgaan »