Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
_Epicurus._ And extremely bad ones, if all followed me in retiring
from the offices of magistracy and of war. Having seen that the most
sensible men are the most unhappy, I could not but examine the causes
of it; and, finding that the same sensibility to which they are
indebted for the activity of their intellect is also the restless
mover of their jealousy and ambition, I would lead them aside from
whatever operates upon these, and throw under their feet the terrors
their imagination has created. My philosophy is not for the populace
nor for the proud: the ferocious will never attain it; the gentle will
embrace it, but will not call it mine. I do not desire that they
should: let them rest their heads upon that part of the pillow which
they find the softest, and enjoy their own dreams unbroken.
_Leontion._ The old are all against you, Epicurus, the name of
pleasure is an affront to them: they know no other kind of it than
that which has flowered and seeded, and of which the withered stems
have indeed a rueful look.
_Epicurus._ Unhappily the aged are retentive of long-acquired maxims,
and insensible to new impressions, whether from fancy or from truth:
in fact, their eyes blend the two together. Well might the poet tell
us:
Fewer the gifts that gnarled Age presents
To elegantly-handed Infancy,
Than elegantly-handed Infancy
Presents to gnarled Age. From both they drop;
The middle course of life receives them all,
Save the light few that laughing Youth runs off with,
Unvalued as a mistress or a flower.
_Leontion._ Since, in obedience to your institutions, O Epicurus, I
must not say I am angry, I am offended at least with Theophrastus for
having so misrepresented your opinions, on the necessity of keeping
the mind composed and tranquil, and remote from every object and every
sentiment by which a painful sympathy may be excited. In order to
display his elegance of language, he runs wherever he can lay a
censure on you, whether he believes in its equity or not.
_Epicurus._ This is the case with all eloquent men, and all
disputants. Truth neither warms nor elevates them, neither obtains for
them profit nor applause.
_Ternissa._ I have heard wise remarks very often and very warmly
praised.
_Epicurus._ Not for the truth in them, but for the grace, or because
they touched the spring of some preconception or some passion. Man is
a hater of truth, a lover of fiction.
Theophrastus is a writer of many acquirements and some shrewdness,
usually judicious, often somewhat witty, always elegant; his thoughts
are never confused, his sentences are never incomprehensible. If
Aristoteles thought more highly of him than his due, surely you ought
not to censure Theophrastus with severity on the supposition of his
rating me below mine; unless you argue that a slight error in a short
sum is less pardonable than in a longer. Had Aristoteles been living,
and had he given the same opinion of me, your friendship and perhaps
my self-love might have been wounded; for, if on one occasion he spoke
too favourably, he never spoke unfavourably but with justice. This is
among the indications of orderly and elevated minds; and here stands
the barrier that separates them from the common and the waste. Is a
man to be angry because an infant is fretful? Is a philosopher to
unpack and throw away his philosophy, because an idiot has tried to
overturn it on the road, and has pursued it with gibes and ribaldry?
_Leontion._ Theophrastus would persuade us that, according to your
system, we not only should decline the succour of the wretched, but
avoid the sympathies that poets and historians would awaken in us.
Probably for the sake of introducing some idle verses, written by a
friend of his, he says that, following the guidance of Epicurus, we
should altogether shun the theatre; and not only when Prometheus and
Oedipus and Philoctetes are introduced, but even when generous and
kindly sentiments are predominant, if they partake of that tenderness
which belongs to pity. I know not what Thracian lord recovers his
daughter from her ravisher; such are among the words they exchange:
_Father._
Insects that dwell in rotten reeds, inert
Upon the surface of a stream or pool,
Then rush into the air on meshy vans,
Are not so different in their varying lives
As we are.--Oh! what father on this earth,
Holding his child's cool cheek within his palms
And kissing his fair front, would wish him man?--
Inheritor of wants and jealousies,
Of labour, of ambition, of distress,
And, cruellest of all the passions, lust.
Who that behold me, persecuted, scorned,
A wanderer, e'er could think what friends were mine,
How numerous, how devoted? with what glee
Smiled my old house, with what acclaim my courts
Rang from without whene'er my war-horse neighed?
_Daughter._
Thy fortieth birthday is not shouted yet
By the young peasantry, with rural gifts
And nightly fires along the pointed hills,
Yet do thy temples glitter with grey hair
Scattered not thinly: ah, what sudden change!
Only thy voice and heart remain the same:
No! that voice trembles, and that heart (I feel),
While it would comfort and console me, breaks.
_Epicurus._ I would never close my bosom against the feelings of
humanity; but I would calmly and well consider by what conduct of life
they may enter it with the least importunity and violence. A
consciousness that we have promoted the happiness of others, to the
uttermost of our power, is certain not only to meet them at the
threshold, but to bring them along with us, and to render them
accurate and faithful prompters, when we bend perplexedly over the
problem of evil figured by the tragedians. If there were more of pain
than of pleasure in the exhibitions of the dramatist, no man in his
senses would attend them twice. All the imitative arts have delight
for the principal object: the first of these is poetry; the highest of
poetry is tragic.
_Leontion._ The epic has been called so.
_Epicurus._ Improperly; for the epic has much more in it of what is
prosaic. Its magnitude is no argument. An Egyptian pyramid contains
more materials than an Ionic temple, but requires less contrivance,
and exhibits less beauty of design. My simile is yet a defective one;
for a tragedy must be carried on with an unbroken interest, and,
undecorated by loose foliage or fantastic branches, it must rise,
like the palm-tree, with a lofty unity. On these matters I am unable
to argue at large, or perhaps correctly; on those, however, which I
have studied and treated, my terms are so explicit and clear, that
Theophrastus can never have misunderstood them. Let me recall to your
attention but two axioms.
Abstinence from low pleasures is the only means of meriting or of
obtaining the higher.
Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness
in another.
_Leontion._ Explain to me, then, O Epicurus, why we suffer so much
from ingratitude.
_Epicurus._ We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we
suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says, 'I did not
deserve this from him'; Reason, while she says it, smoothens her brow
at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit me also, like Theophrastus,
to borrow a few words from a poet.
_Ternissa._ Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to you, and
may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may go to the theatre then;
for she loves it.
_Epicurus._ Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene; and
you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering, and
leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you appear so graceful
to me, O Ternissa--no, not even after this walk do you--as when I saw
you blow a fly from the forehead of Philoctetes in the propylea. The
wing, with which Sophocles and the statuary represent him, to drive
away the summer insects in his agony, had wearied his flaccid arm,
hanging down beside him.
_Ternissa._ Do you imagine, then, I thought him a living man?
_Epicurus._ The sentiment was both more delicate and more august from
being indistinct. You would have done it, even if he _had_ been a
living man; even if he could have clasped you in his arms, imploring
the deities to resemble you in gentleness, you would have done it.
_Ternissa._ He looked so abandoned by all, and so heroic, yet so
feeble and so helpless! I did not think of turning around to see if
any one was near me; or else, perhaps----
_Epicurus._ If you could have thought of looking around, you would no
longer have been Ternissa. The gods would have transformed you for it
into some tree.
_Leontion._ And Epicurus had been walking under it this day, perhaps.
_Epicurus._ With Leontion, the partner of his sentiments. But the walk
would have been earlier or later than the present hour; since the
middle of the day, like the middle of certain fruits, is good for
nothing.
_Leontion._ For dinner, surely?
_Epicurus._ Dinner is a less gratification to me than to many: I dine
alone.
_Ternissa._ Why?
_Epicurus._ To avoid the noise, the heat, and the intermixture both of
odours and of occupations. I cannot bear the indecency of speaking
with a mouth in which there is food. I careen my body (since it is
always in want of repair) in as unobstructed a space as I can, and I
lie down and sleep awhile when the work is over.
_Leontion._ Epicurus! although it would be very interesting, no doubt,
to hear more of what you do after dinner--[_Aside to him._] now don't
smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a single word--yet I would
rather hear a little about the theatre, and whether you think at last
that women should frequent it; for you have often said the contrary.
_Epicurus._ I think they should visit it rarely; not because it
excites their affections, but because it deadens them. To me nothing
is so odious as to be at once among the rabble and among the heroes,
and, while I am receiving into my heart the most exquisite of human
sensations, to feel upon my shoulder the hand of some inattentive and
insensible young officer.
_Leontion._ Oh, very bad indeed! horrible!
_Ternissa._ You quite fire at the idea.
_Leontion._ Not I: I don't care about it.
_Ternissa._ Not about what is very bad indeed? quite horrible?
_Leontion._ I seldom go thither.
_Epicurus._ The theatre is delightful when we erect it in our own
house or arbour, and when there is but one spectator.
_Leontion._ You must lose the illusion in great part, if you only read
the tragedy, which I fancy to be your meaning.
_Epicurus._ I lose the less of it. Do not imagine that the illusion
is, or can be, or ought to be, complete. If it were possible, no
Phalaris or Perillus could devise a crueller torture. Here are two
imitations: first, the poet's of the sufferer; secondly, the actor's
of both: poetry is superinduced. No man in pain ever uttered the
better part of the language used by Sophocles. We admit it, and
willingly, and are at least as much illuded by it as by anything else
we hear or see upon the stage. Poets and statuaries and painters give
us an adorned imitation of the object, so skilfully treated that we
receive it for a correct one. This is the only illusion they aim at:
this is the perfection of their arts.
_Leontion._ Do you derive no pleasure from the representation of a
consummate actor?
_Epicurus._ High pleasure; but liable to be overturned in an instant:
pleasure at the mercy of any one who sits beside me.
* * * * *
_Leontion._ In my treatise I have only defended your tenets against
Theophrastus.