LITERATURE and LIFE

Otago Witness, Issue 4033, 30 June 1931, Page 64

LITERATURE and LIFE

TO AN OLD BOOK.

You’re old, dear lonely volume, Your youthful days are fled, And all your old-time splendour— That by some thinker’s bed Or on some student’s bookshelf Once shone—like him, is dead. Perhaps, when times were pressing. He starved from lack of pelf And took you very fondly From your place upon the shelf And sold you—selling, so it seemed, A portion of himself. Then in a dealer’s window Or on a hawker’s stand You lost the beauty that was yours When your designer’s hand Had shaped and made you what you were— A credit to your land. And then, dear old campaigner. You felt the cruel knocks Of Fortune that no longer smiles! They put you in a box. To sell you—just for what you’d fetch — Among the other crocks. When you were young and clean and fresh Your leaves did not contain A paragraph or sentence more Or but a single grain More truth than now, dear relic, Of a long-departed brain. And as I hold you in my hand I see that even you Can teach a lesson by your life To all us mortals who Reach thoughtless hands to what is bright And beautiful and new. . . . —Clifford Witting, In the Dark Horse. THE GREAT AND THE LITTLE. There are deeps of Time too vast for mind to search. O’er whose wild wastes imagination's dove Flies, and can find no bough whereon to perch. And, desolate, wings the empty skies above: Uncounted myriads have lived and died, Nursing a pain where useless was a pain. For hopeless love, and loss, and wounded pride; Why should they all have tortured been in vain? Through his great tube the astronomer tonight Is watching suns so distant from the earth The rays that reach his eye began their flight Before our hankering species came to birth : Infinity’s all around, above, below, Oh, why then lie awake and suffer so? —J. C. Squire, in the London Mercury. EDWARD FITZGERALD. The literary fame of Edward FitzGerald rests almost entirely on his “ Omar Khayyam.” He wrote many books, but all are forgotten with the exception of that single supreme poem which has made his name immortal. Everyone knows the origin of FitzGerald’s “ Omar Khayyam—that it is a free translation, or paraphrase, of an original composition written by the ancient Persian .poet Omar Khayyam, who lived eight centuries ago. FitzGerald had studied Oriental poetry, and it was a friend who found, in the Bodleian library, Omars rare manuscript, written on yellow paper “ with purpleblack ink profusely powdered with gold,” and gave it to him.. Had it not been that Fitz Gerald had something of the temperament of old Omar the world would have been the poorer without the possession of these beautiful, glamorous, haunting stanzas of Fitz Gerald’s. In Omar there was something strangely familiar to FitzGerald’s own temperament; be wrote “Omar breathes a sort of Consolation to me.” Mr A. C. Benson, in his Life of Fitz Gerald, lias pictured the two men:— Omar was a sentimentalist, and a lover of beauty, both human and natural : so was Fitz Gerald. Omar tended to linger over golden memories of the past, and was acutely alive to the pathos of sweet things that have an ending: and such was FitzGerald. Omar was penetrated with a certain dark philosophy, the philosophy of the human spirit at bay, when all refuge has failed ; and this was the case with FitzGerald. The result was that out of the ore which was afforded him. Fitz Gerald, by this time a practised craftsman without a subject, was enabled to chase and chisel his delicate stanzas, like little dainty vessels of pure gold. Ho brought to the task a rich and stately vocabulary, and a style adapted to solemn and somewhat rhetorical musings of a philosophical kind. Fitz Gerald’s love of slow-moving verse adorned by beautiful touches of natural observation and of pathetic presentment stood him in good stead.

Ah, fill the Cup:—what boots it to repeat How Time is slipping underneath our Feet: Unborn to-morrow, and dead yesterday, Why fret about them if to-day be sweet! The Moving Finger writes ; and having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line. Nor all thy .Tears wash out a Word of it. Alas, that Spring should vanish with the . Rose! That Youth’s sweet-scented Manuscript should close!. The Nightingale that in the Branches sang. Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows! Omar was- a true-poet, and a man. it seems, of scholarly-.tastes; he enjoyed

a large pension granted to him by the Sultan’s Vizier. It was as an astronomer and mathematician that he was known to the Western world until Fitz Gerald by his “ translation ” of his “ Rubaiyat ” revealed him as the poet. Despite that some critics claim him as a mystic, shadowing in allegorical language the Deity under various figures, he was simply the material Epicurean that FitzGerald took him for. He was the poet of Agnosticism, and only diverted himself with the speculative problems of Life and Destiny. He was.no poet whose inspiration sprang from deep intuitions and spiritual ecstasies. He was merely wistful in looking back upon life, youth, and strength, and a goodly world. The joy of life and the sensuous pleasures of material being had thrilled Omar; stirred too by a sense of life’s suffering and anxieties, and the transitory nature of everything:— He could not adopt the view that because these delights are transitory, therefore they must be resolutely avoided. Rather he clung to them, in the spirit of the later poet: — But oh, the very reason why I clasp them, is because they die. That these things should be so sweet and yet so brief was to Omar, as to Fitz Gerald, the heart of the mystery ; not a thought to be banished or to be replaced by some faroff' hope, but a thought to be dealt with, :o be wreathed with flowers, and to be made musical, if that might be. Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter garment of repentance fling; The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter—and the Bird is on the wing. Mr A. 0. Benson’s searching study of the Persian poet Omar (in his Life of Fitz Gerald) is very interesting, and doubtless a true picture. To read it is to get au understanding of both poets, with their moods and philosophy; it helps also to a better appreciation of “ Omar Khayyam ”:— All is vanity ; that is the low cry of the tired heart when the buoyant strength of youth dies away, and when the brave stjows of the glittering world, the harsh inspiriting music of affairs, the ambition to speak and strive, to sway hearts and minds or destinies, fade into the. darkness of the end. Against the assaults of this nameless fear men hold out what shields they can; the shield of honour, the shield of labour, and, best of all, the shield of faith amid the glow and colour of Oriental scenes, is likened to a “ magic shadow-show,” glamour and enchantment in the long twilight,, when a low large moon is hanging over perfumed gardens, where the guests, with song, wine-cup. and rosy garlands, sit “ star-scattered ” on the grass. Ah, Moon of my Delight, who know’st no wane, The Moon, of Heav’n is rising once again; How oft hereafter rising- shall she look Through this same Garden after me —in vain ! And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass Among the Guests star-scatter’d on the Grass, And in thy Joyous Errand reach the Spot Where I made one —turn down an empty Glass I

Edward Fitz Gerald was born near Woodbridge in Suffolk in 1809; here he spent most oFhis life, almost in seclusion and privacy. He was of independent means and indulged the leisurely kind of life he loved —and lamented. He lias been called “ the Shadow-haunted dreamer.” Mr Benson, speaking of his student days, says:—

He pottered about, read such classical authors as he liked, in a desultory way; occupied himself with water-colour drawing, music, and poetry. He cared nothing for the political and social aspirations which set his companions aglow; he walked, talked, strslled into his friends’ rooms; he smoked, drank coffee, sang songs, and exchanged sketches with Thackeray. He had plenty of money, but no expensive tastes. His wardrobe was in a perpetual condition of dilapidation. insomuch that when his majestic mother rattled into Cambridge, with her yellow ccach and four black horses, like a fairy queen, and sent a man-servant to acquaint Fitz Gerald of her arrival, he had no boots in which to attend her summons.

He took his degree at 21 years of age, “and_ then began a vague, drifting, leisurely existence which ended only with his death.” He had sufficient money and never adopted any profession. No one can say in what way Fitz Gerald's literary work might have been affected had he been forced to work for a livelihood. Ho supinely yielded to Fate, which had given him a dreaming, passive temperament; a retiring disposition, melancholy, and never able to pull himself together; entirely unconventional and indifferent to all mundane traditions.' In his earlier years we have -glimpses of him wandering about ‘like the scholar-gipsy.’ Here is a picture of him, at about the age of 30:—

Feeling a desire to have a den of his own (he had a large house at his disposal) he took up his abode in a thatclie;! lodge or cottage containing two rooms, standing by the gate of Boulgo Park, Here, with Shakespeare’s bust in a recess, with a cat, a dog, and a parrot called “ Beauty. Bob,” -he began what he called a very pleasant Robinson Crusoe sort of life. He was waited upon by an old couple.' John Faicrs. a labourer on the estate, a Waterloo veteran, and Mrs Faiers, a red-armed, vain, and snuff-taking lady, with a flower-trimmed bonnet. FitzGerald installed his bonks and pictures in the cottage. The place was a scene of desperate confusion. There were books everywhere ; pictures on easels ; music, pipes, sticks lying on tab'es or on the piano—a barrel of beer provided the means of simple conviviality. Here Fitz Gerald would sit.

unkempt and unshaven, in dressing-gown and slippers, or moon about in the garden. He strolled about the neighbourhood, calling on his friends; sometimes, but rare.y, he went to church, noting the toadstools'that grew in the chancel; and led a thoroughly indolent life, though with dreams of" literary ambition.

Thus, we may think of Fitz Gerald at work—exceptionally fastidious at that — on his “ Omar ' Khayyam ” and other compositions. As years went by, makingmany friends, for he had a passion for friendships; among them Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, Spedding, George Borrow, and a host of others. It is related that Tennyson, when asked at the end of his life which of his friends he had loved the best, replied, “ Why, old Fitz, to be sure.”

All his friends had the greatest' personal regard for him and his wonderful critical powers; he was a man of great intellectual power. He was lovable, whimsical, and eccentric; a solitary man, spending much of his time with the boatmen and his little yacht on the River Deben, indifferent to the practical affairs of ‘life, abhorring conventional things, fitful, irritable, desultory, shabby, and very untidy in his personal habits. In nothing was Fitz Gerald more unfortunate than in his marriage in middle life; a few days of married life disillusioned him. He had married Miss Barton on a promise, it seems, given to her parents. In six months they had separated, each to go their separate ways; he. to resume his pensive, brooding life; she to her worldly social life. Sometimes they exchanged letters, but. they never met again.

The curious story of the first publication of “ Dinar Khayyam ” has been often told, and it would be superfluous to repeat it at length. It had been submil'

to Fraser’s Magazine; as the poem did not appear after two years Fitz Gerald demanded its return. He then, at his own expense, published it at five shillings; it had no sale, and Quaritch, the bookseller, put it in the penny box outside his shop. By a rare stroke of fortune Rossetti bought a copy and, bursting with enthusiasm, sent his friends to buy it. And so its boundless fame began. It is not difficult to understand the mood in which Fitz Gerald spent much time and care over his “ Omar Khayyam,” altering, retouching the quatrains again and again. No fewer than four editions appeared in his lifetime, containing many variations. Fitz Gerald's was the mood of Omar:—

All Fitz Gerald's moments of happiness ’were clouded by the thought that all was passing, moving, changing. In his case this never turns to bitterness, but it turns to a mournful patience :— One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste, One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste — The Stars are setting and the' Caravan Starts for the Dawn of Nothing—Oh, make haste!

Yet it is this very mood that gives FitzGerald his sad and strange power over the mind, for these are tlfings that all have felt and have experienced; and what matters, after all, in a poet is not that the thing should be profitable, but that it should be true, so long as it.is also made beautiful. For disguise it as we will by activities and by pleasures, we live under a shadow o’ doom. We may beguile it. we may banish it, but the tolling of the bell that heralds the end beats in our ears ; and we can but live soberly and innocently, taking all into account.

A settled sadness, a shadow of weariness marked Fitz Gerald’s declining years. He died suddenly in 1883 at the age of 74 when on a visit to friends at Merton Rectory, Norfolk; when a servant went to call him in the morning it was found that he had passed away in the W.-G., in John o’ London’s Weekly.