“ love turned to hate ” has instigated the murderers to the deed,
hovers outside the chamber with Gunnar, her husband, and
listens to the wail of her rival who is weltering in Sigurd's blood.
At the sound of that wail Brynhild laughs.“
Then said Gunnar to her, Thou laughest not because thy heart
roots are gladded, or else why doth thy vzsage wax so wan? "1
This is of course very fine; but, as any two characters in that
dramatic situation might have done that dramatic business,
fine as it is- as the saga 1nan gives us the general and not the
particular-the vision at work is not absolute but relative at its
very highest exercise. But our examples will be more interesting
if taken from English poets. In Coleridge's “ Ancient
Mariner" we find an immense amount of relative vision of so
high a kind that at first it seems absolute vision. When the
ancient mariner, in his narrative to the wedding guest, reaches
the slaying of the albatross, he stops, he can proceed no farther,
and the wedding guest exclaims:-
“ God save thee, Ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus !
Why look'st thou so? ” “ With my cross-bow I shot the albatross."
But there are instances of relative vision-especially in the great master of absolute vision, Shakespeare-which are higher still-so high indeed that not to relegate them to absolute vision seems at first sight pedantic. Such an example is the famous speech of Lady Macbeth in the second act, where she says:-
" Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done 't.”
Marvellously subtle as is this speech, it will be found, if analysed, that it expresses the general human soul rather than any one special human soul. Indeed Leigh Hunt records thei case of a bargeman who, charged with robbing a sleeping traveller in his barge, used in his confession almost identical words-“ Had he not looked like my father as he slept, I should have killed as well as robbed him.” Again, the thousand and one cases (to be found in every literature) where a character, overwhelmed by some sudden surprise or terror, asks whether the action going on is that of a dream or of real life, must all, on severe analysis, be classed under relative rather than under absolute vision-even such a fine speech, for instance, as that where Pericles, on discovering Marina, exclaims" This is the rarest dream that e'er dull sleep Did mock sad fools withai ";
or as that in the third act of Titus Andronicus, where Titus, beholding his mutilated and ruined daughter, asks:- ” When will this fearful slumber have an end? ” even here, we say, the humanity rendered is general and not particular, the vision at work is relative and not absolute. The poet, as representing the whole human race, throwing himself into the imagined situation, gives us what general humanity would have thought, felt, said or done in that situation, not what one particular individual and he alone would have thought, felt, said or done.
Now what we have called absolute vision operates in a very different way. So vividly is the poet's mere creative instinct at work that the ego sinks into passivity-becomes insensitive to all impressions other than those dictated by the vision-by the “divinity ” which has “seized the soul.” Shakespeare is full of examples. Take the scene in the first act of H amtet where Hamlet hears for the first time, from Horatio, that his father's ghost hau11ts the castle. Having by short sharp questions elicited the salient facts attending the apparition, Hamlet says, “ I would I had been there.” To this Horatio makes the very commonplace reply, “ It would have much amazed you.” Note the marvellously dramatic reply of Hamlet -“ Very like, very like! Stayed it long?” Suppose that this dialogue had been attempted by any other poet than a true dramatist, or by a true dramatist in any other mood than his very highest, Hamlet, on hearing Horatio's commonplace remarks upon phenomena which to Hamlet were more subversive
1 Translation of Morris and Magnusson.
of the very order of the universe than if a dozen stars had fallen from their courses, would have burst out with: “ Amazed me Z” and then would have followed an eloquent declamation about the “ amazing ” nature of the phenomena and their effect upon him. But so entirely has the poet become Hamlet, so completely has “the divinity seized his soul, ” that all language seems equally weak for expressing the turbulence within the soul of the character, and Hamlet exclaims in a sort of meditative irony, “Very like, very like I ” It is exactly this one man Hamlet, and no other man, who in this situation would have so expressed himself. Charles Knight has some pertinent remarks upon this speech of Hamlet; yet he misses its true value, and treats it from the general rather than from the particular side. Instances of absolute vision in Shakespeare crowd upon us; but we can find room for only one other. In the pathetic speech of Othello, just before he kills himself, he declares himself to be:-
” One not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme.
Consider the marvellous timbre of the word “ wrought, ” as coming from a character like Othello. When writing this passage, especially when writing this word, the poet had become entirely the simple English soldier-hero, as the Moor really is-he had become Othello, looking upon himself “ as not easily jealous, ” whereas he was “ wrought ” and “ perplexed in the extreme ” by tricks which Hamlet would have seen through in a moment. While all other forms of poetic art can be vitalized by relative vision, there are two forms (and these the greatest) in which absolute vision is demanded, viz. the drama, and in Dramatic a lesser degree the Greek epic, especially the Iliad. Imagina-This will be seen more plainly perhaps if we now “U”vary our definitions and call relative vision egoistic imagination; absolute vision dramatic imagination.
Very much of the dramatist's work can be, and in fact is, effected by egoistic imagination, while true dramatic imagination is only called into play on comparatively rare occasions. Not only fine but sublime dramatic poems have been written, however, where the vitalizing power has been entirely that of lyrical imagination. We need only instance the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, the most sublime poem in the world. The dramas of Shelley too, like those of Victor Hugo and Calderon, are informed entirely by egoistic imagination. In all these splendid poems the dramatist places himself in the imagined situation, or at most he places there some typical conception of universal humanity. There is not in all Calderon any such display of dramatic imagination as we get in that wonderful speech of Priam's in the last book of the Iliad, to which we have before alluded. There is not in the Cenci such a display of dramatic imagination as we get in the sudden burst of anger from the spoilt child of gods and men, Achilles (anger which alarms the hero himself as much as it alarms Priam), when the prattle of the old man has carried him too far. It may seem bold to say that the drama of Goethe is informed by egoistic imagination only-assuredly the prison-scene in Faust is unsurpassed in the literature's of the world. Yet, perhaps, it could be shown of the passion and the pathos of Gretchen throughout the entire play that it betrays a female character general and typical rather tlian individual and particular.
The nature of this absolute vision or true dramatic imagination is easily seen if we compare the dramatic work of writers witliout absolute vision, such as Calderon, Goethe, Ben Jonson, Fletcher and others, with the dramatic work of Aeschylus and of Shakespeare. While of the former group it may be said that each poet skilfully works his imagination, of Aeschylus and Shakespeare it must be said that each in his highest dramatic mood does not work, but is worked by his imagination. Note, for instance, how the character of Clytaemnestra grows and glows under the hand of Aeschylus. The poet of the Odyssey had distinctly said that Aegisthus, her paramour, had struck the blow, but the dramatist, having imagined the greatest tragic female in all poetry, finds it impossible to let a man like Aegisthus assist such a woman in a homicide so daring and so momentous. And
