VI.

BYRON'S DELINEATION OF THE

SUPERMAN IN MANFRED

MANFRED was produced under the twofold influence of the majestic scenery of the Alps and of Goethe's "Faust." The third Act, besides, shows the impression made on Byron by Rome on his first visit to the Eternal City. During his journey in Switzerland in the year 1816, fragments of the first Part of Goethe's "Faust" were translated for him by a friend and must have produced a very profound impression on him. The Faust-like element in Byron's nature was undoubtedly powerfully stirred, and thus the impulse awakened to give independent and personal utterance to what had already been expressed for him, as it were, by another. The impression made on Byron by these fragments of "Faust" was a deeper one than he himself was afterwards willing to confess to, and was still further strengthened by the influence of the glorious Alpine scenery on his enthusiastically disposed mind. This twofold impression is plainly reflected in his dramatic poem "Manfred," Byron's highest and grandest work. In "Manfred" just as in Goethe's "Faust" and in the scenery of the Alps we find soft charm, beauty, and loveliness side by side with awful sublimity and grandeur. Manfred, like Faust and Hamlet, is the man of genius, the superman, whose enraptured eye takes in all the beau

ty of the world, and whose yearning for the highest, the perfect existence, for a divine life, is, nevertheless, so great that all the pleasures which this world can offer are incapable of filling his heart. But, like Faust, Manfred finds it impossible to attain perfect peace and wholly to merge himself in the divine. The earth with her powerful attraction fetters him and draws him down again as often as his soul, eagle-like, strives to soar towards heaven. But the boundless yearning in his heart for the perfect and the eternal preserves him from becoming base and completely absorbed in earthly vanity and nothingness, from becoming the sport and prey of the Evil One.

Thus through his æsthetic perception, through his fine feeling for the beautiful, there runs a vein of profound melancholy. The world that appears so glorious and sublime to him, is at the same time the scene of his sufferings and struggles. Standing on one of the highest summits of the Alps, and gazing with rapture on the marvellous prospect, Manfred exclaims,

"My mother Earth!

And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
That openest over all, and unto all

Art a delight thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever wherefore do I pause?

I feel the impulse - yet I do not plunge;
I see the peril - yet do not recede;

And my brain reels - and yet my foot is firm:
There is a power upon me which withholds,
And makes it my fatality to live,

If it be life to wear within myself
This barrenness of spirit, and to be
My own soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself

The last infirmity of evil. Ay,

Thou wingéd and cloud-cleaving minister

[An eagle passes.

Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,

Well may'st thou swoop so near me - I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above,
With a pervading vision. - Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world!

How glorious in its action and itself!

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence, make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our mortality predominates,

And men are - what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,
[The Shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard.
The natural music of the mountain reed -
For here the patriarchal days are not
A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air,
Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;
My soul would drink those echoes. Oh that I were

The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment - born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!"

These words plainly show how intensely the beauty of the world was felt by Manfred, how strongly his feeling for the perfection of outward appearance was developed, how deeply his mode of looking on things was inspired by genius, in analogy with the aesthetic perceptions of Faust who, during his walk with Wagner, gives such highly poetical expression to his admiration of the setting sun. Hamlet's words in painting the splendour of the world to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bear the same character; he speaks of "this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire."

An intense feeling for the beauty of nature, however, includes a profound sorrow for the imperfection and frailty of human nature. The very appreciation of divine beauty, of the perfection of outside appearance, awakens a longing for inner perfection, for the perfection of thought and desire, that is, for the highest development of one's whole existence, for the highest life. In contrast with the longed-for ideal, the imperfection of reality exerts a doubly painful influence on the mind. Hence it is that the enjoyment called forth by the contemplation of great beauty is so often accompanied by sorrow, the feeling of a hidden want. The happiness and rapture with which the sight of a fair object fills us, then combine with this sorrow to form the feeling which we call melancholy. Great beauty produces in us a sense of joy and of sorrow simultaneously, and a Venus of Milo, or a violin concerto of Beethoven, will occasionally touch

us so deeply that we cannot refrain from tears. We are all of us, more or less, Fausts, Manfreds, and Hamlets; in all of us is present, more or less consciously, a reaching out towards that which is perfect, a yearning for the highest form of existence, and when we see or hear anything perfect or beautiful, this longing swells so as to arrest the beating of our hearts, and brings tears to our eyes. Once when Heinrich Heine went out for the first time after a long illness and entered the Louvre, he broke down sobbing before the statue of the Venus of Milo. The words of Narcissus in Brachvogel's Drama of the same name have always peculiarly touched me: "O Yearning, Yearning, it is thou that holdest the universe together, thou art indeed the best part of life. Ah, he who is no longer capable of Yearning is fit for death, fit for the corruption of the grave!" Aristotle made a similar remark more than two thousand years ago: men of genius are said to have suffered from melancholy." But melancholy is the expression of a profound and unsatisfied yearning.

"All

This discord between the longing for a more perfect existence and one's own imperfection, specially realised at the sight of some beautiful and sublime creation, causes Manfred to combine with his admiration of the glorious world the expression of his deep sorrow at his own imperfection: "How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself! But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, half dust, half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar, with our mix'd essence, make a conflict of its elements, and breathe the breath of degradation and of pride, contending with low wants and lofty will, till our mortality predominates, and men are what they name not to themselves, and trust not to each other."