Vondel's Lucifer

Surely, the emotion of forgiving compassion was never combined with a more musical sorrow. Here, as in all of Vondel's lyrics, there is a perfect harmony between the form and the thought.

FLOOD AND FLAME

At the opening of the last act, Rafael is discovered on the battlements of Heaven. He is in a fever of anxiety to learn the result of the contest, and peers into the empyrean for some sign of a messenger from the field,

"Where armies reel on slopes with lightning crowned."

The glad sounds of approaching triumph fall on his ear. Across the pure hyaline now dart meteoric flashes of light. Each shield of the victorious legions dazzles like a sun:

"Each shield-sun streams a day of triumph forth."

Far in advance of the returning battalions speeds Uriel, "Angel with swiftest wing," bearing the message of victory. With incredible velocity—for he is winged with good news—he flashes through the air, in his "aery wheels" exultingly waving his "flaming, keen, two-edged sword." He has reached the serene altitude of Heaven. He has gained the farthest wall. He is at hand.

Rafael is full of eagerness to hear the details of the fight, the particulars of "this the first campaign in Heaven." Uriel then, "with sequence just," gives a vivid account of the preparations for battle, beginning with the moment when Gabriel first informed Michael of the defection of the Stadtholder.

He tells how the countless loyal legions, at their chief's command, deploy themselves in battle line until they form in serried rank

"One firmTrilateral host that like a triangleThrust out its edges sharp upon the eye."

Michael, the Field-marshal, stands in the heart of this triangle, towering high above his fellows, the personification of judgment,

"With the glowOf lurid lightnings in his lifted hand."

Splendid is the picture of the infernal host; their squadrons,

"Battalion on battalion, riders paleOn dim mysterious chargers,"

advance in the form of a crescent moon. Belzebub and Belial command the two horns of this formidable array,

"Both standing there in shining panoply,Vying in splendors grand."

Lucifer himself holds the centre, "the point strategic" of his army, while Apollion behind him bears on high the lofty standard with its streaming morning-star.

Rafael, in his excitement, occasionally interrupts this graphic description with exclamations of wonder, and, as the story of the terrible conflict progresses, also with occasional cries of horror and of pity. Great art is shown in the introduction of these exclamatory pauses into the long account of the battle scene. It not only gives the narrator time to get breath, but voices the feelings of the listener, and intensifies his suspense.

Then follows a brilliant account of the Stadtholder. As the rebel chief is the protagonist, and as the seditious angels furnish the subject matter for the drama, the poet has artistically described them at great length. At last the two armies confront each other. We are now made to see how they

"Panted for strife and for destruction flamed."

Then follows the famous battle scene, which must be read in the poet's own thrilling words. Here is action in every line, a battle stroke in each word.

After the first onset, the celestial legions begin by circling wheels to soar aloft, whence, like a falcon, they shall soon precipitate themselves upon their enemies, who, having also risen, but with heavier sail, are likened to a flock of drowsing herons, thrown into sudden consternation by the sight of their dreaded foe.

Uriel now gives a striking picture of the grand perspective above—the celestial legions, high in the empyrean, arrayed like a shining triangle, the symbol of the Trinity; far beneath, the infernal phalanx, gleaming like a crescent on the turbaned brow of night, the sign of the Turk, whose ferocious hordes, even in Vondel's time, were yet thundering at the gate of Christendom. Thus each army hangs:

"Suspended like a silent cloud,Full weighted 'gainst the balanced air."

Again the celestial triangle, with terrific force, crashes into the infernal half-moon, and flames of brimstone, red and blue, flash far out into the sky. Thunderbolt on thunderbolt, unchained, leap with angry roar into the surging horde, leaving havoc, ruin, and desolation in their lurid wake. The centre of the half-moon begins to break; and its pointed horns nearly meet together behind the resistless triangle.

Lucifer performs wonderful feats of valor. High on his blazing chariot, he is a conspicuous figure. His fierce team, "the lion and the dragon blue," symbolic of pride and envy, enraged by the battle-strokes rained upon their starry backs, fly forward with fearful strides—the lion, with dreadful bellows, biting and rending; while his terrible mate shoots pest-provoking poisons from his frothy tongue, and,

"… Raving, fills the airWith smoke blown from his nostrils far and wide."

On every side the infernal chief is surrounded by his enemies. They try to overpower him with mere numbers. He parries every stroke, or breaks their force upon his shield. He then waves his battle-axe aloft to fell God's glowing banner, when Michael, clad in glittering armor, "like a god amid a ring of suns," suddenly confronts him.

The Archangel sternly calls upon the rebel Prince to surrender. But Lucifer, unmoved, three times with his war-axe strives to cleave the diamond shield of Michael, wherein blazed God's most holy name. The axe rebounds and shivers into fragments; and we cannot but sympathize with the Archrebel, who is now in a bad plight indeed. The grand catastrophe to which the swift current of his wickedness has been bearing him is at last at hand, reserved with consummate art until the middle of this act.

Michael lifts his terrible right hand, and through the helmet and head of his disarmed but yet unconquered foe he smites his lightnings, cleaving unto his very eyes. The force of this blow is such that Lucifer is hurled from his chariot, which follows him downward, whirling round and round in its descent:

"Thus lion, dragon, driver, all plunge down."

In vain the fierce swarms of warring rebels attempt to stay their chief. Uriel engages Apollion, and succeeds in wresting from him the rebel banner with its morning-star. Belzebub and Belial still fight on; but their legions are all confused. The crescent has now become a disorganized mob,

"And o'er them fell destruction rolls its flood."

In vain Apollion comes back into the field, reinforced by the monsters from the firmament of Heaven, which may be supposed to typify, as Vondel says in his preface, the abuse of the forces of nature by the Devil to effect his evil designs.

Orion, shrieking until the very air grows faint, strives to crush the head of the assault, that

"… Heedless ofOrion or his club, moves grandly on."

The Northern Bears stand upon their haunches to oppose their brutish strength. The Hydra gapes with poison-breathing throats. But, unmindful of all these, the triangle still advances. Numerous other episodes, in the meanwhile, are happening along the line of battle; but the suspense is at last over. The victory of the celestial angels is a glorious fact.

Rafael now gives utterance to exclamations of praise, and asks Uriel concerning the effect of his defeat on the fallen Archangel. Uriel then recounts his terrible punishment, and relates how his splendid beauty was now become, in falling, a complication of seven dreadful monsters, typifying the seven deadly sins. That beast, says the narrator,

"Doth shrink to view its own deformity,And veils with darkling mists its Gorgon face."

The fate of the protagonist being known, Rafael next wishes to learn what became of the rest of the rebel host. Then follows the account of the tumultuous rout, wherein the fleeing hordes, in their descent to Hell, also undergo a metamorphosis into the forms of strange and uncouth monsters.

At this point the triumphant Michael himself approaches with his victorious legions, laden with glorious plunder. The celestial choristers, strewing their laurel leaves, accompanied by the sound of cymbal, pipe, and drum, now greet him with a song of jubilation which, even more than most of Vondel's lyrics, is peculiar for the intricacy of its rimes.

"Hail to the hero, hail," they cry. The spirit and liveliness of this pæan are eminently suited to voice the long pent-up plaudits of the angels. The regularity of this ode, with its rapid melodious swing, is a marked contrast to the strident enthusiasm and the discordant harmony of the chorus of Luciferians at the end of Act III.

As soon as the joyful reverberations of the battle-hymn have ceased to roll through the interminable arches on high, Michael addresses his legions and the assembled hosts in a speech of great dignity, ascribing the glory of the victory to God alone. He speaks proudly of the spoils of battle, which have already been hung on the bright axis of Heaven.

"No more shall we," says he,

"Behold the glow of Majesty supremeDimmed by the damp of base ingratitude."

He next pictures the defeated rebels as:

"…All blind and overcastWith shrouding mists, and horribly deformed."

Then he concludes with stern sententiousness:

"Thus is his fate who would assail God's Throne,"

which the choristers as gravely repeat.

The expected catastrophe has occurred, and the terrible conclusion has been described. In the stormy wake of the sad fall of the angels follows the no less sad fall of man—the loss of

"The primal innocence 'mid Eden's bowers."

The heaving, seething seas of rebellion, "swollen to the skies," have, it is true, subsided; but again they gather momentum for one more wave of disaster, which now breaks upon the shore of Earth, spreading death and desolation throughout the sinless groves of Paradise; for Gabriel now approaches and hurls into the joyful camp a thunderbolt of sad surprise. "Alas! alas!" he cries, breaking into lamentation, "our triumph is in vain;" and he announces the fall of Adam.

Michael is astounded, and shudders as he hears the news. With infinite distress he listens to Gabriel's interesting account of how the overthrow was effected. Gabriel first describes the "dim, infernal consistory" far, far below. Here Lucifer called together all his chieftains, who now

"Unto each other turned abhorring gaze."

Then,

"High-seated 'mid his councillors of state,"

the Archfiend, whose character is now shown in its full development, addressed his followers in words full of bitter rage against God—a striking contrast to the dignity of Michael's address.

His heart is now a hell of hate, boiling with passion for revenge. The Heavens must be persecuted and circumvented, and this must be done by the ruin of man. With prophetic eye he pictures his future dominion on earth, and the myriad miseries into which the fall shall plunge mankind. He then promises his fellow-conspirators the future adoration of the human race, when as heathen gods and pagan deities they shall receive the praise of countless multitudes of men.

At this point Michael breaks into fierce execrations, making a vow of summary and condign punishment. Gabriel then continues to relate how Lucifer selected Belial as the most worthy instrument to seduce the happy pair. Belial, taking upon himself the form of the Serpent, succeeds most fiendishly in his unholy mission, first, as in the Biblical account, alluring Eve, who in turn tempts Adam. Their fall and shame and misery are pathetically told. In the midst of this sad story the chorus interjects its wail of sympathy, while Gabriel continues by narrating the colloquy of the hapless twain with God.

Gabriel then gives the woeful details of their penalty, and presents a dismal picture of future wretchedness, against the blackness of which, however, is one bright star—the promise of the Strong One, the Hero who shall crush the Serpent's head.

Gabriel now commands Michael to place all things in their wonted place lest the malicious spirits should "further mischief brew." Michael, the spirit of eternal order, then proceeds to reduce this chaos of evil to final subjection.

He first sends Uriel down,

"To drive the pair from Eden who have daredTransgress, so rash and blind, the primal law."

His duty it is, also, to force mankind

"To labor, sweat, and arduous slavery."

He is, furthermore, to act as sentinel over the garden and over the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Ozias is enjoined to capture and securely bind the host of the infernal animals with the lion and the dragon, who so furiously raged against the standard of Heaven. Listen to this stern command:

"Sweep from the sky these hordes accursed, and bindThem neck and claw, and chain them forcibly."

Azarias is entrusted with the key of the bottomless abyss, wherein he is commanded to lock all that assail the powers of Heaven. To Maceda is given the torch to light the sulphurous lake down in the centre of the earth, wherein Lucifer, the evil-breeding protagonist, with poetic justice, so near the scene of his last flagrant crime, is doomed to endless solitary torment; there,

"… In the eternal fireUnquenchable, with chilling frosts commingled,""Amid the bitter blast of memory's regret,"

to suffer the throes of ten thousand hells, and to discover

"How slow time limps upon a crutch of pain,"

through an eternity of keen remorse.

For the last time the chorus comes on the stage, echoing in a brief epilogue the one silvery voice of hope that speaks from that dark conclusion of multitudinous despair.

It, too, gives promise of a brighter dawn, wherein the "grand deliverer" shall cleanse fallen man of the "foul taint original," opening for him a fairer Paradise on high, where the thrones, made vacant by the fall of the angels, shall, as in Cædmon, be filled by the glorified souls of the children of men Thus the spectator is left attuned to the triumph of Christ in the promised reconciliation, and the work of redemption is made complete.

In this noble ending, evil, though not annihilated, is controlled; the good is victorious; and Heaven is once more restored to its pristine holiness. The fallen angels, the imperious lords of Heaven, have been succeeded by the lowly third estate, the human worms whom they so much despised.

Thus here, too, revolution has proved progression. The storm of war has ceased, and above the thunder-mantled sky shines the glorious rainbow of peace.

THE "LUCIFER" AS A DRAMA

Like all of Vondel's dramas, the "Lucifer" is after the Greek model; and surely that model was never inspiration for a more splendid tragedy. Vondel's idea of the classic drama was derived from the close study of the ancients and their modern Dutch commentators—Heinsius, Vossius, Grotius, Barlæus, and other Latinists of renown.

The "Lucifer" is a tragedy after Chaucer's own heart:

"Tragedis is to sayn a certeyn storie,As olde bokes maken us memorie,Of hem that stood in greet prosperité,And is yfallen out of heigh degreeInto miserie, and endith wrecchedly."

There is no death, no blood, no murder. It is the drama of a magnificent ruin!

The action of the play, pursuing the straight track of one controlling purpose, and moving with terrible majesty to the goal of an inevitable destiny, also makes it a tragedy in the larger dramatic sense. The wonderful characterization and the overpowering ethical motive also make its application universal. The epico-lyrical quality of this drama, furthermore, gives it a force and cohesiveness unattainable by either epic or lyric.

True, the "Lucifer" as a drama does not deal with men. However, this is a distinction without a difference; for the characters, while they command our awe as divinities not subject to the limitations of this carnal shroud, the body, are yet sufficiently human to elicit our warmest sympathy.

It is, moreover, a play full of heart-agitating passion; and it is addressed, in a most extraordinary degree, to the moral nature—the chief function of all tragedy. Here, too, as in the great drama of the universe, the divine law is the first propelling cause of the action.

The clash of interests and the logical destiny of cause and effect carry the tragic subject without apparent effort to its denouement. The causes are everywhere adequate to produce the effects, and no trivial effects are the result of the huge action; no mountain is set in travail to bring forth a mouse. The disposition of the characters also conforms to our sense of justice, and their development is everywhere within the range of probability.

Besides the main theme, ambition, and the chief object, self-aggrandizement, are various incidental themes and objects which naturally arise out of the circumstances and conditions of the play. This is, however, but natural, and only renders the drama more varied and interesting; these little streams of interest being but tributaries to the main stream of the action, contributing to, rather than retarding, its majestic sweep to the Niagara of its catastrophe.

The drama, though concerning the divine beings of another sphere, conforms, except where tradition or religion has invested these with extraordinary qualities and powers, to the physical requirements of this, thus making it more probable and the action more dramatic.

The dramatist is a veritable illusion-weaving magician, leading the spectator through tortuous mazes of expectation into a labyrinth of suspense. The end is reached, and lo! the path which appeared so bewilderingly crooked is straight and direct, without a turn to its starting point. Everywhere, too, the mind of the reader coöperates with the mind of the poet in his logical appeals to the heart.

The action, moreover, has its mainspring in error, and ends in showing the natural consequences of crime, with a picture of the sin atoned though not unpunished.

Nowhere is the human interest of this drama lessened by grand scenic displays. These are truly splendid; but even such sublime properties as the universe affords only heighten the interest by showing that, after all, "the thinking will" we call the soul is the noblest work of God. As played on the stage, the drama must have had exceedingly simple, though perhaps somewhat costly, accessories.

Nothing in the play is more admirable than the uninterrupted contrast of thought and the constant antithesis of character. Nothing, furthermore, can surpass the inimitable art with which the monologue is handled at the critical moments that determine a character, as in Lucifer's soul-revealing soliloquy in the fourth act. Here the action, though still sweeping irresistibly on, seems to be in perfect poise, while the inmost secrets of the heart are laid bare.

In his dialogue, also, Vondel is simple and direct. The conversation is always used to recall, to suggest, or to display some motive that binds, while, at the same time, it urges, the action. In such scenes, of course, talk is action.

If art is, as some assert, a thing of proportions, then surely this drama is entitled to the highest praise; for its proportions are irreprehensible. If, too, as Ruskin says, "Poetry is the suggestion by the imagination of noble grounds for the noble emotions," as a poem, also, it is unsurpassed. There are, indeed, as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. The "Lucifer" is Vondel's definition.

It is conception that suggests the correlated thought. It is construction that shapes it to the stature of a grand design; and construction is the highest form of the creative intellect; for was it not this same power that framed the templed universe out of the scattered fragments of countless millions of stars? It is in construction, the highest requisite of the dramatist, wherein the "Lucifer" is most grand. The architecture of the play is as symmetrical as a beautiful Greek temple.

There is no obscurity in this classic drama, into which, moreover, the poet has introduced enough of the modern romantic to lend it vivacity and interest. Such a subject could not have been cast save in a classic mould. The romantic drama would not have been equal to the majestic dignity and the stately style demanded by this sublime theme.

Each act, with its own subordinate conclusion, is followed by a chorus which not only fills the pause, but also intensifies, while at the same time it relieves, the suspense. These choruses, noble melodies of retrospect, are yet charged with the rumbling thunder of the coming catastrophe. Each is, as it were, an incarnate conscience, the concentrated echo of the preceding act, gathering around it the action, and blending harmoniously with it.

Vondel is one of the few moderns who grasped the fact that the Hellenic drama originated in rhythmic song, and that around the choral ode should gather the action and the interest of the play. His chorus, therefore, act both as singers and as interpreters of the action, relieving the measured tread of stately tragedy with pauses of musical suspense. Often, also, they break into the dialogue, and act as mediators and as moralists.

The chorus represent the populi of Heaven, and voice the sentiments of the many. The interchange of thoughts between chorus and chorus, and the chorus and the persons, produces variety. To this the swift changes of thought and emotion also contribute.

Here, also, as in the Greek dramas, we observe the proper subordination of the chorus to the protagonist and the chief characters, and of the lyric to the dramatic elements, while through the whole play the length of the speeches is artfully suited to the character and the situation. Much, too, might be said about Vondel's felicities of rime, his sweet feminine rimes, his stately, sonorous hexameters, his trimeters and tetrameters, his frequent use of the various classic metres, and his admirable shifting of the cæsura to suit the feeling of the speaker.

The three unities are here also carefully preserved, which perhaps was the more easily done on account of the divinity of the characters, to which a celerity of movement was natural not possible to mortals.

Hence, the time of the whole drama from the inception of the revolt until the final catastrophe could very probably be included in twenty-four hours. The unity of action we have already spoken of. The unity of place is equally well kept. The "Lucifer," hardly two thousand seven hundred lines, including the choruses, conforms also in respect to length to the classic standard.

The growth of the play is no less wonderful than the characterization, many preparations and conspiracies developing at last into a battle, many scenes into a definite situation; the numberless changes of cause and effect at length resulting in a plot full of the force of an action-impelling motive. Thus from the varied complexities of circumstance and situation is at last evolved the one controlling purpose.

A fine antithesis to the turbulent catastrophe is the quiet climax, Lucifer's soliloquy in Act IV.; where, however, all that precedes is resolved into one intense situation. The advent of Rafael here, furthermore, is an unforeseen complication to heighten the interest.

The end, by suggestive reminiscence of the fading perspective of the beginning, unites the commencement with the close, making the drama an organic whole, whose soul is purpose and whose heart is truth.

The exquisite blending of the action with the characters, each shaping the other, has rarely been equalled. It is the characters, after all, that are the chief interest and that control the action. We see here the strange anomaly of a classic play where the individual shapes the action, and is yet conquered by law.

Here, where the will of a god clashes with the supreme will of the Supreme God, great art is necessary to sustain human interest—to delay the interposition of the superior deity until the very close.

The primary motive, self-exaltation, fails grandly; yet in its failure it brings into partial fulfilment the secondary motive, the fall of man. True, the logical catastrophe does not occasion surprise. It has all along, as in every tragedy, been foreshadowed by circumstances big with fate. Yet Vondel has added the element of surprise, and to a remarkable degree, by the introduction of a second catastrophe, the expulsion of Adam from Paradise, the natural result of the first. Thus curiosity and reason only end with the play itself. One by one, too, the various episodes are seen to spring from the action, which, moreover, requires no introduction of antecedent circumstance to set it in motion.

The ensemble scenes, or groups, a sure test of the great dramatist, are handled in a masterly manner. There is also a delightful retardation which heightens the suspense and delays the catastrophe, until, like an electric cloud, it bursts into the thunder of its own generating.