The Fallen God: And Other Essays in Literature and Art (Classic Reprint)

Overview

Excerpt from The Fallen God: And Other Essays in Literature and Art This catholic tradition was overwhelmed by the new heaven and earth created for English literature by the pagan dramatists of the Elizabethan renaissance. The Christian Devil and his attendant Vice found little consideration at the hands Of Shakespeare and his brethren. Marlowe, the self-acknowledged scoffer, used him, it is true, - but he never troubled to analyze him, or to embody him in any horrible personification. Mephistopheles is the symbolization of German scholarly scepticism; and it is not strange that the whole German literature, born Of the Elizabethan drama, Offers no deep analysis Of spiritual good and evil. Even Goethe, original and vast as he undoubtedly is, clung very closely to the mocking Marlowe,and his intellect is so untouched by the fiery Zeal which burns in the soul Of Aeschylus, Milton and Dante, that it is not irksome to him to introduce the Author of all evil in a jesting colloquy with the Spring Of all good. With the Elizabethan both the Hebrew and the classical myths areobliterated; and though Achilles, Hector and the Hellenic gods and goddesses gleam through double translations, their features are blurred, their char acters modernized, and but for their names, SO Englished as to be almost beyond recognition. Under this mountain, from three convergent sources flowed the stream by which sat the muse Of Milton. The religious continent Of the imaginings Of the poet of Paradise Lost was, however, no longer catholic. It was localized. It was puritan. It was untouched, unsoiled, by the grosser devil which in the medieval mysteries ran howling about the mouth of hell. With him the Jehovah Of the Hebrews became the All-father; the Devil Of the medieval mysteries an evil power Of the first magni tude, while the gods and goddesses Of Greece and Rome were allowed no higher sphere than that Of attendant spirits to the supreme ill. But Milton's Satan is not the Christian Lucifer. Shelley says Of him with perfect truth This character engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs and excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure.' In other words, the sympathy Of the reader is with Satan. He is very human, not at all horrific. The sublime pageantry which surrounds him only adds zest to the pity for his magnificent sufferings. How inexpressibly human and touching is the passage.

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