"No more shall we," says he,
"Behold the glow of Majesty supreme
Dimmed by the damp of base ingratitude."
He next pictures the defeated rebels as:
"…All blind and overcast
With 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 dared
Transgress, 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 bind
Them 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 fire
Unquenchable, 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 degree
Into 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.
Each messenger, in the play, brings vividly before the eye of the spectator the consequential scene which he himself has just witnessed—of which, perhaps, he has been a part.
Thus, by the artful use of motive-producing complications, the action, once projected, moves on to its end, where the totality of figures, thoughts, and emotions are drawn into one maelstrom of ruin.
There is no distraction. There is no swerving from the opening to the catastrophe; from the catastrophe to the conclusion, the awful retribution.
As in the tragedy of life, so, too, in this drama, the innocent suffer through the punishment that overtakes the guilty; witness the sorrow of Rafael and the good angels at the fall of their fellows; the sin of Adam and Eve, and the doom pronounced upon their innocent descendants.
The truth of Vondel's poetic conception is seen in the fact that its essential elements are coeval with man and coeternal with the universe. As in Sophocles, we hardly know which most to admire, the balanced proportions of the play, or its general conception. Here, also, we often, in a single sentence, find a synthesis of a situation or a character.
Vondel, moreover, most impressively introduces into the ancient Greek form, with its suggestion of an over-ruling destiny, the modern idea of free will. And he does it so admirably that there is no confusion. Simple in its complexity, splendid in its largeness of design, grand in its harmony, magnificent in its whole conception, the drama sweeps irresistibly through the whole gamut of human emotion.
Such epic breadth and intense lyric concentration have rarely been combined in one poem. Such a drama is, indeed, the sum of all the arts!
THE CHARACTERIZATION
Vondel's devils are no devils, until the last act, when they act no more, but are described. Then truly they are the incarnations of Hell's deepest deviltries, and are as splendid in their malignity as they were formerly superb in their wickedness.
The sophistries of these evil spirits are scarcely inferior to those in "Faust." They are the meshes of a gigantic delusion woven by the leaders of the conspiracy around the rank and file of the angels, seducing them from bliss to doom.
Belzebub is the cynic of the play—a compound of Iago and Mephistopheles. This dark contriver of hellish plots is colossal in his malignity. He is the first in Heaven to make a prurient suggestion. He is more fiend than his noble superior. Sleepless, unrelenting, resourceful, alert, he conjures motives of evil even from the tender beauty of the primal innocence. He finds the gall of hate even in the sweet flower of Eden's sinless love. His is the deliberating intellect necessary for the Stadtholder's counsellor; and though slowly unfolding the many sides of his malign nature, he is, we feel, evil from the beginning, grandly diabolical.
Belial, conscienceless and without remorse, is utterly depraved; a vile seducer, the genius of deceit, who does evil for its own sake; a useful tool to serve the baser purposes of the chief devil. Apollion has some gleams of goodness in his nature, but is weak, lustful, and easily influenced by the hope of gain—a type of the traitor. All of the devils, and they are the chief characters of the play, may be supposed to represent the different phases of evil; while the good angels, whose characteristics have been but briefly indicated, show the different attributes of the Deity.
As in the "Œdipus Tyrannus," "the country must be purged," so here, too, the Heavens must be cleansed of "this perjured scum,"—the rebellious angels.
We must now proceed to speak of Lucifer: his all-consuming wrath, his ambition, his pride, and infernal energy. These traits are exhibited in gigantic outlines even before his fall. After his defeat, what can be more impressive than his all-enduring Archangelic passion, glorious in its all-defying mood? Not his the wild outbursts nor the mad ravings of Lear. Every ebullition of his anger is fraught with purpose, and is transmuted into revengeful action. Mind and spirit are, after all, the conquering forces of the universe. Material circumstance and physical environment cannot thwart their design. It is this ennobling consciousness of intellectual power, supplemented by unconquerable and irresistible will, that makes the magnificence of the personality of Lucifer. Like Milton's Satan, he is, we feel, most near a god when he is most a devil.
Lucifer, like Macbeth, is not influenced all at once. With a god-like circumspection, he first weighs every atom of probability. However, when the die is cast and the line of rebellion has once been crossed, he fights to the last ditch.
Lucifer is a sublime egoist—the spirit of negation placed against the limitations of the positive. He is overpowering. No one, even for an instant, dares to dispute his power, not even the grand Michael. His is the unconquerable Batavian heart. He dominates the entire action, and like a magnet draws all the other characters around him. Though jealousy of man is the animating passion of the lower devils and the excuse of the protagonist himself, yet we feel that he uses this merely as a stalking horse for his overweening ambition. Lucifer would become God himself. It is an unwritten law of great tragedy that the villain, though a villain, must be admirable. Lucifer, arch-villain that he is, is superb in his constructive villany—a very god of evil, with resources at his command formidable enough to make or to mar a world, and yet resulting only in his own undoing. Proud in the consciousness of godlike powers, he thinks,
"I have a bit of fiat in my soul,
And can myself create a little world."
His confidence, however, proves to be but the fiat of his damnation.
"There is no fiercer hell than the failure in a great undertaking." Into this hell Lucifer was forever thrust. Yet he is allowed one brief moment of happiness; it is where he proclaims himself a god, and is worshipped by his followers.
Lucifer is the prince of thinkers, and a monarch among actors. His is the intellect to plan and to conceive, and the will to execute; and will is above all the one quality emphasized. As much as he is in this respect supereminent, so much greater the degree of his guilt. Could the force of this faculty have been better shown than in the picture of the fallen Archangel, where, in the agonies of torture and the throes of expiation, he not only deliberates, resolves, and executes, but even exults, as, culling the bitter sweetness of a hopeless hope from the hell-flower of despair, he rejoices in the fiendish triumph that he knows is but the prelude to everlasting doom? Unlike the unconquerable and torture-racked Prometheus, he allows not one sigh to escape from the depths of his anguish; not one moan rises from his abysmal despair. Malediction alone can unlock his implacable lips. From even the caverns of Hell he projects his evil genius back into space to accomplish a predetermined revenge.
Lucifer reasons with Rafael and with Gabriel; but with Michael only war is possible. The two chiefs are too equal in power, too proud, and too warlike to waste time in words. Each, accustomed to command, will brook no authority in the other. The pathos and the tenderness of Rafael, on the other hand, present a strong relief to the sombre passions of Lucifer. It is the ethical portraiture of this drama that is its most powerful feature.
Lucifer, also, in a certain sense, represents the ideal Dutchman—combining in a losing struggle the daring of Civilis and the intellect of Erasmus with the astuteness and magnanimity of William the Silent—a grand hero in a bad cause! Lucifer has indeed "set the time out of joint" for Adam's seed; yet the play also gives promise of the Christ who will again make all things right; there is here, also, a suggestion of the "Paradise Regained."
The drama is ended; the thunders have ceased to roll, and are again chained to the chariot of the Deity; the lightnings once more slumber in the bosom of the night. The battle is over, the air is again pure and clear. The good has been exalted; the bad has been debased. The heart of the spectator, too, has been the scene of the battle of the passions: terror, pity, hope, despair, love, joy, peace have each alternated in brief possession. The katharsis of the soul is accomplished. It has been purified of all that is gross and earthly. It has become spiritualized. It has become conscious of its wings, thrilled with aspiration for the ethereal and for the stars beyond.
IS THE "LUCIFER" A POLITICAL ALLEGORY?
It is maintained by several eminent Dutch critics that the "Lucifer" is a political allegory like the "Palamedes" and several other tragedies of Vondel.
Some of these literati have displayed considerable ingenuity in their attempt to prove that it typifies the struggle of the Netherlands against Spain; Orange corresponding to Lucifer, Philip II. to God, Alva to Michael, the Cardinal Granvelle to Adam.
Many of the situations of the play bear out this analogy. Lucifer, like Orange, was the idol of his followers. Both desire to change a hated tyranny to a state of freedom. Both speak grandiloquently of a charter disannulled and of ancient privileges violated.
The simile of the sea dashing in vain against the rock in the battle-scene of the "Lucifer" may be supposed to illustrate the device of Orange: "Sævis tranquillus in undis." The crescent array of the rebels may refer to the shibboleth of the water-beggars: "Rather Turk than Papist."
The lion and the dragon that draw the chariot of the Archfiend are also blazoned upon the crest of the two provinces, Holland and Zealand, which were the chief supporters of Orange. The medley of seven beasts into which Lucifer, in falling, was changed, may be taken to represent the seven Northern provinces that became the Dutch Republic, while the Southern provinces, which remained loyal to Spain, nearly two-thirds of the whole number, may be typified by the faithful angels.
Lucifer renewed the fight three times; so did Orange. Both pretended to fight "pro lege, rege, et grege."
In that age, before successful revolutions had established a precedent, no revolt could hope for success unless by conforming to the maxim "the king can do no wrong"—a cardinal principle in every religion of that day. By this political fiction rebels professed to fight for the king, though really fighting against him. Vondel pictured his revolt after these examples, the most prominent of which was the revolt of his own country against Philip II. Lucifer, however, fell, and Orange triumphed; though the assassination of the latter might be taken as equivalent to a fall. Lucifer accomplished the fall of Adam, even as Orange brought about the expulsion of Granvelle. Alva, like Michael, furthermore, received the charge "to burn out with a glow of fire and zeal" the polluting stains of heresy. Egmont and Montigny, like Gabriel and Rafael, acted as ambassadors.
The cause of the jealousy of the Netherlander, as in the "Lucifer," was the fact that greater privileges were accorded to foreigners (the Spaniards) than to the hereditary princes of the land. As in the drama Gabriel's proclamation is followed by protest and rebellion, so in the Netherlands the unjust edicts of Philip were the primary cause of revolt.
It was the sworn duty of the Stadtholder, William of Orange, even as of the Stadtholder Lucifer, to maintain the laws of his superior. Orange also held a position similar to that of Lucifer. He was the favorite of Charles V., Stadtholder of Holland, and Knight of the Golden Fleece. Each placed himself at the head of the disaffected at their earnest importunity. Each was accused of ambition. Each accomplished his designs by Machiavelian methods, and attained a brief exaltation.
Cardinal Granvelle, who held a position similar to Adam in the drama, was, like him, of low descent; and was honored with greater privileges than even the nobles themselves, who hated him intensely. The opponents of the Cardinal changed the liveries of their servants into motley to mock him; so, also, we hear Lucifer say to his minions:
"Lay off your morning rays and wreaths of light."
The nobles complained of the presence of Spanish troops in the land; so the Luciferians speak of "Adam's life-guard, many thousand strong." The arguments of the drama were also the arguments advanced by the several parties in the Dutch revolt.
The three hierarchies of Heaven in the "Lucifer" correspond to Margaret's three Councils of State. Lucifer, though described as nighest to God, belonged only to the third rank of the hierarchies; just as Orange, though first among the Dutch noblemen, and next to Philip II., was yet subject to the State as Stadtholder.
Brederode, as the head of the aristocrats who went with supplications to Margaret of Parma, bears a close analogy to Belzebub, where the latter says to the Luciferians,
"With prayers ye first and best might gain your end,"
and where, too, he expresses his willingness to act as mediator. In this scheme, furthermore, Apollion would represent Louis of Nassau, and Belial, Marnix St. Aldegonde.
Others see in the drama the career of the great Wallenstein, the ambitious Generalissimo of the Thirty Years' War. In his envy of the son of his emperor, and in his desire to place the crown of Hungary on his own head, an analogy is suggested to Lucifer's attitude to Adam. Even as the celestial rebels swore their chief allegiance, so, too, his generals, after the reverse of Pilsen, when his enemies wished to deprive him of his command, swore him faith and fealty.
Vondel, it is asserted, was conscious of this when he dedicated this drama to Ferdinand the Third, Emperor of Austria, who was no other than the intended King of Hungary who had aroused the envy of Wallenstein, and whose succession to the crown had been so much endangered by the latter's treachery.
But there is yet another view of the subject, which has even more show of probability than either of the others. It is supposed by many that the "Lucifer" was intended to represent the English Rebellion of 1648. Lucifer in this analogy is supposed to represent Cromwell, whom Vondel hated so bitterly and against whom he thundered such tremendous invective. Indeed, there are some external circumstances in support of this theory. Speaking of his lampoons on the great English rebel, the poet says that they were written the same year that he "taught Lucifer his rôle to play." He also says elsewhere that the "Lucifer" was presented,