The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860

But Dionysus not only looks back with triumphant remembrance to ancient conquest, but has his victories in the present, also, and in the great Hereafter. For triumph was connected with all Dionysiac symbols, hints of which are preserved to us in representations found upon ancient vases: such, for instance, as the figure of Victory surmounting the heads of the ivy-crowned Bacchantes in their mystic orgies; or the winged serpents which bear the chariot of the victor-god,—as if in this connection even the reptiles, whose very name (serpentes) is a synonyme for what creeps, are to be made the ministrants of his conquering flight. The tombs of the ancients from Egypt to Etruria are full of these symbols. Many of them have become dim as to their meaning by oblivious time; but enough is evident to indicate the prominence of hope in ancient faith. This appears in the very multiplicity of Dionysiac symbols as compared with any other class. Thus, out of sixty-six vases at Polignano, all but one or two were found to be Dionysiac in their symbolism. And this instance stands for many others. The character of the scenes represented indicates the same prominence of hope, sometimes as connected with the relations of life,—as, for example, the representation, found upon a sepulchral cone, of a husband and wife uniting with each other in prayer to the Sun. Frequent inscriptions—such as those in which the deceased is carefully committed to Osiris, the Egyptian Dionysus—point in the same direction; as also the genii who presided over the embalmed dead, a belief in whose existence surely indicated a hopeful trust in some divine care which would not leave them even in the grave. Statues of Osiris are found among the ruins of palaces and temples; but it was in the monuments associated with death that they dwelt most upon his name and expressed their faith in most frequent incarnation and inscription.

The epic movement of Eleusinian triumph was in its range as unlimited as the movement of sorrow. Each found expression in sculptured monument,—the one hinting of flight into darkness, and the other of resurrection into light; each in its cycle inclosed the world; each widened into the invisible; as the wail of Achtheia reached the heart of Hades, so the paean of Dionysus was lost in the heavens.

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But in what manner did this Dionysus make his avatar in the world? For he must needs have first touched the earth as human child, ere he could be worshipped as Divine Saviour. Latona must leave the heavens and come to Delos ere she can give birth to Apollo; for, in order to slay the serpent, the child must himself be earth-born,—indeed, according to one representation, he slew the Python out of his mother's arms. Neither the serpent of Genesis nor the dragon of Revelation can be conquered save by the seed of the woman. From this necessity of his earthly birth, the connection of the Saviour-Child with the Mater Dolorosa becomes universal,—finding its counterpart in the Assyrian Venus with babe in arm, in Isis suckling the child Horus, and even in the Scandinavian Disa at Upsal accompanied by an infant. It is from swaddling-clothes, as the nursling of our Lady, and out of the sorrowful discipline of earth, that the child grows to be the Saviour, both for our Lady and for all her children.

Hence, according to the tradition, Dionysus was born of Semele of the royal house at Thebes; and Jove was his father. A little before his time of birth,—so the story goes,—Jove visited Semele, at her own rash request, in all the majesty of his presence, with thunderings and lightnings, so that the bower of the virgin mother was laid in ruins, and she herself, unable to stand before the revealed god, was consumed as by fire. But Jove out of her ashes perfected the birth of his son; whence he was called the Child of Fire, ([Greek: puripais],)—which epithet, as well as this part of the fable, probably points to his connection with the Oriental symbolism of fire in the worship of the Sun.

And it is worth while, in connection with this, to notice the gradations by which in the ancient mind everything ascended from the gross material to a refined spirituality. As in Nature there was forever going on a subtilizing process, so that

 
  "from the root
  Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
  More aëry, last the bright consummate flower
  Spirits odorous breathes,"—
 

and as, in their philosophy, from the earth, as the principle of Nature, they ascended through the more subtile elements of water, air, and fire, to a spiritual conception of the universe; so, as regards their faith, its highest incarnation was through the symbolism of fire, as representative of that central Power under whose influence all things arose through endless grades of exaltation to Himself,—so that the earthly rose into the heavenly, and all that was human became divine.

The enthusiasm of victory and exaltation in the worship of Dionysus tended of course to connect with him whatsoever was joyous and jubilant in life. He was the god of all joy. Hence the fable which makes him the author and giver of wine to men. Wherever he goes, he is surrounded by the clustering vine and ivy, hinting of his summer glory and of his kingly crown. Thus, the line of his conquests leads through the richest fields of Southern Asia,—through the incense-breathing Arabia, across the Euphrates and the Tigris, and through the flowery vales of Cashmere to the Indian garden of the world: and as from sea to sea he establishes his reign by bloodless victories, he is attended by Fauns and Satyrs and the jovial Pan; wine and honey are his gifts; and all the earth is glad in his gracious presence. Hence he was ever associated with Oriental luxuriance, and was worshipped even among the Greeks with a large infusion of Oriental extravagance, though tempered by the more subdued mood of the West.

But that depth of Grecian genius, which made it possible for Greece alone of all ancient nations to develop tragedy to anything like perfection, insured also even in the most impassioned life the most profound solemnity. Into the praises of Apollo, joyous as they were,—where, to the exultant anthem was joined the evolution of the dance beneath the vaulted sky, as if in his very presence,—for the sun was his shechinah,—there enters an element of solemnity, which, in certain connections, is almost overwhelming: as, for instance, in the first book of the "Iliad,"—where, after the pestilence which has sent up an endless series of funeral pyres,—after the strife of heroes and the return of Chryseïs to her father, the priest of the angry Apollo,—after the feast and the libation from the wine-crowned cups, there follow the apotropoea, and the Grecian youths unite in the song and the dance, which last, both the joyous paean and the tread of exultant feet, until the setting sun. I know of nothing which to an equal degree suggests this element of solemnity, that is almost awe-inspiring from its depth, short of the jubilant procession of saints, in the Apocalypse, with palms in their hands.

This element is also evident in the worship of Dionysus,—so that the inspiration of joy must not be taken for the frenzy of intoxication, though the symbol of the vine has often led to just this misapprehension. Besides, Dionysus must not be too closely identified with the Bacchanalian orgies, which were only a perversion of rites which retained their original purity in the Eleusinia: and this latter institution, it must be remembered, was from the first under the control of the state,—and that state at the time the most refined on the face of the earth.

Surely, it is not more difficult to give a pure and spiritual significance to a vintage-festival or to the symbolic wine-cup of Dionysus, than in the rhapsodies of a Persian or Hindu poet to symbolize the attraction between the Divine Goodness and the human soul by the loves of Laili and Majnum, or of Crishna and Radha,—to say nothing of the exalted symbolism attached to the love of Solomon for his Egyptian princess, and sanctioned by the most delicate taste.

Indeed, is it not true that whatsoever is most sensuous in connection with human joy, and at the same time pure, is the very flower of life, and therefore the most consummate revelation of holiness? Nothing in Nature is so intensely solemn as her summer, in its infinite fulness of growth and the unmeasured altitude of its heavens. And within the range of human associations which shall we select as revealing the most profound solemnity? Surely not the sight of the funeral train, nor of the urn crowned with cypress,—of nothing which is associated with death or weakness in any shape;—but the sight of gayest festivals, or the paraphernalia of palace-halls,—the vision of some youthful maiden of transcendent beauty crowned with an orange-wreath, within hearing of marriage-bells and the whisperings of holy love,—or the aspirations of the dance and the endless breathings of triumphant music. These are they which come up most prominently in remembrance,—even as the whole race, in its remembrances, instinctively looks back to the Orient,—to some Homeric island of the morning, where are the palaces, the choral dances, and the risings of the sun.⁵ And as Memory has the power to purify the past of all material grossness, Faith has the same power as regards the present Hence, the closest connection of religious faith with the most joyous festivals, with a finely moulded Venus or Apollo, with an Ephesian temple or a splendid cathedral, or the sweetest symphonies of music, does not mar, but reveals its natural beauty and strength.

But most certainly the Greeks gave a profound spiritual meaning to the Eleusinia, as also to the mystic connection of Demeter with Dionysus. She gave them bread: but they never forgot that she gave them the bread of life. "She gave us," says the ancient Isocrates, "two gifts that are the most excellent: fruits, that we might not live like beasts; and that initiation, those who have part in which have sweeter hope,—both as regards the close of life, and for all eternity." So Dionysus gave them wine, not only to lighten the cares of life, but as a token, moreover, of efficient deliverance from the fear of death, and of the higher joy which he would give them in some happier world. And thus it is, that, from the earliest times and in all the world, bread and wine have been symbols of sacramental significance.

Human life so elevates all things with its exaltation and clothes them with its glory, that nothing vain, nothing trifling, can be found within its range. He who opposes himself to a single fact thus of necessity opposes himself to the whole onward and upward current, and must fall. We have heard of Thor, who with his magic mallet and his two celestial comrades went to Jötunheim in quest of adventures: and we remember the goblet which he could not exhaust because of its mysterious connection with the inexhaustible Sea; the race with Hugi, which in the end proved to be a race with Thought; and the wrestle with the old nurse Elli, who was no other than Time herself, and therefore irresistible. So do we all get us mallets ingeniously forged by the dark elves;—we try a race with human thought, and look vainly to come out ahead; we laugh at things because they are old, but with which we struggle to no purpose; and the cup which we confidently put to our lips has no bottom;—in fact, the great world of Jötunheim has grown for so long a time and so widely that it is quite too much for us,—and its tall people, though we come down upon them, like Thor and his companions, from celestial heights, are too stout for our mallet.

Nothing human is so insignificant, but that, if you will give it time and room, it will become irresistible. The plays of men become their dramas; their holidays change to holy days. The representations, through which, under various names, they have repeated to themselves the glory and the tragedy of their life,—old festivals once celebrated in Egypt far back beyond the dimmest myths of human remembrance,—the mystic drama of the Eleusinia, which we have been considering in its overwhelming sorrow developed in hurried flight, and its lofty hope through triumphal pomp and the significant symbolism of resurrection,—the epos and the epic rhapsodies,—the circus and the amphitheatre,—and even the impetuous song and dance of painted savages,—all these, which at first we may pass by with a glance, have for our deeper search a meaning which we can never wholly exhaust. Let it be that they have grown from feeble beginnings, they have grown to gigantic dimensions; and not their infantile proportions, but their fullest growth is to be taken as the measure of their strength,—if, indeed, it be not wholly immeasurable.

Upon some day, seemingly by chance, but really having its antecedent in the remotest antiquity, a company of men participate in some simple act,—of sacrifice, it may be, or of amusement. Now that act will be reiterated.

 
  "Quod semel dictum est stabilisque rerum
  Terminus servet."
 

The subtile law of repetition, as regards the human will, is as sure in Determination as it is in Consciousness. Habit is as inevitable as Memory; and as nothing can be forgotten, but, when once known, is known forever,—so nothing is done but will be done again. Lethe and Annihilation are only myths upon the earth, which men, though suspicious of their eternal falsehood, name to themselves in moments of despair and fearful apprehension. The poppy has only a fabled virtue; but, like Persephone, we have all tasted of the pomegranate, and must ever to Hades and back again; for while death and oblivion only seem to be, remembrances and resurrections there must be, and without end. Therefore this before-mentioned act of sacrifice or amusement will be reiterated at given intervals; about it, as a centre, will be gathered all the associations of intense interest in human life; and the names connected with its origin—once human names upon the earth—will pass upon the stars, so that the nomina shall have changed to numina, and be taken upon the lips with religious awe. So it was with these old festivals,—so with all the representations of human life in stone or upon the canvas, in the fairy-tale, the romance, and the poem; at every successive repetition, at every fresh resurrection, is evolved by human faith and sympathy a deeper significance, until they become the centres of national thought and feeling, and men believe in them as in revelations from heaven; and even the oracles themselves, in respect of their inherent meaning, as also of their origin and authority, rise by the same ascending series of repeated birth,—like that at Delphi, which, at first attributed to the Earth, then to Themis, daughter of Earth and Heaven, was at last connected with the Sun and constituted one of the richest gems in Apollo's diadem of light.

In the end we shall find that the whole world organizes about its centre of Faith. Thus, under three different religious systems, Jerusalem, Delphi, and Mecca were held to be each in its turn the omphalos or navel of the world. It follows inevitably that the main movement of the world must always be joyous and hopeful. By reason of this joy it is that every religious system has its feast; and the sixth day—the day of Iacchus—is the great day of the festival. The inscription which rises above every other is "To the Saviour Gods."

We must look at history as a succession of triumphs from the beginning; and each trophy that is erected outdoes in its magnificence all that were ever erected before it. Nothing has suffered defeat, except as it has run counter to the main movement of conquest. No system of faith, therefore, can by any possibility pass away. Involved it may be in some fuller system; its material bases may be modified; its central source become more central in the human heart, and so stronger in the world and more immediate in its connection with the eternal; but the life itself of the system must live forever and grow forever.

Still it is true that in the widest growth there is the largest liability to weakness. "Thus it is," says Fouqué, "with poor, though richly endowed man. All lies within his power so long as action is at rest within him; nothing is in his power the moment action has displayed itself, even by the lifting-up of a finger on the immeasurable world." In the very extent of the empire of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Tamerlane, rests the possibility of its rapid dissolution. At the giddiest altitude of triumph it is that the brain grows dizziest and there is revealed the deepest chasm of possible defeat; and the conqueror,

"Having his ear full of his airy fame,"

is just then most likely to fall like Herod from his aërial pomp to the very dust. This consciousness, revealing at the highest moment of joy its utmost frailty, led the ancients to suspect the presence of some Ate or Nemesis in all human triumphs. We all remember the king who threw his signet-ring into the sea, that he might in his too happy fortunes avert this suspected presence; we remember, too, the apprehension of the Chorus in the "Seven against Thebes," looking forward from the noontide prosperity of the Theban king to some coming catastrophe.

But it is not without us that this Nemesis waits; she is but another name for the fearful possibility which lurks in every human will, of treachery to itself. And as solemnity rises to its acme in the most sensuous manifestation of the glory of life,—so in all that most fascinates and bewilders, at the very crisis of victorious exaltation, at the very height of joyous sensibility, does this mysterious power of temptation reveal her subtlest treachery; and sometimes in a single moment does she change the golden-filleted Horæ, that are our ministers, into frightful furies, which drive us back again from triumph into flight.

What was it, then, which saved the Eleusinia from this defeat,—which kept the movement of the Dionysiac procession from the ruin inevitably consequent upon all intemperate joy? It was the presence of our Lady, the sorrowing Achtheia, who was the inseparable companion of the joyous conqueror,—who subdued the joy of victory, and preserved the strength and holy purity of the great Festival. Demeter was thus necessary to Dionysus,—as Dionysus to Demeter; and if in remembrance of him the sepulchral walls were covered with scenes associated with festivity,—in remembrance of her there must needs be a skeleton at every feast.

How inseparably connected in human thought is sorrow with all permanent hope is indicated in the penances which men have imposed upon themselves, from the earliest Gymnosophists of India, and the Stylitæ of Syria, down to the monastic orders of the Romish Church in later times. This is the meaning of the old Indian fable which made two of the Rishis or penitents to have risen by the discipline of sorrow from some low caste,—it may be, from very Pariahs,—first to the rank of Brahmins, and at last to the stars. The first initiation in which we veil our eyes, losing all, is essential to our fresher birth, by which in the second initiation all things are unveiled to us as our inheritance: indeed, it is only through that which veils that anything is ever revealed or possessed.

Through the same gate we pass both to glory and to tragic suffering, each of which heightens and measures the other; and it is only so that we can understand the function of sorrow in the Providence of God, or interpret the sudden calamities which sometimes overwhelm human hopes at their highest aspiration,—which from the most serene and cloudless sky evoke storms which leave not even a wreck from their vast ruin.

Nor merely is sorrow efficient in those who hope, but in even a higher sense does it attach to the character of Saviour. Apollo is, therefore, fabled to have been an exile from heaven and a servant of Admetus; indeed, Danaüs, in "The Suppliants" of Æschylus, appeals to Apollo for protection on this very plea, addressing him as "the Holy One, and an exiled God from heaven." Thus Hercules was compelled to serve Eurystheus; and his twelve labors were typed in the twelve signs of the zodiac. Æsculapius and Prometheus both suffered excruciating tortures and death for the good of men. And Dionysus—himself the centre of all joy—was persecuted by the Queen of Heaven and compelled to wander in the world. Thus he wandered through Egypt, finding no abiding-place, and finally, as the story runs, came to the Phrygian Cybele, that he might know in their deepest meaning—even by the initiation of sorrow—the mysteries of the Great Mother. And, very significantly, it is from this same initiation that His wanderings have their end and his world-wide conquest its beginning; as if only thus could be realized the possibility both of triumph for himself and of hope for his followers. For these wanderers can find rest only in a suffering Saviour, by the vision of whose deeper Passion they lose their sense of grief,—as Io on Caucasus in sight of the transfixed Prometheus, and the Madonna at the Cross.

It is worthy of more attention than we can give it here, yet we cannot pass over in silence the fact, so important in this relation, that Grecian Tragedy, in all its wonderful development under the three great masters, was directly associated, and in its ruder beginnings completely identified, with the worship of Dionysus. And this confirms our previous hint, that the same element which made tragedy possible for Greece must also be sought for in the development of its faith. There are those who decry Grecian faith,—at the same time that they laud the Grecian drama to the skies: but to the Greeks themselves, who certainly knew more than we do as regards either, the drama was only an outgrowth of their faith, and derived thence its highest significance. Thus the mystic symbolism of the dramatic Choruses, taken out of its religious connections, becomes an insoluble enigma; and naturally enough; for its first use was in religious worship,—though afterwards it became associated with traditionary and historic events. Besides, it was supposed that the tragedians wrote under a divine inspiration; and the subjects and representations which they embodied were for the most part susceptible of a deep spiritual interpretation. Indeed, upon a careful examination, we shall find that very many of the dramas directly suggest the two Eleusinian movements, representing first the flight of suppliants—as of the Heraclidae, the daughters of Danaüs, and of Oedipus and Antigone—from persecution to the shrine of some Saviour Deity,—and finally a deliverance effected through sacrifice or divine interposition. Examples of this are so numerous that we have no space for a minute consideration.

But certainly it is plain that the Eleusinia, as being more central, more purely spiritual, must in the thought of Greece have risen high above the drama. The very dress in which the mystae were initiated was preserved as most sacred or deposited in the temple. Or if we insist upon measuring their appreciation of the Festival by the more palpable standard of numbers,—the temple at Eleusis, by the account of Strabo, was capable of holding even in its mystic cell more persons than the theatre. To be sure, the celebration was only once in five years,—but it was all the more sacred from this very infrequency. Nothing in all Greece—and that is saying very much—could compare with it in its depth of divine mystery. If anything could, it would have been the drama; but no wailings were ever heard from beneath the masks of the stage like the wailings of Achtheia,—no jubilant song of the Chorus ever rose like the paean of Dionysiac triumph.

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Thus was the name of Dionysus connected with the palace and the temple, with the sepulchral court of death and the dramatic representations of life,—and everywhere associated with our Lady.

Sometimes, indeed, she seems to overshadow and hide him from our vision. Thus was it when the Eumenides in their final triumph swept the stage, and victory seemed all in the hands of invisible Powers, with no human participant: even as throughout the Homeric epos there runs an undercurrent of unutterable sadness; because, while to the Gods there ever remains a sure seat upon Olympus, unshaken by the winds, untouched by rain or snow, crowned with a cloudless radiance,—yet upon man come vanity, sorrow, and strife; like the leaves of the forest he flourisheth, and then passeth away to the "weak heads of the dead," ([Greek: nekuon amenaena karaena],) conquered by purple Death and strong Fate.

To the eye of sense, and in the circumscribed movements of this world, the desolation seems complete and the defeat final. But the snows of winter are necessary to the blossoms of spring,—the waste of death to the resurrection of life; and from the vastest of all desolations does our Lady lead her children in the loftiest of all flights,—even from all sorrow and solitude,—from the wastes of earth and the desolation of Æons, to ineffable joy in her Saviour Lord.

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