A Meredith Footnote

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

INDIVIDUALS who compose the world of readers are seldom pleased at being classed as component parts of “ the general ” to which a work of genius is so often caviare; yet the public opinion of all must to a certain extent be taken as expressive of the private judgment of each. This is the age of hurry, of condensed information and superficial cleverness; so it is not altogether surprising that a poem fifty sonnets in length, psychological in matter and more or less obscure in manner, should have met with no general recognition or appreciation.

Modern Love, by George Meredith, is far more than a poem, — its detractors would call it far less; for it is also a philosophical essay, a study of the human heart, a novel in little, a riddle — we must confess it — as regards certain enigmatical words and deeds of some of the characters. But the analytical eye will discover true clearness of thought and emotion shining out from depths of profound speculation through surface obscurity of phrase.

The story running through the fifty sonnets (if sonnets the verses of sixteen lines may be called) is of the slightest. The seemingly needless unhappiness of an “ ever-diverse pair,” who are yet strangely akin, and the subtle causes and effects of that unhappiness are the themes on which Meredith bases his flash-light revelations of internal storm and stress. We are given to understand that the marriage began by being one of ardent love, the lovers of equally high ideals and lofty ambitions, but sensitive and proud, given to deep self-analysis and morbid questionings, modern in all the shades of meaning in that word which has come to be synonymous with emotional and intellectual complexity. Another man and woman are introduced, but only as side lights to throw the central characters into bolder relief, unimportant save in their effect on the husband and wife whose unnecessary alienation and final pitiful reconciliation are the real subjects of interest. The “ goldhaired lady ” is merely an incidental result of their spiritual separation, and the inevitable “other man” is hardly more than the “ disturbing shadow ” of the forty-sixth sonnet, though some interpreters assign to him the more important rôle of first cause in the domestic shipwreck. Jealousy is, of course, an important element in the estrangement of husband and wife, — not the vulgar suspiciousness of an untrusting pair, but the gnawing dread of changed relations between two persons whose similarity of temperament is a real element in their silent suffering. For in this tragedy of temperaments the minor note of discord is struck not by any outward circumstance of woe, but by the action of these two highly organized and complex individualities on each other. And in this it may be taken as typical of the domestic and social disasters of the present day. As Meredith himself tells us, —

We find hints at the causes of the alienation between husband and wife in the tenth and fiftieth verses. In the first of these the husband cynically warns all lovers that love is

He further throws light on his own case by continuing: —

In the closing sonnet the writer offers a clue to the unhappiness of his characters in the following impartial explanation : —

A matter-of-fact reader may fail to find in the poem sufficient outward cause for the wrecked happiness of the man and woman, but such a reader has been warned what to expect in the ominous quotation with which Meredith precedes Modern Love in its latest edition — “ This is not meat for little people or for fools.”

That the poem is full of faults and unnecessary obscurities none but a Meredith maniac would deny; but these defects are comparatively unimportant, and do not impair its real significance or diminish its value. We may sometimes be puzzled and even irritated by the irresponsible manner in which the husband appears by turns as “ I ” and “he,” and by the too flattering confidence Meredith places in his reader’s ability to distinguish at once between “ Madam ” and “ My Lady.” But these puzzling points can be satisfactorily settled at the second reading, which the poem requires for even partial comprehension. It is, in truth, an audacious reader who dares to hold any opinion for or against this most subtle of life studies, till, after patient labor, he has solved to his own satisfaction the many verbal intricacies with which smooth places are made rough, and has come to some conclusion in regard to sundry ambiguous phrases. Then only can he properly appreciate the intellectual as well as the literary value of Meredith’s great poem. But after paying the cost of the first step into the mazes and mysteries of Modern Love, the adventurer will find that with each re-reading some new meaning will be made manifest, some different thought suggested or fresh light thrown on the problem dealt with, — a problem likely to exist wherever civilization adds intricacy to human nature and complexity to human emotions.

A few English poets and critics have made bold to set down in print their opinions that Modern Love is second to nothing of its class in any age. Algernon Charles Swinburne is among its ardent admirers. But it is not merely as a whole that Modern Love takes high rank among human documents, whether of poetry or prose. Many of the verses may be appreciated singly, and form in themselves complete poetic expressions, — notably numbers XI, XIII, XLIV, and XLVII. But in truth each may be singled out for its own peculiar quality, of poetic beauty, of penetrating knowledge, of brilliant epigram, or of biting cynicism ; and so each separate sonnet, sometimes roughly hewn and of crude workmanship like a marble of Michael Angelo, has in it something of the same strength and virility and eternal truth. The philosopher, the humorist, and the student of the human heart are revealed in the work of the poet, as the poet, the architect, and the painter are suggested in the creation of the sculptor. And surely, the sincerity of each separate manifestation of power goes to make up the unity of a man’s completed work, which, in its result, we call genius.