On Himself

H. Belloc

Q: I think what Belloc meant in crediting Virgil with the power to give us a sense of the Unknown Country was that Virgil specialises in a kind of wistful vision of things across great distances in space or time, which renders them dream-like and invests them with an air of ideality. He mentions as an instance the passage (perhaps in the

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sixth book of the Aeneid) where the swimmer sees all Italy from the top of a wave:

Prospexi Italiam summa sublimis ab unda.

I dare say—

Sternitur infelix alieno volnere coelumque
Aspicit et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos¹

as well as

Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore²

belong to the same category. To an ordinary Roman Catholic mind like Belloc, which is not conscious of the subtle hierarchy of unseen worlds, whatever is vaguely or remotely appealing—in short, beautifully misty—is mystical, and "revelatory" of the native land of the soul. Add to this that Virgil's rhythm is exquisitely euphonious and it is no wonder Belloc should feel as if the very harps of heaven were echoed by the Mantuan.

He couples Shakespeare with Virgil as a master of (to put it in a phrase of X) "earth-transforming gramarye". The quotations he gives from Shakespeare struck me as rather peculiar in the context: I don't exactly remember them but something in the style of

Night's tapers³ are burnt out and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops

seems to give him a wonderful flash of the Unknown Country!

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He also alludes to the four magical lines of Keats about Ruth "amid the alien corn" and Victor Hugo's at-least-for-once truly delicate, unrhetorical passage on the same theme in "La Légende des Siècles". I wonder if you recollect the passage: its last two stanzas are especially enchanting:

Tout reposait dans Ur et dans Jérimadeth;
Les astres émaillaient le ciel profond et sombre;
Le croissant fin et clair parmi ces fleurs de l'ombre
Brillait à l'occident, et Ruth se demandait,

Immobile, ouvrant l'æil à moitié sous ses voiles,
Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été
Avait, en s'en allant, négligemment jeté
Cette faucille d'or dans le champ des étoiles.⁴

What do you think of them?

A: If that is Belloc's idea of the mystic, I can't put much value on his Roman Catholic mind! Shakespeare's lines and Hugo's also are good poetry and may be very enchanting, as you say, but there is nothing in the least deep or mystic about them. Night's tapers are the usual poetic metaphor, Hugo's moissonneur and faucille d'or are an ingenious fancy—there is nothing true behind it, not the least shadow of a mystical experience. The lines quoted from Virgil are exceedingly moving and poetic, but it is pathos of the life plane, not anything more—Virgil would have stared if he had been told that his ripae ulterioris was revelatory of the native land of the soul. These sentimental modern intellectuals are terrible: they will read anything into anything; that is because they have no touch on the Truth, so they make up for it by a gambolling fancy.

1-4-1932

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