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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841-1901) |
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BOOK REVIEWS - POETRY 4. Napoleon Fallen (1871) to The Drama of Kings (1871)
Napoleon Fallen: a lyrical drama (1871)
The Examiner (7 January, 1871 - Issue 3284) MR ROBERT BUCHANAN’S NAPOLEON. Napoleon Fallen. A Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. Strachan & Co. The fertility of Mr Buchanan’s muse is marvellous, and even startling. Although little more than seven years have elapsed since the first fruits of his genius were presented to the public under the felicitous title of ‘Undertones,’ Mr Buchanan is already one of the most voluminous of our verse-writers. Within that brief period he has published half-a-dozen volumes of poems, and he now announces a volume of ‘Ballads of Life’ as ready for immediate publication, and ‘An Epic Poem’ in preparation. It must, however, be admitted that Mr Buchanan’s poetical works are hardly less remarkable for variety of style and subject than they are for the almost unrivalled rapidity with which they have been produced. Every successive volume is a veritable creation, or congeries of creations, and not a repetition, either in matter or in manner, of any of its predecessors. There is obviously no lack of originality in Mr Buchanan; on the contrary, the defects of his poems would lead us to suspect that this faculty is kept in a morbid state of activity. His muse, indeed, is probably too often in labour to beget mature and healthy children with a long and happy life before them; at all events, his progeny exhibit all the symptoms of being born out of due season. Yet, if thou darest, pray. Thou canst not tell It must be admitted that this is a powerful imitation of the Greek drama, but the thought is scarcely worthy of the vesture. Mr Buchanan’s meaning is neither original nor profound, and it might have been quite as effectively rendered in prose. There is nothing here that would justify even the faintest burst of song, and this majestic strain only brings the poverty of the thought into more glaring relief. By the secret hands of His great Church, We may as well mention that Louis Napoleon expresses a doubt whether Rome would be able to fulfil her part of the bargain, and resolutely refuses to accept the terms proposed by the simple Bishop. In the fair City then, ___
The Scotsman (10 January, 1871 - p. 5) NAPOLEON FALLEN. A Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. London: Strahan & Co. MR BUCHANAN has here made a bold seizure of a prominent character in modern history for poetic handling. He feels that he has been courageous even to temerity, saying truly in his preface that “ardent politicians, who would have let me have my own way with Tiberius or Peter the Great, or even Bonaparte, are certain to rate me roundly if I disagree with them about Louis Napoleon.” But others besides “ardent politicians” may question the good taste of making a living man subject of such artistic treatment as Mr Buchanan here gives the Emperor. He would say, in reply, perhaps, that Napoleon is dead for history; to which again Imperialists would probably rejoin, “nous verrons.” He revived before, after Strasbourg, and Boulogne, and Ham; and who shall say that a second lease of power may not yet be his? And, be this as it may, is it fair to practise this sort of dramatic vivisection in any case? Night. NAPOLEON sleeping. Chorus of SPIRITS. A VOICE. What shapes are ye whose shades darken his rest this night? CHORUS. Cold from the grave we come, out of the dark to the light. A VOICE. Voices ye have that moan, and eyes ye have that weep, CHORUS. Tho’ thou wert buried and dead, still would we seek and find thee, A VOICE. Who in imperial raiment, darkly frowning, stand, ANOTHER VOICE. Who in their shadow looms, woman-eyed, woe-begone, CHORUS. Peace, they are kings; they are crown’d; kings, tho’ their realms have departed; SPIRIT OF HORTENSE. Woe! O ye shades unblest, SPIRIT OF CAESAR. Greater than thou, I fell: thy day is o’er. SPIRIT OF HORTENSE. Woe! From his bed depart, SPIRIT OF BONAPARTE. Greater than thou, I fell; die, and give place. NAPOLEON (in sleep.) Dost thou too frown, dark Spirit of our house? SPIRIT OF HORTENSE. Father in Heaven, they rise!— A VOICE. What Spirit art thou, with cold still smile and face like snow? SPIRIT. Orsini; and avenged. Too soon I struck the blow. A VOICE. And thou, with bloody breast, and eyes that roll in pain? SPIRIT. I am that Maximilian, miserably slain. A VOICE. And ye, O shadowy things, featureless, wild, and stark? CHORUS. We are the nameless ones whom he hath slain in the dark! A VOICE. Ye whom this man hath domm’d, Spirits, are ye all there; CHORUS. Not yet: we come, we come—we darken all the air. A VOICE. O latest come, and what are ye? Why do ye moan and call? CHORUS. O hush! O hush! we come to speak the bitterest curse of all. HORTENSE. Woe!—for the spirits wild, CHORUS. Ours is the bitterest curse of all:—for we With sin and death our mothers’ milk was sour, With incantations and with spells most rank, We drank of poison, ev’n as flowers drink dew; Love, with her sister Reverence, passed our way Of some both Soul and Body died; of most Ah woe, ah woe, for those thy sceptre swayed, Lambs of thy flock, but oh! not white and fair; It is too late—it is too late this night— SEMI-CHORUS I. Tho’ thou wert buried and dead, still would they seek thee and find thee. HORTENSE. Woe! woe! woe! SEMI-CHORUS II. Ye who beheld dim light thro’ the chink of the dungeon gleaming, CHORUS. Gather around him there, spirits of earth and air, trouble him till he awaken. ___
Glasgow Herald (10 January, 1871 - Issue 9680) LITERATURE. NAPOLEON FALLEN: a Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. London: Strahan & Co. 1871. IT is not wonderful that the events of the last six months should have powerfully stirred all human hearts. Those who, like the poets, are the most sensitive and sympathetic, naturally feel the interest and horror of the time more deeply than others. In a single sitting, Mr Swinburne produced an ode on the new-born Republic, and Mr Robert Buchanan, after brooding on the spectacle for only a month or two, presents us to-day with a Lyrical Drama on the central figure of the first month of the war—the fallen Napoleon. He propounds his theory of the spirit of the dethroned Government, his views of the sources of its power, the secrets of its success, its conscious and unconscious aims, and the fatal poison in its blood which brought its destruction on it like a whirlwind. The attempt to give us a living portrait of the leading personage of a period, is one which is usually left by the poet till the historian has marshalled, in orderly sequence, the turbulent chaos of events in which the judgment of contemporaries is apt to lose itself. Mr Buchanan offers the slightest of apologies for his departure from the common practice. “The man who here soliloquises,” he says, “may not be the real Napoleon, but I believe there is some justification for my portrait. After all, truth is one thing and dramatic truth is another.” We find it difficult to admit the apology. There is no necessity in the nature of things compelling a poet to exhibit his dramatic truth in connection with historical fiction, and we are doubtful whether Mr Buchanan has studied his central figure with sufficient patience to entitle him to use it as the hero of a Lyrical Drama. It is not true, in our opinion, that it “is likely, on the other hand, to secure certain elements of real strength from the mere fact of its being based on contemporary events.” It is certain that the book will be more rapidly read and widely circulated now because its subject has hardly yet left the columns of the daily newspaper. We “lack as yet the proper foreground for the contemplation of the chief character.” “Fortunately,” says the poet, “the subject, if treated with any ordinary skill, will be always gaining instead of losing that artistic distance which many think so necessary.” It is not “distance” that is wanting, but “truth;” and the one is hardly at all valuable except as a help to the other. TO THE PROPHETS AND MARTYRS. O Prophets! that look forward, searching slow Our main quarrel with this Lyrical Drama is that it seems to us that this thesis is not established in it. It consists of a series of dialogues between Napoleon, a Bishop, an Officer, and a Messenger, interrupted by Chorus and Antichorus, Strophe and Antistrophe. At last, wearied out a little by the stress of the many considerations that have been urged on his attention, Napoleon falls asleep. He is visited in his dreams by a troop of spirits—the spirit of his mother Hortense, the ghost of Maximilian, of Cæsar, of the First Napoleon, of Orsini, of the prisoners whom he sent to Cayenne, and last of all by the souls who have been lost through the demoralisation of the Empire. This wakens him up, and he expresses himself in a long soliloquy, after which he falls asleep again, to be visited in his second slumber by a Chorus of the Dead, a Chorus of Citizens, and a Final Chorus or Epode, in which the result to which the whole drama is meant, as we understand, to point—the result that the Soul is safe—is didactically declared. The events of the past six months, as Mr Buchanan views them, appear to us to teach no such lesson. It is true that, at the beginning, the crimes of Napoleon were punished in the most exemplary way—and that Victor Hugo, who has regarded the fallen Emperor as the incarnation of every thing mean and wicked, is entitled to speak of the Bursting up of the Neva. But Mr Buchanan thinks that Napoleon was a man of peace—a man of many good instincts—a man in alliance with religion and the Church—the people’s shepherd when the people needed one—a good father and a good husband. His crime, if it can be called a crime, appears to have been that he selected a set of poor creatures as his trusted counsellors— Not France betrayed thee, Sire; but rather those And if the fall of Napoleon loses its instructiveness in view of this theory, the rise of the Republic affords no such consolation to Mr Buchanan, writing at Christmas, as it was fitted to afford to Mr Swinburne writing in the early days of September. The splendid endurance of the French Defence is associated historically with the Republic, but Mr Buchanan has apparently none of the wild enthusiasm with which Mr Swinburne welcomed that form of Government as the “Light of the life of Man.” He regards the men in power, as most Englishmen do, as people doing what they see to be their duty doggedly and well—on the whole surprisingly well; but he is not clear as to the success with which they may be crowned or the failure with which they may be rebuked. Merely to have maintained a Republican form of Government appears nothing to Mr Buchanan, and the explanation of that feat is no doubt what M. Thiers gave in his memorable mot—“The Republic is the Government which will divide us least.” SEMI-CHORUS I. Nay, for the Lamb shall wrap the world in whiteness; SEMI-CHORUS II. Peace! ye make a useless lamentation. FINAL CHORUS, OR EPODE. Comfort, O true and free, These events have thrown no light on the prospects of that “City of God” which so many prophets and martyrs have seen. From the midst of every darkness the prophets have seen, far off, the shining of its celestial walls. Mr Buchanan’s poem is meant to draw aside for us the veil with which the things of faith are hidden, and to reveal to us God and truth visible in living history. In spite of the great merits of his verses— in spite of the wonderful pictorial power which he exhibits throughout this remarkable poem—he has failed, because he has been more of a journalist than a poet or a prophet—a man who cannot help writing and speaking of things as they occur before his eyes, and drawing great lessons from them as a kind of necessity of trade, whether the lessons in them have as yet been made obvious by the events themselves or not. It is a curious illustration of the journalistic habit of mind of our poet that the next verse in this fine chorus should refer to the great subject of woman’s suffrage, which he probably agrees with Mr Mill in thinking the panacea for all human woes— In the fair City then, And who is the holy Bard of this stanza?— In the fair City of men, And what is the sense of the remarkable reference to the Contagious Diseases Acts agitation in the next stanza?— No man of blood shall dare The poem has the merits and defects of a political pamphlet in verse. The verse is often of the highest quality, and there is enough to prove Mr Buchanan a poet who owes it to his reputation, to prefer one book as perfect as he knows how to make it, to half-a-dozen, shot off in hot haste under the spur of a momentary excitement. ___
The Graphic (18 February, 1871 - Issue 64) “Napoleon Fallen.” A Lyrical Drama. By Robert Buchanan. (Strahan and Co.) Mr. Buchanan has lived to verify the canon of the old critical school, which forbade a poet to deal with the great events of the immediate present, as the principal subject of his poem. His “Napoleon Fallen” as a representation of the character of the fallen Emperor, although a dark and terrible picture of crime, will not fully satisfy the enemies of the late Emperor; because in their eyes the picture is not dark and criminal enough to be a portrait; while those who pity his fallen grandeur, and still more those who saw in the late Emperor the fine qualities of a great ruler, a faithful ally, and a true friend, will turn from Mr. Buchanan’s sketch with feelings of regret, if not with positive feelings of disgust and abhorrence. The atmosphere of the political world is too much clouded and disturbed with party spirit and political prejudice to enable the public to look clearly, calmly, and without any disturbing medium upon the poem before us solely and simply as a work of art. And even here, on this, the most legitimate ground of criticism, we have reason to apprehend a most unfavourable impression of Mr. Buchanan’s effort at poetry, which in name is “Napoleon Fallen,” but in reality “Buchanan Fallen.” The Emperor is represented by our poet as a captive in the castle of Wilhelmshöhe, where— He sits so snug, the man of sin and tells us— I staked my soul He is ultimately visited by a chorus of Republicans and citizens, who sing their abuse to most wretched imitations of Swinburnian measures. Then we have the visit of a Bishop, who rebukes the fallen autocrat for his treachery to the Pope, and denounces England as the home of “frozen-blooded islanders.” Towards the close of this most undramatic drama, there are tacked on some choral commonplace verses, celebrating what looks like a coming millennium, when In His white robes of peace For Mr. Buchanan’s credit as a poet of unquestionably great genius and genuine inspiration we much regret the appearance of this unfortunate poem, which, when compared, or rather contrasted, with his “London” and “Undertones,” is verily as “water unto wine.” We cannot leave him without reminding him that he has a great reputation to sustain, which he will seriously jeopardise by a repetition of such versicles as the present; and also that the word “orisons” is not the denotative term for morning prayers in contradiction to “vespers,” but “matins.” ___
The British Quarterly Review (Vol. 53, January/April, 1871 - p.303-304) Napoleon Fallen. A Lyrical Drama. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Strahan and Co. Mr. Buchanan is a brilliant improvisatore, and could doubtless produce dramas and epics to order on any subject to which the revolutionary mind is akin. We do not doubt the genuineness of his lyrical passion; it is white-hot and screaming, but it seems as if it were easy to kindle, not quite rational in its foundation, and certainly not classical in its expression. As a rhymed pamphlet, special-pleading a cause, and echoing the cries of the hour, ‘Napoleon Fallen’ is unquestionably powerful; as a dramatic representation of events in the shape in which they will descend to history, it is too violent to be true. It was a happy device to incorporate the Athenian chorus with the modern drama; the expedient provided expression for the eager feelings with which the world witnessed the stupendous struggle. But to import into the statuesque forms of poetry the frantic passion and inarticulate rage of the vanquished, in their naked amorphous violence, removes the poem out of the sphere of art. If the representation of a thing is meant to be permanent, the thing itself must be not only real, but also permanent in its nature. Lessing laid down this canon, and one would have thought that it was now established. But if ‘Napoleon Fallen’ is not perfect as a poem, there is very much fine poetry in it. The lyrical fire which an age in travail with revolutions produces is perhaps not rare in our days; Mr. Buchanan unquestionably possesses it. He also possesses that belief and faith without which no man has a right to sing at all—belief in the divine end of human life, and faith in the future. With poetic indefiniteness it is rather an aspiration than an articulated creed, but he is at least no emasculated Pagan. His dramatic power is less obvious, and perhaps it is only the dramatism of the lyrist—the mere modulation of passion into a different key. Back to the Bibliography or Poetry _____
The Examiner (2 December, 1871 - Issue 3331) MR BUCHANAN’S DRAMA OF KINGS. The Drama of Kings. By Robert Buchanan. Strahan. This is a great experiment; and, taking into account the vastness and the extraordinary difficulty of the task, it must, on the whole, be pronounced a success. In ‘The Drama of Kings’ we have, as Mr Buchanan states, “the first serious attempt ever made to treat great contemporary events in a dramatic form, and very realistically, yet with something of the massive grandeur of style characteristic of the great dramatists of Greece.” The conflict between France and Germany is here depicted A choric trilogy of tragedies and the author’s mode of conception, so to speak, bears a close resemblance to that of the Greek tragedians. His point of view, he tells us in “A Note for the Adept,” is that of “the realistic mystic, who, seeking to penetrate deepest of all into the soul, and to represent the soul’s best and finest mood, seizes that moment when the spiritual or emotional nature is most quickened by sorrow or by self-sacrifice, by victory or by defeat.” And this is not a point of view assumed for the nonce. In this, and in all his previous works, Mr Buchanan declares “an attempt is made to combine two qualities which the modern mind is accustomed to consider apart—reality and mysticism, earthiness and spirituality.” What this “mystic realism” exactly is, almost as a matter of course, is not clearly explained in the very mystical note from which we have made the foregoing quotations; but we are informed that it is something very different from those “musings of non-mystic men,” which “assume the purely spiritual and unimaginative form,” and we may safely infer that it is as far removed from that purely realistic mode of thought which is also unimaginative. However, although we fail to understand Mr Buchanan’s prose description of “mystic realism,” and have to confess that we never suspected its presence in ‘Undertones’, ‘The Legends of Inverburn’ or ‘London Lyrics,’ there is in ‘The Drama of Kings’ something that corresponds with the attitude of mind delineated in “A Note for the Adept.” The “note” throws a light upon the “drama;” and the “drama” does, in a way, illustrate the “note.” Following the example of “the great positivist who wrote the first and second ‘Fausts,’ the greatest poetic sceptic of modern times,” than whom “no one did fuller justice to mystic truths,” Mr Buchanan has made use of supernatural machinery, “without perfect faith,” confining it, however, to the framework of prelude and epilude in which the drama is set. He has resorted to this contrivance, as he tells us, in the hope that it may serve “to keep before the reader the fact that the whole action of the drama is seen from the spiritual or divine auditorium,” and he expresses his willingness to suppress it, if “the consensus of wise criticism inclines to its condemnation as a defect.” But, notwithstanding the semi-allegorical employment of theological personifications, the Greek-like mode of thought, and the Greek form of the poem, “in minor points of detail, the author is sanguine that it is not at all Greek, nor in any sense of the word Archaic,” and this hope is well founded. The spirit and the ideas that pervade ‘The Drama of Kings’ are essentially modern; indeed, they belong to future as much as to contemporary times. That wind of human voices anguishing Liberty, then, is the burthen of the drama, which is to show how two mighty nations, “dimly, darkly, for the great Idea,” struggled and fought together, while “one by one came leaders veil’d to each”—“bloody men who juggled with the mystic word of God”—and led them to ruin, “each saying ‘In the name of Liberty.’” When Time is proceeding to tell “how from sorrow came mysterious good,” Seeing man’s wrong’d Soul hoarded its deep strength he is interrupted by a confused noise. The drama has begun. After hurriedly muttering that Germania overthrown, Mad, stricken, lies upon her back and glares and after disclosing that he is one with Death, and yet deathless, Time quits the stage. From this prologue, we learn that it is one of the objects, if not the chief object, of the drama to exhibit the operation of man’s passion for liberty in the series of events that culminated in the capitulation of Paris, the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine to Prussia, and the unification of Northern Germany. This inextinguishable but often deceived and often defeated passion for liberty performs a similar function in Mr Buchanan’s ‘Drama of Kings’ to that performed by Destiny in the tragedies by Æschylus. Ours too long hath been a mighty house Here we may remark that the characters of the “drama” are so highly sublimated that they retain none of the accidental marks of their individuality. This will be a stumbling-block in the way of many readers. But this stripping off of the accidental and revealing the higher, essential, and predominating elements of character dissociated from their commonplace accompaniments, is precisely what Mr Buchanan means by “mystic realism.” The author of ‘The Drama of Kings’ is not the originator of this method, and it cannot be said that he will absolutely have to create the taste that will appreciate his work, but he will assuredly have to develop and cultivate that taste. We see thee and know thee now by the white immortal brow; The interview between Buonaparte and a Cardinal in the first part of the trilogy forms a fine contrast with an interview in the second part between Napoleon and a Bishop. To be sure the uncle is in the height of his prosperity, and the nephew is a prisoner at Wilhelmshohe, but this difference in circumstances does not fully explain the difference in their attitudes towards Rome. The nephew is plainly imitating the uncle, but he has not strength enough to perform the part effectively. When the Cardinal threatens, in the name of the Pope, to interpose his spiritual authority against Buonaparte’s sword, the latter replies: Thou comest a few centuries too late, But there are other powers working against Buonaparte, which echo the curse of Rome. The Semi-Chorus seeks to hearten and advise the people. If, it sings, If it will cheer your hearts while ye wait here, And answering the query, “Shall not our curses drag him down?” this practical minded Semi-Chorus replies: Nay, but arise, if so your hearts aspire, When the first part of the “drama” closes, the spirit of Liberty is troubling the soul of Buonaparte—could he dream that she “could live and dwell on earth and rear the race,” he would find out means to wed her to the Titan—but doubt and his own ambition lay the thought, and he is meditating divorce from Josephine, and marriage with some royal bride in order to perpetuate his dynasty. Where is the perfect State The most prominent character in the third part of the trilogy is, of course, Count Bismarck, and he is introduced at the close of a chorus of French Sisters of the Red Cross, who are lamenting the misfortunes of Paris. The Chancellor has little sympathy with the wail, and here, and at a later stage of the action, in an interview with a deputy from the City, insists at great length on the necessity of punishing and humiliating France for the social and political mischief she has wrought. Acknowledging that “this thing that men call ‘Liberty’” is “the everlasting principle,” “the secret law, the impulse and the thought whereby men live and grow,” Bismarck, nevertheless, dares, still holding by “this thing whereof the foolish rave,” to declare himself in favour of the Hierarchy: God above all, and next to God To this, the chorus—not, we presume, of Red Cross Sisters—replies in a powerful, satiric strain, from which we can give but a short extract. Because one foolish King hath slain Because these things have been and are, O Lord our God whose praise we sing, To our mind, one of the grandest passages in the whole “drama” is that in which Mr Buchanan gives his rendering of the religious services held by the Emperor of Germany in celebration of his victory. In this part, and in other parts of the poem, we are reminded of Mr Swinburne, but Mr Buchanan is not an imitator. His parody has a deep purpose, and is the natural and appropriate vehicle of the grim, scornful humour with which he regards the theme on which it is employed. Piercing through the conventional language of the worshippers, he boldly represents the Priest invoking the blessing of heaven, and of the people, on the Sword. “Hush!” sings the Priest, Hush! In the name of the Lord, With the submission of Paris to the triumphal passage of the German army through her streets, ‘The Drama of Kings’ ends. But the play is followed by an “Epilogue,” spoken by “Time” upon the stage, and an “Epilude,” before the curtain. In the former, “Time” points the moral of the “drama.” This is not the end. Thus far of evil there has issued forth The “sandstone Church of Rome, that lie of lies,” has been seen to be slowly decomposing, and “Cæsar’s last ghost,” Imperialism, that “second lie of lies,” has perished for ever. In the “Epilude,” the actor who played Buonaparte, Napoleon, and the Chancellor, who turns out to be Lucifer himself, comes and kneels, with his company, before the Lord. All receive thanks, but Lucifer is especially commended. “Never,” saith the Lord: Never since the earthly play began Then Lucifer asks the Lord to listen to a song describing the millennial city or state, which formed part of “Napoleon Fallen” as it was originally printed, and with that song the trilogy ends. That ‘The Drama of Kings’ is a great poem we hope will be apparent from the imperfect outline and from the extracts we have made. It has defects undoubtedly, judged even according to its author’s own design, but it is, nevertheless, a work of extraordinary and original genius. ___
The Daily News (23 December, 1871 - Issue 8004) RECENT POEMS. Several recently-published works of poetry demand serious consideration for the imposing earnestness of their tone, which claims to be inspired by a sense of anxiety concerning urgent moral, social, and religious questions of the present time. Among these productions one of the first to be noticed is that of Mr. Robert Buchanan, whose literary merits as an accomplished master of poetical diction and versification are generally acknowledged. If these faculties, added to great power of rhetorical expression, and a perfect command of the artistic methods and effects proper to the Greek lyrical drama, were all that is needful in a modern Æschylus, we should hail Mr. Buchanan as a truly classical poet. Mr. Algernon Swinburne, indeed, would dispute his pre-eminence by virtue of the same qualities, while Tennyson would stand at a modest distance, and Browning would be nowhere. There may, however, be a high degree of excellence in form, with a deficiency of substance, a crudeness and unsoundness of conception, a want of truth to nature, an absence of ethical wisdom, most fatal to dramatic or to epic poetry. In either of those two species of composition, it ought to be presumed that the author, whose personality should be kept quite out of sight, is an impartial philosopher or enlightened man of the world. He should have a superior acquaintance with all the varieties of human character, habit, and condition, but should regard them all with the equal eye of compassionate tolerance. He should be a calm witness even of the worst actions performed on the stage of history, and of the most distressing events, believing in the ultimate restoration of moral order, and prophesying, in the spirit of this faith, that wrong shall hereafter be righted, and loss shall be repaired in the common existence of humanity. Mr. Buchanan, though a man of ability and moral refinement, is far from having attained this serene equanimity, by which the imagination is preserved in the state of a clear and placid mirror for the undistorted reflection of surrounding objects. He is disqualified by an over-hasty vehemence of temper for the office of a poet, revealing the spiritual significance of things daily reported and discussed. This he attempts in “The Drama of Kings” (Strahan and Co.). The composition purports to be a “trilogy,” representing, from a divine, and therefore infallible point of view, the conflicts between Bonapartist France and Germany; the first part showing the victories of Napoleon I., and the establishment of his temporary dominion over Europe; the second part consisting of “Napoleon Fallen,” or the surrender of Napoleon III., after his defeat at Sedan; and the third part bringing in “The Teuton against Paris,” with the coronation of the Emperor William at Versailles during the siege. The author tells us, in a prose note on “Mystic Realism,” which is the explanation of his literary mission, that he has thought it worth his while to celebrate these events in song, because he finds that ordinary people have failed to perceive their poetic and mystic sublimity, as they fail in their daily walk through life to feel the spiritual relations, or to discern the ideal and essential characteristics of every object in nature. Mr. Buchanan, the “mystic realist,” esteems himself the possessor of some unique neutral endowment, by which he is made aware of the wonderful and beautiful significance of earthly affairs; and he is thereby entitled to judge of contemporary foreign politics from the standpoint of a heavenly spectator, admitted to the counsels of the Deity, and seated among the Archangels to see the play. This amazing supposition is presented in the framework of prelude and “epilude,” within which the three acts of the dramatic trilogy are inclosed. We scarcely like to tell our readers the manner in which Mr. Buchanan has ventured to introduce the person of the Supreme Being, as president of a company assembled to witness a theatrical performance, in which Lucifer takes the part of Napoleon Bonaparte, and afterwards of Bismarck, for their entertainment. The device is not very witty, and its effect is much more obnoxious to Christian feelings than that of the well-known Prologue to Goethe’s Faust, which might in some sort be excused by the necessity of accounting for the permission granted to Mephistopheles to mislead Faust by insidious suggestions and temptations. Mr. Buchanan is avowedly a Theist, in the Christian sense, and his sincerity and piety are not to be impeached; we hope that he will see the impropriety of the passages to which we advert, and that he will remove them from a future edition of this singular poem, should that be called for. The whole composition, though evincing considerable powers of imaginative idealisation and forcible expression, has the effect of fantastic unreality. The author, with superior literary talents for the manipulation of language, and especially for the construction of verse, is deficient in the faculties required for truly discerning and representing in a dramatic form the characters of individual men. He does not help us to understand the sentiments of a Napoleon or a Bismarck any better than we did before, “Mystic Realism” has read the newspapers, like the rest of us, and has risen to an exalted mood of self-conscious wonderment, but has no peculiar insight, as it fancies, into the inner workings of the mighty world-machine. ___
[Archibald Stodart-Walker opens Chapter V of Robert Buchanan - The Poet of Modern Revolt with the following paragraph: “The year 1873 will always have a unique place in the bibliographical history of Mr. Buchanan. It was in this year that he risked a fall with the Philistine, and succeeded even beyond his most ambitious hope. ‘The Ishmael of Song’ had the courage to publish the two volumes, ‘St. Abe and his Seven Wives,’ and ‘White Rose and Red,’ anonymously, with the result that he soon had his enemies in his net. With unanimous voice those who had scourged the poet before joined in the song of praise. ‘Pest on Mr. Buchanan’s dreaming! to oblivion with all such aspiring versifiers! here we have a poet indeed—here is altogether the true characteristic of genius!’ and so on. The poet was a poet of patience. ‘St. Abe’ ran rapidly into four or five editions, and then the thunderbolt burst. The author of ‘St. Abe’ was Robert Buchanan, the Ishmael of Song, the outcast Scotsman—he who sang of trulls and costermongers—‘the Celtic madman’; and there was sadness over the land.” Except the year was 1872 and among the journals who fell into Buchanan’s trap was The Graphic which printed a review of Buchanan’s The Drama of Kings followed by a review of the anonymous St Abe and His Seven Wives. Rather than transcribe these reviews separately, the original page can be accessed below.] The Drama of Kings and St. Abe and His Seven Wives: a Tale of Salt Lake City
Back to the Bibliography or Poetry _____
Book Reviews - Poetry continued Saint Abe and his Seven Wives (1872)
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