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ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841-1901) |
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BOOK REVIEWS - POETRY 7. The Earthquake (1885) to The Wandering Jew (1893)
The Earthquake: or Six days and a Sabbath (1885)
The Scotsman (1 January, 1886 - p. 7) Mr Robert Buchanan, in his new poem The Earthquake, has shown royal disregard of the charge of plagiarism. The skeleton plan of it is as old as Chaucer and Boccaccio, and the “Decameron” also seems to have yielded the central idea. For details of scenery and stage “properties,” Mr Buchanan has been beholden to other sources. The “Priory ruins” on the banks of the Tweed where the tales pass from mouth to mouth amid banter and argument suggest the Abbey ruins in Tennyson’s “Princess;” and for the mailed figure of “Sir Ralph,” we have the torso of a faun. All this does not deprive Mr Buchanan of the praise of originality in the choice and treatment of his subject. A shock of earthquake has passed through London, and the great city is shaken to the foundations of its society. At Limehouse a factory has fallen; a fissure has opened down to the sewers in one of the streets— On the western side A second, but less severe shock follows, and London is seized with panic. Nobody seems to have been hurt; but the great metropolis is deserted; only In the City still and in the Marts Among the first to flee, was the Lady Barbara of Kensington— Barbara the learned In the North she seeks refuge from the doom impending over London, and about her gathers a motley crowd of the worshippers of new cults, like strange animals fleeing, as before another flood, to the Ararat on the Tweed:— In flocks they came, the apostles of the creeds, Barbara is constituted Queen of the new “Court of Learning,” and since she is “nothing if she is not philosophical,” and since The world is old and gray before its time; she proposes that Our new Decameron Straightway the lions and lionesses, among whom we recognise under thin disguises, voices and lineaments of Ruskin, Spencer, Swinburne, Walt Whitman, and other teachers, preachers, and poets of the age, attracted by the novelty or the profanity of the idea, open their mouths in acclaim. But, as it has been noticed that in the presence of danger the lion and the lamb will lie down peaceably together, the apostles of the creeds are found to be in wonderfully tolerant as well as outspoken mood. Christianity suffers rough and contemptuous treatment at the hands of “plump Pantheists,” “pallid Pessimists,” and “positive Positivists,” and is not much helped by such advocates as Bishop Eglantine or Bishop Primrose. But only once, after a peculiarly defiant utterance of “Sparkle, Professor of the Institute, a wandering priest of Science”—an utterance, as we are not surprised to learn, “by some deemed blasphemous”—did there arise “angry cries” and a timorous crowding together of the lions, “as if fearing the earthquake’s jaws might open under them.” The present volume contains only three days’ sittings of the “new Decameron”—or rather “Heptameron”—ranged under the titles of “Renaissance,” “Anthropomorphism,” and “This World;” it is too soon yet, therefore, to pronounce opinion on the scope of the poem, and the success of the poet in presenting the different aspects of the “Great Problem.” In the tales and lyrical interludes Mr Buchanan is almost professedly imitative rather than original; he would probably decline to hold himself personally responsible for the super-subtle sensuousness of “Julia Cytherea,” or the Pagan morality of “Pan at Hampton Court,” any more than for the audacious arrogance of the “Soliloquy of the Grand Etre.” The “Grand Etre” speaks the jargon of science in the spirit of Heine:— I am Lord of the World. I am God, being Man, As far as the limits of Time and of space I am God, being Man. In my glory I blend Passages of great sweetness and of considerable strength abound; the poetry of the “Earthquake” will indeed be much more to the liking of the majority of readers than its philosophy. The May-day lilt of the Hampton Court idyll makes “music in the blood,” though its unabashed Bohemianism causes Lady Barbara’s pretty cousins from Annandale to blush and “titter amid their curls.” The “Voyage of Magellan” has a fine lyrical roll and swell like a South Sea billow— With the frost upon his armour, like a skeleton of steel, Once again before our vision sparkles Ocean wide and free, Was not Mr Buchanan’s memory haunted here by We know the merry world is round To our taste the fine old wine of poetry and romance is more palatable and healthy, even with the rank flavour it sometimes possessed in Boccaccio, than when mixed, after Mr Buchanan’s blend, with the vitriolic acid distilled from the controversies of the creeds and ‘isms. ___
The Earthquake from The Graphic (27 February, 1886 - Issue 848) Both title and motto are calculated to arouse expectation in the case of “The Earthquake; or, Six Days and a Sabbath,” by Robert Buchanan (Chatto and Windus); at present the application of the latter is not apparent, but the promised second part of the work may explain this. The main idea, pleasantly worked out, is borrowed from the scheme of the Decameron, and the heterogeneous company of Lady Barbara’s guests, amongst whom will be easily recognised some clever portraits of well-known characters, occupying themselves in the rather futile discussion as to the existence and nature of the Supreme Being. Mr. Buchanan always writes musically, though not invariably happy in his choice of metres, and some of the stories told are good, especially “Serapion” and “The Voyage of Magellan,” whilst the touches of natural scenery are charming. The poem is evidently meant as a satire on the would-be philosophies of the present day, and is decidedly clever; the sequel will be awaited with some interest. Back to the Bibliography, Poetry or The Earthquake _____
The Graphic (21 April, 1888 - Issue 960) RECENT POETRY AND VERSE “THE City of Dream: an Epic Poem,” by Robert Buchanan (Chatto and Windus), will not greatly advance the author’s reputation as a poet. It contains fine passages, as his work almost invariably does, more especially those in which he has scope for the descriptive faculty, which is one of his most striking characteristics. For instance, nothing could be better of their kind than the lines beginning “Green were the fields with grass, and sweet with thyme,” the ensuing song, “O child, where wilt thou rest?” the mystical voyage under the guidance of Eros, the pageant, or the passage opening “O bright the morning came.” But when all is said, the fact remains that the poem is tedious, as long allegories in verse have a way of being. Mr. Buchanan apostrophises Bunyan (who would have been highly horrified by some of the sentiments enunciated) and seems to have tried to write a sort of sceptical “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It would, of course, be grossly unfair to credit him with upholding the dreary, hopeless views put forward by Ishmael and others of his characters; but we fail to see what possible benefit to the world can accrue from their presentation in this form. Will any one be the wiser, better, or happier for such a book? And when the author speaks of “childish faith” being “past,” is he not arguing, in defiance of all logic, from particulars to generals? We hope for better work than this from his pen. ___
The Daily News (11 October, 1888 - Issue 13264) “The City of Dream”: An Epic Poem. By Robert Buchanan. (Chatto and Windus). The announcement of an Epic Poem in these hurrying days, when the only libraries are “circulating” or railway stalls, is a formidable survival. Indeed, one is apt to doubt whether there is any public for poetry nowadays, except in the very smallest doses. Of verse-making, of course, there is no end, and there is always a market for pretty tunes. But an Epic! Well, here is one in Fifteen Books, and written, too, by a genuine poet—a poet by instinct, by inspiration, by gift of utterance and expression; no poet of solitude and seclusion, lettered and leisured, but a toiler of the turbid sea of London ink; a playwright, a reviewer, a journalist, a theatrical manager on occasion. It was as a poet, however, that Mr. Buchanan made a name, and we are inclined to think it is as a poet that he will keep it. All his periodical and other work, even the roughest and the readiest, has had too much of something not appraised in the prices current of the markets to which he has brought his literary wares. Their faults and failings have been often those of his market rather than of his wares; the faults of articles made to sell in a miscellaneous market. His present work, which “represents the thought and speculation of many years,” is one which, were it signed by an unknown hand, would, we believe, have made a reputation; we trust it may not be obscured by the familiarity of a popular author’s name. We have found in it very high qualities of imagination, emotion, conception, and design, with a sustained elevation of thought and purpose. There are lines and passages of rare descriptive power, of fine imagery, of profound pathetic sympathy with human wretchedness and sorrow. The poem itself is eminently representative of the age that gives it birth. Dedicated “to the sainted spirit of John Bunyan,” it is to an age of tossing and tormenting doubt, of shattered faiths and crumbling altars and extinguished hopes, what “Pilgrim’s Progress” was to an age of God-fearing Puritanism. The pilgrim of the poem is an agnostic in search of the Unknowable God who, in the vocabulary of modern scepticism has replaced the Unknown God of the Athenians to whom Paul preached. The legendary beliefs of his childhood have deserted him, and sick and weary of the unsatisfying dogmas of a theology that ignores the evil and the misery it is impotent to explain or to remedy, he wanders through the enchanted mysteries of the old superstitions and the lonely and loveless realities of modern philosophy with unresting aspiration until from the borders of “the Celestial ocean” he beholds a “Ship of Souls vanishing into the distance of everlasting Light.” In the books entitled “The Outcast, Esau,” “The Groves of Faun,” and “The Valley of Dead Gods,” and “The City Without God,” the poet strikes a succession of chords which resolve themselves into a majestic harmony at the close, and if his unsparing boldness of denunciation may sometimes shock the pious ear, the most religious spirit will be content with the final reconciliation and resignation of the Pilgrim whose dream “seemed no dream at all.” To the critic of form there is an appearance of hasty execution here and there in Mr. Buchanan’s work, as if he had found no time to revise or recast the rough copy. There are iterations, and some doubtful “quantities” perhaps, which demand revision in a poem that deserves to live. Back to the Bibliography or Poetry _____
The Outcast: a rhyme for the time (1891)
The Scotsman (31 August, 1891 - p. 2) NEW POETRY Mr Robert Buchanan had a miraculous escape from being born a genius. Sometimes when he is seen with his eyes in a fine frenzy rolling, glancing from heaven to earth and from earth to the abyss, and apostrophising with melodious volubility God, and Man, and the Devil, one is ready to jump to the belief that he is a heaven-sent poet with an inspired message. But after listening to him it presently becomes clear that he is all the time speaking of and to himself, and that Deity, Humanity, and Diabolus—the “spirit that denies and spurns”—are but aliases of Mr Buchanan. There are amazingly clever and wonderfully beautiful things in The Outcast, but, granting that it may not be quite fair to judge the whole by the part, one fails to see in it the promise that “The Amours of Vanderdecken,” when that great opus is complete, will take good second rank as poetry—to say nothing of philosophy—after “Faust” or “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” There must be more in inspiration of the highest kind than is implied in the utmost measure of fluency and versatility; and the singer, if his singing is to be really true to nature and endowed with the hope of immortality, must try to forget both himself and the critics. Mr Buchanan’s new poem is proof, if any were needed, that he has talent enough to furnish forth a host of minor versifiers, and yet not sufficient power of concentration and self-forgetfulness to become a really great bard. The new Flying Dutchman is only the poet himself, soliloquising. It is true that he puts the bolder and naughtier—some old-fashioned people will say the more profane and nasty—sayings within “inverted commas” as the words and opinions for which Vanderdecken is to be held responsible. But, after all, it is only a question of degree—and not always of degree—between the language of the guest and the host—between the Outcast Spirit and his medium. If the reader does not fully understand the nature of the Diary kept by the Accursed—a parchment written, “just for a joke,” in his own red blood, and left with Mr Buchanan to be edited and published by instalments to the gaping world—it is not his editor’s fault. He has written a “Proem,” a “Prelude,” an Inscription to the Reader, promising him, among other things, “curious and often improper Reflections on Men, Manners, and Morals;” an Interlude, an Epilogue, and Dedicatory Addresses, both in prose and in verse. In these the poet almost necessarily repeats himself; but, along with the particulars of Vanderdecken’s sin and early career, we gather a good deal of information concerning the subsequent and still untranscribed adventures of this strange hero, and are allowed to do more than guess at his ultimate fate. As a dramatist and playwright, the author ought to know the danger of thus anticipating the course and end of his marvellous drama of Sea and Land, and of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, which he is careful to inform us is intended to be taken seriously, and not to be read as mere horseplay and flouting of Providence and the stream of Modern Tendency. Philip Vanderdecken makes his entry in a manner not at all new, but in a garb in which one would scarcely have expected to find him. It is a London masher, an intellectual dandy, Elegant of mien, smiles at the poet’s start of vague alarm when he enters his study after receiving, in answer to his knock, an invitation to come in. It is the Flying Dutchman, who, in the intervals allowed him to go ashore, has been reading more than is good for him in modern literature, and passing his time in dubious social pleasures. Hardly has he handed over his manuscript to Mr Buchanan, and exchanged confidences by which they discover that they have both been damnably ill-used by Providence and the Critics, when his time runs out and there comes over him a sea change— Lo, his cheek We are to recognise in this enigmatic shape the Modern Spirit, Holding within his ringed white hands He has been damned through reading Spinoza, but there is hope for him if he is able to discover, in the interludes of his sojourn on solid land—a grace granted him by special intercession of the Madonna—a woman capable of softening and saving him by her self-sacrificing love. This discovery, we learn, he is at last to make, but not until he has passed through many sad experiences, and uttered opinions which, besides being made salt and strong with improprieties and impieties, have sometimes the still more profound fault of being nonsense. His first probation will seem to many by no means a hard one; he spends what may be called, from the side of the flesh, “a good time” in an Eden of the Pacific. Afterwards he is to be sent to Germany, Rome, Paris, London, and heaven, or the other place, knows where else before he discovers Love, the universal solvent. Were there not so many signs of serious purpose—so much also of noble poetry—in the piece, one might suspect Mr Buchanan of trying his hand at a new kind of “shocker”—one too long, however, as well as too strong, to hit a popular taste. ___
The Times (3 September, 1891 - p.6) In “A Letter Dedicatory to C. W. S. in Western America,” appended to his new poem, THE OUTCAST: A Rhyme for the Time (Chatto and Windus), Mr. Robert Buchanan almost absolves the critic from his task and discharges it for him. “At 19 years of age,” he tells us, “after having been educated in independence, I was tossed out on the stormy sea of literature, where I have been busy ever since, beating this way and that, often almost sunk by authorized gunboats or piratical dhows, and never finding a fair wind to waft me to the Fortunate Isles. I have since had the usual experience of original men—my worst work has been received with more or less toleration and my best work misunderstood or neglected; while the self-authorized critical pilots who haunt the shallows of journalism have agreed that I am a factious and opinionated mariner, doomed like my own Dutchman to eternal damnation, because like my prototype I have once or twice been provoked to violent language. For nearly a generation I have suffered a constant literary persecution.” And in a subsequent passage of the same letter he offers to wager his friend that his book is either universally boycotted or torn into shreds. If we may assume for a moment the function of the critic without being supposed to adopt the rôle of the persecutor, we should say that the former fate is the more probably of the two, not indeed because Mr. Buchanan is the victim, as he strangely fancies, of a constant literary persecution, but because his poem is in our purblind judgment dull and tedious. “Yet it is a live thing,” he tells us, “part of the very seed of my living soul,” and, as for its “morality,” which he thinks may shock some poor groundlings, “I would read every line of it to the woman I loved, to her whose purity was most sacred to me”—an ordeal which would rather attest the endurance of the lady than the merit of the poem. Surely Mr. Buchanan takes himself too seriously. He is a versatile man of letters who occasionally exhibits flashes of genuine inspiration. But his airs of the persecuted prophet are insufferable, and “The Outcast” is a very mediocre performance. ___
The Pall Mall Gazette (23 September, 1891 - Issue 8271) MR. BUCHANAN AS THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.* MR. BUCHANAN lately published a book under the name of “The Coming Terror.” He was apparently alluding to the portentous series of poems in which he contemplates recording the “amours of Vanderdecken, called the Flying Dutchman.” The first volume has appeared, and is before us. It consists mostly of proems, preludes, interludes, epilogues, and appendixes, but the rest is partly about the subject in hand. Mr. Buchanan is not very clear in his explanations, but the Flying Dutchman seems to be meant partly for the Modern Spirit, and partly for Mr. Buchanan himself. This is odd, if true, for the Spirit and the person seem to have nothing in common but their antagonism. Still, here is the poet’s impression as he scrutinizes his visitor, the “Flying Dutchman”:— Into his face I look’d again All this is somewhat a new light in which to look upon the clever collaborator of Mr. George R. Sims. But the whole book is full of surprises. It is a book of confessions. Not even from the columns of the Daily Telegraph (many of which appear, almost word for word, in rattling lengths of verse) could we learn so much about Mr. Buchanan—his soul, his morals, and his manners. For instance, how interesting it is to have one’s opinions confirmed by the frank confession that both Browning and George Meredith— would end by frowning The word morality occurs a great many times in these pages, not accompanied, however, by any illustration of its meaning. Mr. Buchanan is at great pains to assure us that what he writes will be “considered shocking,” but that it is not. Well, it is not particularly. Let him be assured his work is not in the least corrupting, it is never more than rather vulgar. When he offends, he offends—to quote his own words— “with merest horseplay, like a zany.” It is entirely out of one’s power to object seriously to the merely ill-bred irreverence, the merely cockney cocksureness of contempt for gods and men, that characterize the after-dinner chatter of such casual and irresponsible verse. “He prattled on,” says the poet of his hero, and indeed the interchangeable pair prattle on, in a circular series of digressions, all through the book. Mr. Buchanan was once a poet; he can still write clever jingle. The verse goes swinging along, a little unevenly it is true, but with sufficient agility for the purpose. Page succeeds page apparently without effort—a remarkable feat when we consider how much has been made out of how little. In the scraps of space left over from the digressions there is something about the first “amour of Vanderdecken:” a very childish affair it seems to have been. Even in connection with this Mr. Buchanan insists on referring to his own experiences. * “The Outcast: a Rhyme for the Time.” By Robert Buchanan. (Chatto and Windus.) ___
The Graphic (26 September, 1891 - Issue 1139) RECENT POETRY AND VERSE In his new poem, “”The Outcast” (Chatto and Windus) Mr. Robert Buchanan throws down the gauntlet to a great many people. His “Letter Dedicatory to C. W. S.” contains this passage:—“I will wager you the whole set of ‘Chambers’s English Poets’ to one of your far more precious letters, that this book is either universally boycotted or torn into shreds; that its purpose is misunderstood; and that, above all, it is impeached on the ground of its ‘morality.’ Yet it is a live thing—part of the very seed of my living soul.” The volume before us professes to be the first of a series of tales dealing with the Amours of Vanderdecken. The poet on Christmas Eve is seated in his chambers, cynically musing upon what the late Mr. Lowell called “humbug generally,” when there is a knock at the door, and there enters— A stranger, elegant of mien, The stranger introduces himself as Philip Vanderdecken, the Flying Dutchman. For a hundred years, owing to his denial of a personal God, he had been compelled to face the storm in his ship, but was allowed one year in ten on shore, so that he might search for a woman willing to give her soul for his. He kept a diary of his short life written in Mine own blood, on parchment skin. which he hands to the poet, meanwhile observing:— Like a young lady, truth to tell, After the conversation with the famous Dutchman, the main portion of Mr. Buchanan’s book is taken up with Vanderdecken’s first year of shore-life. It is passed in a lovely Pacific isle, and his liaison with a very fair child-woman is described with a frankness and vigour which will delight some folk and appal others. Indeed, if the succeeding volumes at all resemble this one, we are promised a new “Don Juan”—a something like the performance of his own island dancing girls:— A leaping, eddying, unabating, His picture of the island girl is very charming. She is a Haidee of the world in which Mr. Stevenson lives. After all, Vanderdecken will, so we understand the poet, find rest at last, and in the end of this work will be its moral and justification. Mr. Buchanan manages to make many observations, sharp or bitter, on persons living and dead which we have no space to notice. We may observe, however, that, apart from fine descriptive passages, he seems not least effective when he suddenly, amid much that is incongruous, breaks out into moralising. As an example of this we quote the following lines:— Man is most godlike, I affirm Altogether, the poem is a fine one, and not unworthy of Mr. Buchanan’s poetic reputation. As it stands it is incomplete, and therefore it is in a sense beyond criticism. For the same reason the poet is liable to be misunderstood—a fate he has certainly taken no pains whatever to avoid. Back to the Bibliography or Poetry _____
The Wandering Jew: a Christmas carol (1893)
The Penny Illustrated Paper (14 January,1893 -p.3) Mr. Buchanan’s “Wandering Jew.” Just as I sat down to write these paragraphs a press copy of M. Robert Buchanan’s new poem, “The Wandering Jew,” came to hand. I have met that Israelite at various times and places. My first acquaintance with him was in the pages of Eugene Sue, when the weird figure was strangely mixed up with the horrors of the Paris slums. Then he appeared in a romance by Dr. Croly, called “Salathiel.” I had the pleasure of knowing the rector of Walbrook, and used to go to the old church by the Mansion House to hear him preach. There were noble passages in his “Salathiel.” Next I found my old friend in the pages of Heine, the German poet with a French style. Again I met with the Irrepressible Israelite in a sort of cantata set to music by Meyerbeer. Anon he turned up in Shelley’s poems, and in the verses of three or four later bards. Meanwhile, after fiction and poetry had done best or worst with “The Wandering Jew,” the stage got hold of him, and at last people began to regard him as A Hebrew “Bogie Man,” and would have no more of him. I thought the poor wanderer had possibly, like “The Flying Dutchman,” been redeemed by some gentle maiden; but it seems not. Mr. Robert Buchanan has made a wondrous discovery. His “Wandering Jew” is the “Founder of Christianity” himself, who still walks the earth, grey with accumulated years and lamentations over human sorrows. The poet mixes Him up with Buddha, Hypatia, Mahomet, &c., and makes altogether as strange and incoherent a poem as I have ever seen. I expect there will be trenchant reviews of the latest “Wandering Jew.” ___
Glasgow Herald (16 January, 1893) MR. BUCHANAN’S NEW POEM. * Many years ago Mr Robert Buchanan put the reproachful question to his brother poets—“Why is our Christianity forgotten as a subject?” His latest poem shows conclusively that he at least has not forgotten it. Christ is the central figure in this “epos of the world’s despair,” some of the principal speakers are familiar New Testament characters, and the outsiders are introduced only in so far as they are connected with Christianity. We are treated to an uncompromisingly rationalistic life of Christ, and we get a good deal of Church history; Popes, sunworshippers, martyrs, persecutors, saints, infidels, heretics, Jews, Mohammedans, Encyclopædists, Buddhists, all appear on the scene, and their subject from first to last is—Christianity. The title has been skilfully chosen. One naturally thinks of Ahasuerus, “That Wanderer whom God’s curse And, indeed, when the poet, mooning alone in a very sceptical state of mind in London streets on a snowy Christmas Eve, was accosted by a strange old man “with reverend silver beard and hair snow-white and sorrowful,” he thought at first the “Wights” was the wandering Jew himself. This weak and ancient Wight cried to him in pain, “For God’s sake, mortal, let me lean on thee.” “Oh then, meseemed, the womb of Heaven afar The poet was deeply affected by the Wight’s woful speech and appearance, and cursed God and Nature in true spasmodic style; for will it be believed, one of the poet’s complaints was against “The winds and snows that smote this man so old, After some mystification and swooning, the poet suddenly discovered that the Wandering Jew was not Ahasuerus at all, but Christ, and the rest of the poem is the explanation of how he appeared in this particular guise. We are transported to “an open plain beyond the city,” where, to quote the poet’s own words:— “Before my face These shrieking phantoms had assembled there to pass judgment on Christ for deceiving them with vain hopes of another life and other lies, and the presiding judge, who represents the Spirit of Humanity, is thus described— “Human he seemed, and yet his eyeballs shone After he and “another awful shrouded skeleton” had denounced the Wandering Jew for breaking the pleasant slumbers of the world with wicked dreams, for leading men to despise life and love and home, and turning the earth that once was glad into “a lazar-house of woful man and mad,” the witnesses for the prosecution are called. Judas first appears and gives the fashionable explanation of his conduct, and he is followed by a long string of accusers, who all for different reasons bear their witness against Christ. Nero, for instance, of whom we get a remarkably clever picture, denounces him for his apathy in allowing him to go on as he did. The “Vicars of Christ” denounce him for not interfering when, to use Mr Buchanan’s elegant simile, “sins like lice ran o’er them.” Galileo and the martyrs of Science complain that He was the cause of their death. Montezuma curses him because of what his followers did. “Trampling my naked hosts with armèd heel And Julian in a mixture of spasmodism and Pope perorates thus— “The Galilean conquered as I threw Mr Buchanan mercifully does not permit one-half of the accusers to speak, and he does not take us much beyond Voltaire, possibly because Browning had already dealt with the German professor. The witnesses are then called for the defence, and Mary Magdalene, the Virgin, John, St Paul, and many others, give their view of the matter. The accused next speaks for himself, and in one of the not too numerous really beautiful passages in the poem describes how he felt when he came to this earth— “Yet I remember, on this my Judgment Day, After denouncing the world for its rejection of him, Christ craves for death at the hands of the Judge, but this boon is denied him, and his doom is pronounced in the following terms:— “Since thou hast quicken’d what thou canst not kill, And then the poem concludes with the prayer:— “God help the Christ, that Christ may help us all.” The main conception is certainly daring and original. It can hardly be said, however, that the meaning is quite clear. The poet himself in some not very lucid lines admits this— “For lo, I voice to you a mystic thing We hazard the following conjectures, though only a Buchanan Society could fathom all the poet’s intentions. The poem is an attack on the tendency in certain quarters to lay the blame of the corruptions and misunderstandings of Christianity on Christianity itself, and it is at the same time a satire on the modern Pagans, who complain that the teaching of Christ has robbed the world of its gladness, and who would willingly return to the joyous life of humanity before it had been troubled with the spectres of God and immortality. It may also be meant to teach us that the spirit of Christ, having really entered into the world, cannot ever again be driven out, but must live on till in “the Father’s time” it shows itself to be the true salvation of men. And this, at least, is hinted at, that even though Christ were theologically mistaken, all true souls must cling to Him because of what he was, and that it is woe to the world because it has rendered His work ineffectual—in the meantime at least. This, however, is guess work, for “all his words seem wild, His meaning dark.” In his new poem Mr Buchanan takes all that liberty with words which he has from the first allowed himself. It is long since he turned braved into bravèd, and make it rhyme with David, and so here again we get “starèd,” and “hushèd,” and “manèd,” and “countrie,” and “mìrage.” “Wight” occurs even unto weariness, and we have some glaring examples of the breathless style—such as “the infinitely weary glooms of God,” “swooning to a sick horror,” “filths of evil.” The dedication to his father, “Father more dear than any Father in Heaven,” is in the taste of Renan’s dedication of his “Vie de Jésus” to his sister, only that it is written in strangely halting verse instead of in exquisite prose. Mr Buchanan throughout has not very faithfully followed what, if we mistake not, is one of his own canons of the poetic art, namely, that a thing cannot be uttered too briefly and simply if it is to reach the soul; and, spite of the wonderful brilliancy of some of the pictures and the really extraordinary power of some of the separate passages, we would not give one “Poet Andrew” for a dozen “Wandering Jews.” *The Wandering Jew: A Christmas Carol. By Robert Buchanan. (London: Chatto & Windus.) ___
The Guardian (17 January, 1893 - p.9) The Wandering Jew: A Christmas Carol. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. Mr. Robert Buchanan has been so long now at the practice of verse-writing that it would be very strange indeed if he were to produce any poem entirely new in kind. As a matter of fact, any critical reader of his work who is told that the “Wandering Jew,” who is the hero of this piece, is not our old friend Ahasuerus at all (though he appears), but Christ, and that a sort of trial of the Saviour before a court with Death for judge and a long string of persons from Judas Iscariot to Jean Calas as witnesses for the prosecution, could probably anticipate what it is like. To criticise it without an appearance of yea-nay and facing-both-ways is not easy. Mr. Buchanan has, and always has had, some of the requirements of the poet, and those not the commonest nor the easiest to attain. He has a powerful though rather melodramatic imagination, a very considerable command of verse, which, though rarely polished, has vigour, fervour, and sweep, and a certain distinct touch of mystical passion which no one who remembers the “Ballad of Judas Iscariot” will deny, and which has often been exhibited since that ballad. On the other hand, he has no power of self-criticism; he is very deficient both in taste and in logic; his boisterous fluency is a terrible snare to him; and he has followed to his hurt the most dangerous of all models to a person of his stamp—Victor Hugo. He himself will probably take it as a compliment, and the discerning reader will at once perceive the proportions of praise and blame in the remark when we say that the “Wandering Jew” is very like a minor Hugonic poem without the intoxication which even at his worst Hugo knew how to produce by sheer dint of his mastery of rhythm and language. That the orthodox Christian will call it blasphemous and offensive, and that the logical Agnostic will call it fantastically inconsistent and inconclusive, are matters which are not quite minor: for the truth of the second objection cuts away any possible defence to the first. If the poem is a formal indictment of Christianity it must state the charges intelligibly, give proper venues, &c. for the counts, and tender us a rather better list of witnesses than opposition Prophets like Mahomet and Buddha, persecutors like Nero or like Julian, and open rebels to every precept of Christ like the Papal lovers of Marozia or of Vanozza, and the unjust judges who sentenced Calas. If, on the other hand, we are to take the thing poetically, it will have to be objected that, despite some verse of merit, the whole wants concentration and condensation, that the scenario is very obscure, and that the machinery is wholly incomprehensible. In short, the whole thing once more shows Mr. Buchanan’s besetting sin of crudity, a fault by no means uncommon in the best wine and the best poets when both are young, but fatal to both poets and wine when they ought to have and have not outgrown it. ___
The Times (19 January, 1893 - p.7) In THE WANDERING JEW, a Christmas Carol (Chatto and Windus), Mr. Buchanan seems to us to have essayed a task that would have taxed to the utmost the poetic genius of a Dante and a Milton combined. The Wandering Jew of Mr. Buchanan’s apocalyptic vision is the Redeemer himself, who is arraigned before a mystic tribunal, accused of all the woes, and sins, and tragedies, all the delusions and disappointments of the 19 centuries of Christian history, and condemned to the desolate immortality of an everlasting outcast. ___
Birmingham Daily Post (27 February, 1893 - Issue 10823) NEW BOOKS. THE WANDERING JEW: A Christmas Carol. By ROBERT BUCHANAN. [Chatto and Windus.] Whether or not Mr. Buchanan has any serious purpose in this strange poem we cannot venture to guess. It seems primarily designed to shock the feelings of so much of the Christian world as may be allured to read it. The more obvious teaching of the poem as a whole is, in long-winded phrase, the hasty utterance of the Fool, “There is no God.” The Christ who essayed to reveal to men the Father after two thousand years awakes to find his “dream was vain”: that there is no Father, and that for all Death is the end of all, only for Him, who was all pity and all love. Some form, which typifies we know not what, pronounces the doom— Since thou hast quickened what thou canst not kill, The poem here and there recalls the wonderful “Dream of Atheism” in Jean Paul Richter’s “Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces,” and at times Arthur Hugh Clough’s “The Shadow,” though to us it is far less impressive than either of those brief and masterly productions. If this is more than a poetic rhapsody in execrable taste, then we say, this is an impossible view of Jesus of Nazareth. There are among us many able and good men, who believe that the world has wrongly accounted Him divine, yet none would be so mad as to charge on Him the guilt of those who in His name have pursued their own selfish purpose and glutted their ignoble appetites; of those who have ignored His teaching while making a market of His name: he towers above Zoroaster, Gautama, Confucius, Mahomet, “the highest, holiest manhood,” the great embodied Love. So much is held by those who are not His disciples. All this weltering flood of foul accusation is but the morbid dream of an egotistical rhymer; it does not voice Humanity, nor any section of it. Judged merely as a poem, divesting ourselves, so far as is possible, of any prejudice in the matter, it is impossible to deny that it has occasionally great power. If we can think of it as we nineteenth century mortals, reared in the atmosphere of Christianity, would think of the story of Zeus and Prometheus, we can but admire the profusion, the invention, the energy, and “go” of the poem. The poet tells us that as he, Mr. Robert Buchanan, wandered in the city’s streets, “bitter with God because his wrongs seemed great,” and “pitying the blended herd” of his fellow men who still believed in Christ, a thin hand crept trembling in his own and a tremulous voice asked “for God’s sake to be allowed to lean on him,” Mr. Robert Buchanan. There are whirlwinds, and glamours, and all sorts of wonders, until at last it dawns on the mind of the poet that this is the Wandering Jew, and taxing him with it, the form answers, “I am He!” But after further communing with him he sees upon his hands and feet the bloody stigmata and recognises The lineaments of that diviner Jew Then he bends in adoration before the Master, and visions come to him, the silent cisterns of the night are stirred and the pale stars cling together. Like Asmodeus, Mr. Buchanan peers through brick and stone, and sees multitudes awakening with the words “Arisen! Arisen!” on their lips. And, better far— Far, far away, faint as a filmy cloud, Some terrible atmospheric disturbances follow, and then Mr. Robert Buchanan sees the Lonely Man, trailing his cross of wood before the hill of Golgotha, on which sits in judgment One, shrouded and spectral. The judge seems to be the accuser, too, but the arraignment is made by “another awful shrouded skeleton,” even Death, recounting His story and charging upon Him the crimes of the world. Then come the witnesses, Judas Iscariot, Ahasuerus, Pilate, Nero, Julian, Hypatia, Mahomet, Gautama, Zoroaster, Menù, Moses, Confucius, Prometheus, a swarm of Popes, Galileo, Castilio, Bruno, Justinian, Du Molay, King Frederick, Algazalli, Alhazen, Petrarch, Huss, De Gama, Columbus, Magellan, Montezuma, the Incas of Peru, myriads of martyrs, Calas, Voltaire, and countless hosts of dead. There seems no reason beyond the limits of our biographical and classical dictionaries, and prudential publishing considerations, why the list of witnesses should ever have stopped. Then “the Jew” is invited to call his witnesses, if he has any. He calls none, but, “uplifting still his weary gaze, searches the empty Heaven’s pathless ways for miracle and token.” But John the Baptist, and John the Divine, the “gentle Mother of God grown grey and old,” Mary the wife, and Mary Magdalen, pallid apostles, impetuous Paul, and others, a great cloud, rose; but their voices were drowned by the fierce anger of the accusers, and in the end the doom which we have already quoted is spoken by the anonymous Form. Once again we ask, does Mr. Buchanan mean anything by it? To us it appears as if the poem were characterised in one line, in which the poet describes the utterances of the Jew— And all his words seemed wild, his meaning dark. The poem is not unfrequently marred by metrical lapses that jar upon the ear. The metre is the familiar heroic verse, iambics of ten syllables, and we do not know how in such a measure to read, for example, such lines as these:— “Snows of white hair blowing feebly in the wind.” There is an unpleasant wilfulness too in the use of words, “Twain hands,” “stenching the cities,” “the fire-flaught,” treading the “glooms,” the moon’s “hypnotic spell,” speaking of “puerperal women,” “light enew,” which seem to be employed for the sake of oddity—a very cheap kind of distinction. Sometimes the idea is as little congruous as Pope’s Verses by a Person of Quality, e.g., we are told that the lonely man “sank feebly on the parapet of stone,” and, following the description, in the same breath that “he stood from head to feet smothered” in the snow. These are slight blemishes which would irritate in a poem one cared to remember. We have read “The Wandering Jew” without pleasure, and shall not be sorry to forget all about it. Back to the Bibliography, Poetry or The Wandering Jew ___
Richard Le Gallienne’s review of The Wandering Jew in The Daily Chronicle is available in the following section of the site: “Is Christianity Played Out?” - The Wandering Jew controversy. _____
Book Reviews - Poetry continued 7. The Devil’s Case (1896) to The New Rome (1898)
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