Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Essays, Lectures & Letters of S. T. Coleridge (Illustrated)

This excellence is so happily achieved in the Don Juan, that it is capable of interesting without poetry, nay, even without words, as in our pantomime of that name. We see clearly how the character is formed; and the very extravagance of the incidents, and the superhuman entireness of Don Juan’s agency, prevents the wickedness from shocking our minds to any painful degree. We do not believe it enough for this effect; no, not even with that kind of temporary and negative belief or acquiescence which I have described above. Meantime the qualities of his character are too desirable, too flattering to our pride and our wishes, not to make up on this side as much additional faith as was lost on the other. There is no danger (thinks the spectator or reader) of my becoming such a monster of iniquity as Don Juan! I never shall be an atheist! I shall never disallow all distinction between right and wrong! I have not the least inclination to be so outrageous a drawcansir in my love affairs! But to possess such a power of captivating and enchanting the affections of the other sex! — to be capable of inspiring in a charming and even a virtuous woman, a love so deep, and so entirely personal to me! — that even my worst vices, (if I were vicious), even my cruelty and perfidy, (if I were cruel and perfidious), could not eradicate the passion! — to be so loved for my own self, that even with a distinct knowledge of my character, she yet died to save me! — this, sir, takes hold of two sides of our nature, the better and the worse. For the heroic disinterestedness, to which love can transport a woman, can not be contemplated without an honourable emotion of reverence towards womanhood: and, on the other hand, it is among the miseries, and abides in the dark groundwork of our nature, to crave an outward confirmation of that something within us, which is our very self, that something, not made up of our qualities and relations, but itself the supporter and substantial basis of all these. Love me, and not my qualities, may be a vicious and an insane wish, but it is not a wish wholly without a meaning.

Without power, virtue would be insufficient and incapable of revealing its being. It would resemble the magic transformation of Tasso’s heroine into a tree, in which she could only groan and bleed. Hence power is necessarily an object of our desire and of our admiration. But of all power, that of the mind is, on every account, the grand desideratum of human ambition. We shall be as Gods in knowledge, was and must have been the first temptation: and the coexistence of great intellectual lordship with guilt has never been adequately represented without exciting the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in this bad and heterogeneous coordination we can contemplate the intellect of man more exclusively as a separate self-subsistence, than in its proper state of subordination to his own conscience, or to the will of an infinitely superior being.

This is the sacred charm of Shakespeare’s male characters in general. They are all cast in the mould of Shakespeare’s own gigantic intellect; and this is the open attraction of his Richard, Iago, Edmund, and others in particular. But again; of all intellectual power, that of superiority to the fear of the invisible world is the most dazzling. Its influence is abundantly proved by the one circumstance, that it can bribe us into a voluntary submission of our better knowledge, into suspension of all our judgment derived from constant experience, and enable us to peruse with the liveliest interest the wildest tales of ghosts, wizards, genii, and secret talismans. On this propensity, so deeply rooted in our nature, a specific dramatic probability may be raised by a true poet, if the whole of his work be in harmony: a dramatic probability, sufficient for dramatic pleasure, even when the component characters and incidents border on impossibility. The poet does not require us to be awake and believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves to a dream; and this too with our eyes open, and with our judgment perdue behind the curtain, ready to awaken us at the first motion of our will: and meantime, only, not to disbelieve. And in such a state of mind, who but must be impressed with the cool intrepidity of Don john on the appearance of his father’s ghost:

“GHOST. — Monster! behold these wounds!

“D. JOHN. — I do! They were well meant and well performed, I see.

“GHOST. —— — Repent, repent of all thy villanies.

My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries,

Heaven will pour out his judgments on you all.

Hell gapes for you, for you each fiend doth call,

And hourly waits your unrepenting fall.

You with eternal horrors they’ll torment,

Except of all your crimes you suddenly repent. (Ghost sinks.)

“D. JOHN. — Farewell, thou art a foolish ghost. Repent, quoth he!

what could this mean? Our senses are all in a mist sure.

“D. ANTONIO. — (one of D. Juan’s reprobate companions.) They are not!

‘Twas a ghost.

“D. LOPEZ. — (another reprobate.) I ne’er believed those foolish tales

before.

“D. JOHN. — Come! ‘Tis no matter. Let it be what it will, it must be

natural.

“D. ANT. — And nature is unalterable in us too.

“D. JOHN.—’Tis true! The nature of a ghost can not change our’s.”

Who also can deny a portion of sublimity to the tremendous consistency with which he stands out the last fearful trial, like a second Prometheus?

“Chorus of Devils.

“STATUE-GHOST. — Will you not relent and feel remorse?

“D. JOHN. — Could’st thou bestow another heart on me I might. But

with this heart I have, I can not.

“D. LOPEZ. — These things are prodigious.

“D. ANTON. — I have a sort of grudging to relent, but something holds

me back.

“D. LOP. — If we could, ‘tis now too late. I will not.

“D. ANT. — We defy thee!

“GHOST. — Perish ye impious wretches, go and find the punishments laid

up in store for you!

(Thunder and lightning. D. Lop. and D. Ant. are swallowed up.)

“GHOST To D. JOHN. — Behold their dreadful fates, and know that thy

last moment’s come!

“D. JOHN. — Think not to fright me, foolish ghost; I’ll break your

marble body in pieces and pull down your horse.

(Thunder and lightning — chorus of devils, etc.)

“D. JOHN. — These things I see with wonder, but no fear.

Were all the elements to be confounded,

And shuffled all into their former chaos;

Were seas of sulphur flaming round about me,

And all mankind roaring within those fires,

I could not fear, or feel the least remorse.

To the last instant I would dare thy power.

Here I stand firm, and all thy threats contemn.

Thy murderer (to the ghost of one whom he had murdered)

Stands here! Now do thy worst!”

(He is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.)

In fine the character of Don John consists in the union of every thing desirable to human nature, as means, and which therefore by the well known law of association becomes at length desirable on their own account. On their own account, and, in their own dignity, they are here displayed, as being employed to ends so unhuman, that in the effect, they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other — more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelings, of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama. Thus having invited the statue-ghost of the governor, whom he had murdered, to supper, which invitation the marble ghost accepted by a nod of the head, Don John has prepared a banquet.