XVI. THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE.

In the year 1833 Edgar Quinet published his “Mystery” entitled Ahasuerus. It seems an amazing fact that a work of this importance should never have been translated into English. It was well appreciated in France, and was the subject of the excellent review (Revue des Deux Mondes, Dec., 1833) which has already been referred to in this work. It is an epic in prose. Amid the stately Miltonic forms of Biblical and other mythology, and through a mist of mysticism, may be seen Edgar Quinet himself bent under the doom of turning the faith of his childhood, the illusions of all he loved, into mere conventionalised foliations of a frame around the reality of a creature moving about amid worlds for ever dead.

His early faith having suffered what he fondly hoped might prove to be transient eclipse, he started upon those restless journeyings through Europe and the East, which were still less restless than his spiritual wanderings; but at no point could he see any faintest arc of a sun returning from its eclipse. The old light had for ever gone down. As he wandered there arose before him this other self, this doomed Ahasuerus. Through ten years he was writing it; it was written, he has told us, on foot, on horseback, in the gondola, at sea; in cathedrals of Germany, basilicas of Rome, in the convent of Bron, in the villas of Naples, and the almshouses of Morea. “Its aim is to reproduce some scenes of the universal tragedy played between God, Man, and the World.” In the end Quinet married a German lady, Rachel by name, who appears in his dramatic epic also as the saviour of Ahasuerus.

The work is divided into four “Days,” with three interludes, a prologue, and an epilogue. The first day is “The Creation;” the second, “The Passion,” discussed by the devils as a rather poor comedy. Ahasuerus appears in this second “Day.” He is seated on his bench in an open door as Jesus passes with his cross, followed by a crowd which praises Barabbas and Pilate. Ahasuerus believes Jesus a magician, and when he says, “Is it thou, Ahasuerus?” the latter says, “I know thee not.” “I thirst; give me a little water from thy spring.” “My well is empty.” “Reach thy cup—thou wilt find it full.” “It is broken.” “Help me to bear my cross along this hard path?” “I am not thy cross-porter; call a griffin from the desert.” “Let me sit on thy bench at thy house door?” “My bench is full; there is no room for another.” “On thy threshold?” “It is empty, but the door is shut and bolted.” “Touch it, and you can enter to get a stool.” “Go thy way!” “If thou wilt, thy bench may become a golden seat in the house of my Father.” “Go, blaspheme where thou wilt! Thou hast already withered with thy footsteps my vine and fig-tree; do not set foot on my stairway, it will crumble under thy speech. Thou wouldst bewitch me.” “I wish to save thee.” “Diviner, leave my shadow! Thy road is before thee. March, march!” “Why hast thou said that, Ahasuerus? It is thou who shalt march, even till the Last Judgment, more than a thousand years. Go take thy sandals and travelling raiment; wherever thou passest thou shalt be known as the Wandering Jew. It is thou who shalt find no seat whereon to rest, no mountain-spring to slake thy thirst. In my place thou shalt bear the burthen which I leave on the cross. For thy thirst thou shalt drink what I have left at the bottom of my cup. Others shall take my coat, thou shalt inherit my eternal pain. Hyssop shall germinate in thy staff, wormwood increase in thy leather bottle; despair shall cling as the leather girdle about thy loins. Thou shalt be the man that dies not. Thy age shall be mine. To see thee pass the eagles shall perch on their barn. The little birds shall half hide themselves under the crest of the rocks. The star shall bend beneath the cloud to watch thy tears falling drop by drop in the abyss. I go to Golgotha; thou shalt journey on from ruins to ruins, from kingdoms to kingdoms, without finding thy Calvary.”

This is about half of the sentence pronounced upon Ahasuerus. A hand had written on his house, “The Wandering Jew.” Ahasuerus finds himself alone, and calls for Jesus to return; he would speak only one word more! After his sad soliloquy the angel Michael appears, and bids him travel onward. Ahasuerus enters his house once more and attempts to rest and eat with his father and children, but he cannot; he must go, despite their pleadings.

After a long and pathetic farewell to his family and his home, Ahasuerus passes out to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Here, he says, he would build his hut upon the rock could he only find some water. The Valley bids him journey on: “I have neither well nor cistern; those who dwell in my vale never thirst.” “Where are thy date-trees planted?” “I have none. They who sojourn in my hill never hunger.” “Find in thy brushwood some herb to heal this wound in my heart, which is like a point of iron?” “My simples heal all pains, but not that of the heart in which a thorn rests.”

After much converse the Valley bids him adieu. “Talk no more where the dead sleep. I am silent.” After that, whatever Ahasuerus says, Echo alone replies. His requests are successively in the words Jesus had addressed to him at his door, and Echo repeats his own refusals.

The third “Day” is called Death. Death is represented under the name of Mob. And now a human spirit comes upon the scene—Rachel. As we have seen the tender Jesus passing out of life to blend with the remorseless elements, uttering the curses which find their echo in the heartless hills, and the winds whistling in the Valley of Death; so now, on the other hand, we see a heart leaving the heavenly realm that smiles above human agony to share the earthly sorrow. In the presence of God and Christ, and the heavenly host, one angel has forgotten the wrongs of Christ so far as to shed a tear for Ahasuerus. For that she is cast out of heaven, banished to the earth, and made to dwell in the house of Mob (Death). Rachel and Ahasuerus meet, neither knowing anything of the other for a long time; they are in love with each other; and for a time the drama somewhat resembles that of Margaret and Faust, Mob taking the part of Mephistopheles. There is a very beautiful scene in which the Angel of Death (Mob) leads Ahasuerus and Rachel into the cathedral at Strasburg. There the mighty shades, royal and papal, demand of Ahasuerus his name. He will not utter it; but Christ speaks from the stained window and declares him to be the Wandering Jew. The dead curse Ahasuerus, the cathedral curses him; but Rachel pleads for him. While demons flash their flames around, Rachel cries: “Be blessed, Ahasuerus! Mercy for him, Lord; open Thy heaven! Are these the angels that watch at the gate of Paradise? Angels, angels, open for me the gate; there is also a place for Ahasuerus, is there not? Oh, how flaming are their swords! Oh, how heavy their bolts! Come, come, Ahasuerus: the stars of Paradise are rising beyond the threshold!”

Another motif from Goethe’s Faust rises in the fourth “Day,” the Day of Judgment, where Rachel and Ahasuerus (whom she calls Joseph) are seen in a desert, beside a waste ocean in the distance, and a ruin emblematic of the world now in ruins. Ahasuerus has exhausted every experience, except that of being loved by Heaven. Rachel tells him that her Christ is a divine sea of love, into which they may together plunge and lose all memories and all longings. As Faust’s contract with Mephistopheles holds the latter to bring him to an hour when he shall desire nothing beyond, an hour to which he shall say, “Stay, thou art fair!” so Ahasuerus is moved only by the pledge of his angel Rachel that no desire can arise beyond the divine Love. There is no water near; so there in the desert Ahasuerus kneels, and Rachel baptizes him with her tears.

As the world comes up before the seat of Judgment—cities, ages, continents, islands—curses fall on Ahasuerus. Rome, Babylon, Athens, the Highway, repeat the sentences of his doom in Jerusalem; the Mountain offers to be his Calvary; the Forest proffers him a Cross, and the Rivers would give him gall. But Christ speaks more kindly. Of all the universe Ahasuerus and Rachel now only remain. Christ offers now to give him his home in the East; but Ahasuerus says he does not desire it. “I ask life, not repose. Instead of the steps of my house of Calvary, I wish to ascend without pause the stairway of the Universe.” “Art thou not weary from thy first journey?” “Thy hand, rising over me, has already dried my sweat. With thy benediction, I depart this evening towards those future summits where thou already dwellest.” “But who will follow thee?” A voice of the Universe breaks in, “Not we! If thou wilt, we will return on our steps; but we cannot mount higher. Our wild steeds, our waves, our tempests are weary.” Rachel says, “I! I will follow him; my heart is not weary.” Whereon the Universe cries, “A woman has lost me, a woman has saved me!” “Yes,” declares Christ, “this voice has saved thee, Ahasuerus. I bless thee, the pilgrim of coming worlds, and the second Adam. Return me the burden of the Earth’s pains.... Journey thou from life to life, world to world, from one divine city to another; and when, after eternity, thou shalt have arrived at circle on circle of the infinite summit whither all things move, whither tend the souls and the years, the peoples and the stars, thou shalt cry to star, to people and universe, if they would pause, Climb on, climb for ever: it is here!”

The epic closes with an impressive Epilogue. Christ is alone in the vault of the firmament. “Since the hour when Ahasuerus returned my Cup, the wound has come again to my side; my tears fall into the abyss.... The heavens are empty; in the firmament I am alone. One after another the angels have all folded their wings, like the eagle when it is old. My mother Mary is dead: my father Jehovah has said from his couch, ‘Christ, my age is on me. I have lived enough of the ages; the worlds burthen me to lift.... I am cold.... I am weary.... I thirst. My age is too great; I see no more the light of thy aureole. Go! thy father is dead.’... The firmament has cast its god from its branch, as the fig-tree its leaves.... Farewell, worlds, stars, dews of the morning and evening, which have saluted me by name when I was a child.... Is it true? in the night, in the day, afar, near, is there no one?’ Echo answers, ‘None.’ ‘Life, truth, falsehood, love, hate, gall and vinegar mingled in my pyx—yes, the universe was I. I am a shadow; a shadow that for ever passes; I am the tear that ever trickles, the sigh ever renewed, the death that ever agonises; I am the Nothing that ever doubts of its doubt, the Negation that ever re-denies itself.’” Eternity alone hears the sorrow of Christ, but it cannot aid him to weep, its eyes are dry; it cannot promise love to the orphan-worlds he is leaving, for in its breast is neither love nor hate. ‘All is finished!’ cries the universe-wanderer, who has no Rachel’s tear to baptize him. ‘Lay me in the tomb of my Father. Be it so!’ Eternity speaks: ‘For the Father and the Son I have digged a grave in a frozen star which rolls companionless, without light. The Night, beholding that pale star, shall say, ‘This is the tomb of some god.’”

Then Eternity crumbles the worlds, the sphinx, and even the void, ending with a triumphant Moi.

The romance of The Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue (1844), from which the majority of people have derived what impressions they may have of the legend, is so “sensational” that its value as an illustration of the myth is concealed. Whether intentionally or not, this novel, so far as the Jew appears in it, reproduces very nearly the spirit of an Arabian legend which belongs to the class discussed in this work. The story of Al Khedr will be found in the Koran (xviii.). It is said that Moses, having boasted of his knowledge, was told by God of one wiser than himself; and having found out this man (Al Khedr), he (Moses) journeyed with him. But the aged man had exacted from Moses a promise that he would not ask any question, whatever he might see. Al Khedr commits various crimes, and Moses cannot contain his indignation. Al Khedr then reveals to him that each apparent wrong he had done was a retribution, or a blessing in disguise, telling him the story of each person who had apparently suffered injustice. The Arabs have identified Al Khedr with both Elias and St. George (who they say, recovered life after being thrice slain). The wisdom of Al Khedr therefore lies in his continuity of existence. He represents the primitive conception of a particular providence, seeing the end of events from the beginning. They who have perused the history of a single family whose records have been preserved for several generations, may sometimes feel, with Browning’s Luria,

It takes the life of a family to round out and complete the events and incidents which its individual members often find so out of joint, and which have baffled the efforts of this or that generation to set them right. And since the general pressure of the aggregate members of the family, in all its generations, is toward the better conditions, the tendency is such as to suggest a providential guidance by the Sleepless and Eternal. This is reflected in Al Khedr; and the Eternal Jew of Eugene Sue is related to him. In the drama built of this novel, which I saw well performed recently as “All for Gold” in the Surrey Theatre, the tableaus of the Wanderer were quite impressive. He appears on a peak of Arctic snow, with the Northern Light behind him; his doom, as that of his race, was recalled in a certain reddish hue of beard and raiment, and he speaks of the children—who, seeming so helpless, are struggling successfully as unconsciously for their bequest with the hidden powers of Jesuitism—as representatives of a family which represents the history of humanity.

Wherever Ahasuerus moves he leaves the sign of the cross on his track—the last departing glimpse of the mark of Cain. Herodias, his fellow-sufferer, comes up to the Arctic region on the American side—a notable incident when it is remembered (see IX.), that her myth is mainly Spanish and survives chiefly in Spanish America. Eugene Sue brings both of the Wanderers to rest. Herodias enters the Abbey of “St. John the Beheaded;” exhausted she sinks before his image. Weary, footsore, as she had never felt before, even when passing over fiery lava, sandy desert, or Arctic icefields, athirst, and in pain, she looks into a fountain and observes the traces of age in her features. Her youth, which had seemed endless, has passed. Her expiation ends at the feet of the image of him her guilt had destroyed. She implores the forgiveness of God for Ahasuerus also. The Wandering Jew, meanwhile, has climbed Calvary and sits down at the feet of an image of Jesus there. Suddenly he perceives that the face looks upon him as if it were alive, with gentleness and compassion. Ahasuerus prays and is pardoned. Ahasuerus and Herodias are finally seen together, under a shelter, at peace, awaiting longed-for and approaching death.

In Ahasuerus, Sue represents the Workingman, an outcast from heaven under sentence of drudgery, finding at last release from oppression. Herodias is Woman, delivered at last from her political slavery.

So, in their widely differing spheres, have Quinet and Eugene Sue given a nineteenth-century refrain to the seventeenth century song:

M. Pierre Dupont has written a poetical version of our legend to accompany G. Doré’s designs (published by Michel Lévy in 1856). But, as Champfleury says, the imaginatively created Jew of M. Doré, and the modernised narrative of M. Dupont, are very uninteresting compared with the rude pictures of the folk-books, and the quaint simplicity of the folk ballads. The figure of the Wandering Jew which Kaulbach introduced into his picture of the siege of Jerusalem might, as a painting, be regarded as somewhat related to the New Ahasuerus of the poets, but it is a subject that still invites artistic treatment. And how suggestive of artistic effects the legend is may be judged by the next and last French work to be considered here: La Mort du Juif-Errant. Par Edouard Grenier.

This poem was first published, separately, in 1857, but afterwards included in its author’s Petits Poëmes, of which the fourth edition is before me. It is a beautiful and pathetic poem, and treats the story subjectively. The poet describes himself as having escaped from the haunts of men, and built a little hermitage far away in the mountain solitudes. One evening, when he had been watching the fading splendours of sunset, the signs of a storm appeared. The labourers had hastened homeward, the herds sought their shelter, the birds their nests. He then beheld a solitary wayfarer moving on, and asked him to enter, informing him that, in the direction he was going, he could reach no house until morning, and pointing to the increasing menaces of the storm. The traveller turned upon him a burning eye and said, “Thou knowest not the wayfarer whose steps thou wouldst stay. Why, detained by thy request, should I enter with thee thy hospitable door, if my name, when pronounced, must freeze thy welcome, and force me to repass thy threshold?” “Whatever thy name or lot, yet must this roof shelter thee this night.” The Wanderer accepts. The poet draws a striking picture of his guest’s strange and noble appearance. The traveller is shown a fountain where he may bathe; a repast is then spread before him. Afterwards the poet inquires the name and country of his guest, who turns pale, and with a sigh answers, “I am called Ahasuerus; I am the Wandering Jew.” Seeing the poet’s shudder, the Wanderer rises, thanks him for his hospitality, and says, “The cursed one blesses thee,” then starts up to resume his journey. But the poet holds him. “It is not I who am charged with thy punishment.” He forbids Ahasuerus to go out into the storm. The Wanderer says, “The beasts of the field and the birds of the air have their retreats from the rain and lightning, but the Proscribed One hath not where to lay his head.” He heeds not the storm, but the voice which above it cries, “Still march! For thee alone neither repose nor death. March for ever! The justice of God has not had its full course.” But when the poet has detained him, and as they sit together, this harsh voice for the first time is not heard. He asks if the divine justice can have become weary? The poet bids him hope. The lamp is lit, and the poet entreats Ahasuerus to instruct his youth. He who has explored so many regions, seen so many peoples, traversed the earth—what a sublime destiny!—can tell much to him who, bound to one little spot, can only dream of such far realms, which he has longed to see. Ahasuerus tells him the earth is so small, his desire would soon be calmed, could he explore it. Each corner of nature offers the universe as in miniature. With the blue heaven above, and a soul within, he may unite the image of the real with the infinite dream. Earth, air, heaven, man, are everywhere the same. But, the poet says, life is so short; man does but begin to peruse the universe when death closes his eyes; while for him—the Wanderer—length of days have opened the treasures of knowledge; man, time, lands and ages, have no secrets for him. Ahasuerus bids the poet undeceive himself: each man receives in his mind what his forerunners have traced. “Step by step, day by day, century by century, along with humanity, I have wearily climbed the painful ladder on whose last rung God has placed thee.” They have journeyed the same road, but he—the Wanderer—as a pioneer, has had to travel for ages on foot, over stones, the course which the man of the present passes in his chariot in a day.

In the third canto the Wanderer gives the poet an account of his wanderings. At first he had not believed in his doom; then, when he began to contemplate the possibility of it, he entered into all manner of dissipation to forget himself. Finally, in the mournful Valley of Jehoshaphat, he turned upon the pursuing phantom and faced it. “Is it then such a terrible thing to live for ever? What have I lost? Death. What everybody is trying to do! Are not all aiming to live eternally as God in heaven?” He is elated at his prospect; he will have glory, gold, bend nations under his sceptre. Perhaps he will be the Messiah himself!

But the Wanderer’s wife, passionately loved, slowly parts from his heart, withers of age, and dies in his young arms. The torture of that gradual decay of the one he loved is portrayed. His sons, as they grow in years, dread him, hate him, try to poison him; and then leave him in horror or remorse for other lands. Of his family one alone remains, a beloved son. But this last child’s heart even grows cold to him. Its life sinks; its colour departs; its face becomes thin, corpse-like. O horror! he sees before him, in the dying child, the very face of Jesus, whom he had insulted! The child dies on the day and hour of the anniversary of Christ’s death.

After many wanderings Ahasuerus finds himself in the Colosseum at Rome, there seated in the moonlight. He had seen that great edifice built by Jews, stone by stone, while their own beloved Jerusalem fell to dust. As in the great Roman ruin he is meditating upon the vicissitudes he has witnessed, the Angelus sounds forth; the stars, the dew, all nature started in chorus, and said, “Repent!” He looks upon the crucifix amid that circle—triumphantly raised there, where he had seen Christians torn by lions. As he was looking upon that figure a well-remembered voice came to him from it, “Why fly from me? Thy sole refuge is in my love.” Then he there knelt, crying, “O Christ! thou hast conquered me!” Then his first relief came in tears, and an ineffable peace descended in his heart. From that time he did not suffer as one disinherited; he even felt a delicious pain in his expiation; he lived, suffered and loved along with humanity. He now comprehended the enormity of his crime, which God had pursued so relentlessly: it was not his insult to Divinity, but his lese-humanity. He now felt that he might hope that his expiation would be complete, and in the last day he would find repose in the love of Christ.

In the fifth and last Canto the poet entreats the Wanderer to give him a description of Jesus personally, of whom he has so long dreamed—his look, manner, voice. When he has ended this appeal there is a knock at his door, and a stranger enters. Ahasuerus at once recognises him, and kneels, clasping his feet and bathing them with his tears. Jesus says to him, “Friend! weep no more! Since thy touched heart comprehends its sin and washes it away in tears; since the man outraged by thee as much as the God is now thy brother; since thy heart loves, I bring pardon, the reward of repentance. Be happy! Now, thou canst at last die.”

In the morning a shepherd coming to the poet’s hermitage found two forms lying prostrate, both apparently dead. The poet was slowly brought to life, but Ahasuerus was dead. On his face was a smile of celestial sweetness and calm felicity. On a bier made of larches the poet and the shepherd bore the dead body of the Wanderer to its place of rest. They bore it to the summit of the highest mountain. Beyond the trees they passed, beyond the bushes, and where the grass became scant. Into a cloud they entered, upward and onward bore him, till they came to the blue foot of a glacier. On a little couch of moss they laid the body while they dug a grave; as they covered the Wanderer’s form their last vision was of the smile still shining, or even happier, upon his face.

It is interesting to contrast this peaceful end of Grenier’s Ahasuerus with the invincible Wanderer of Shelley. Nevertheless, the Ahasuerus of this poem yields only to a tender appeal from Christ—himself the bound victim of an eternal curse. Another poem may yet be written which shall show Jesus not to have pronounced the doom upon the poor shoemaker, but to have known so much of Jahve’s vindictive disposition as to foretell it, and ultimately coming to an understanding with Ahasuerus as the fellow-victim of an eternal curse. They might be shown buried together by the compassionate poet and shepherd where the foiled eagle of Jove, surviving from its feast on Prometheus, could not reach them, and the glacier-heart of deified power could freeze and crush them no more. This, for one of the two, would be a happier fate than survival in the satirical song still sung in France—