Bezsemenov. Keep still mother! They will come back . . they dare not! Where will they go? (To TETEREV.) What are you grinning about, you ulcer! Out of my house, not another day, all of you. Pertshichin. Wassili Wassilyevich, comrade. Akoolina Ivanovna. Tanja Tanetshka! My dear, you poor thing . what is going to happen now.. Bezsemenov. You, my girl, you knew everything and you kept it to yourself. You plotted against your father. (Suddenly as if terrified.) You think he will never leave her! This lewd woman! Will he take her as his wife! My son! Curses on you, miserable abandoned beings! Tatiana. Oh, let me be! Don't make me hate you. Akoolina Ivanovna. My poor daughter, my poor unlucky child. They have tortured you to death. . why do they do it? Bezsemenov. And who did it? Nil, the out-law! He turned our son's head.. . has brought bitter sorrow to our daughter. (Glances at TETEREV, standing at the sideboard.) You bum, what do you want? Get out of my house! Pertshichin. Wassili Wassilyevich! What are you putting him out for? Say the old fellow has gone mad. Teterev (to BEZSEMENOV). Don't be yelling so, old man, you have not the strength to scatter the forces which have arrayed against you. But do not disturb yourself. Your son will return to you. Bezsemenov (quickly). How . . how do you know? Teterev. He will not go far away. . . He has only gone upstairs as it were. . or has been carried up. He will soon come down. . . After you die he will rebuild the big pen . . change the furniture about and live as you have lived, quietly, stolidly and comfortably. . . Pertshichin (to BEZSEMENOV). Now you see, you queer chap! Hothead! People wish you well, have pleasant words for you and you break out bellowing! I tell you, Terentey is a wise chap. Teterev. He will change the furniture about and will go on living in the belief that he has done his duty excellently by life and humanity. And he is exactly like you from top to toe, in all respects, you both Pertshichin. As like as two peas. Teterev. Exactly, both cowardly both stupid.. Pertshichin (to TETEREV). Stop! What are you saying? just as cruel. (PERTSHICHIN looks wonderingly into TETEREV's face, not understanding whether he is comforting or abusing the old man. BEZSEMENOV's face, too, shows doubt, though intense interest.) And just as unfortunate. Life is taking its course, old man, and whoever cannot keep up, is left behind in loneliness. Pertshichin. There! Ah! Ah! Do you hear? Everything happens just as it has got to . . and you are getting angry? Bezsemenov. Stop! Let me alone! Teterev. And your pitiful son will be told the truth then just as unmercifully as I ask you now 'what have you lived for, what good have you done?' And like yourself, your son shall not be able to answer. Bezsemenov. Yes! . . what are you talking about now . . you have a skillful tongue in your head. . but what about your heart and soul? No, I don't believe you. Let it stand, vacate your room, enough, I have had enough of you. You have preached a harmful gospel here. Teterev. No! I was not to blame. . if I only had been. . Bezsemenov (shaking his head). Shall I endure it?-yes, wait.. Let us wait. I have suffered my whole life long.. I will go on suffering (goes to his room). . . Akoolina Ivanovna (runs after him). Father! My dear! What have we killed our children for? (Exit to their room.) (PERTSHICHIN stands blankly in the centre TATIANA, with staring eyes, sits at the piano, looking around. From the old folks' room, a low murmur.) Pertshichin. Tanja! . . Tan . (TATIANA does not answer, nor look at him.) Tanja! What did they run away crying for? Ha! (Looks at TATIANA with a sigh.) Strange people. (Gazes at the old folks' door and then goes to the hall, shaking his head.) I will go-to Terentey.. queer customers! Tatiana (slowly bends forward, lets her head_sink and supports herself with her elbows on the keys of the piano. The discordant tone fills the room and presently dies away). THE ALL EMBRACING BY INGRAM CROCKETT [Accorded Honorable Mention in the Prize Competition] OW soon the smoke, that dense and black outblows HR That softly glows, Or Life, or Death, 'tis but the unending change For her investiture. Even now a star from deeps of blue she brings, And twinkling opal light. And once I saw her, in the tranced June, And all the languorous airs that longing swoon And flames of fragrant fire. The rainbow is her pathway; when the sky What hope doth she withhold? All worlds are hers, and from the nebulae, To her their kisses blow. C IN RE CALIBAN BY OSCAR LOVELL TRIGGS ALIBAN was the most grotesque and repulsive figure on Shakespeare's stage. At the same time he is one of the most original of the dramatist's creations and was given place in a play which was written in the maturity of Shakespeare's genius. Alonso said at Caliban's appearance: 'This is a strange thing as e'er I looked on.' Prospero called him a 'freckled whelp,' 'hag-born.' It seems that he was fathered by the devil and was reared in solitude. He gabbled until Prospero taught him to speak. Throughout the play he appears as a wild, brutish creature, devoid of any moral sense. Food alone attracted him. He hearkened to dreams and the music of spirits. When it thundered, he grovelled in fear. His intelligence corresponded to his origin and his necessities. His senses were keenly perceptive and he felt at home with the fresh springs, the berries, the clustering filberts and the blind moles. Within the compass of his nature he was not altogether unpoetical. Although a beast he approximated the attributes of a man. I suppose that Shakespeare had merely a dramatic interest in this brute-man. The conception of a being of this character would naturally arise with the idea of a desert island. From the play we catch echoes of travelers' tales of the islands of the sea and their savage inhabitants. The facts about primitive races were just then becoming known to the English people. Among contemporary publications were the histories of Sir Walter Raleigh and Richard Hakluyt, Purchas's Pilgrimage and Richard Eden's account of the voyage of Magellan in the South Sea. For the first time, the poet, with his world-wide curiosity, could set forth upon the stage the lowest type of man. For the first time, indeed, he could picture the variety of the human kind; Ariel, belonging to the land of faery, a spirit of the air; Caliban, in far contrast, the basest representative of the earth, a brute emerging from the mud. It was doubtless Shakespeare's purpose to give both types a place and meaning in the play of enchantment. In the case of Caliban he may have meant to entertain his audience with an exhibition of one of Montaigne's 'noble' savages. I would not deny that he had a certain scientific motive in showing the world his idea of an evolutionary growth intermediate between brute and man. The nineteenth century Caliban is the same picturesque slave of Prospero and something more. Without losing anything of dramatic force, Browning delineates the savage subjectively. Sprawling in the cool slush of his cave and surrounded by the abundant life of summer, Caliban looks out over the ocean, where sunbeams cross and recross till they weave a spider's web of fire, and longs for a solution of a mystery, no longer a mere brutish slave of a master, but in a natural and independent way, questioning in regard to the existence and nature of Setebos whom his dam called God. His thoughts are busy with the problem of evil and pain. Setebos rules and vexes man, he thinks, in spite and sport. Above Setebos is the Quiet which the lower god apes and, unable to reach the other's happy life, takes his solace in make-believes. In 'The Tempest' we saw the Caliban form; in Browning's poem we behold the Caliban-soul. This difference in the two poets' portrayal of the savage nature measures the growth of three centuries. The sixteenth century is termed the period of the Renaissance. It was marked by an efflorescence of the human spirit. Humanity stood a marvel to itself, greater than anyone had dreamed. At the same moment new worlds were disclosed-the ancient world of art and thought, and continents to the West where untold wonders were. The nineteenth century was also an era of expansion, but the new knowledge was spiritual and not physical. Emerson in America and Carlyle in England revealed the invisible world that is in us and about us—as the ancients fabled of the spheral music. Whereas Shakespeare might present life in its outward manifestation, Browning was able to show man thinking, feeling, struggling for spiritual gains; his dramatizations are based upon modern psychology. In other respects of science Browning represents an immense advance. He had at his service the new science of anthropology, which deals in its history of the human species with the customs and habits and beliefs of primitive man, and the still newer science of folk-lore, which takes for its field of investigation the survivals of primitive modes of life and thought in civilized communities. Caliban, the savage, takes on new meaning. For it is now known that both life and thought are evolutions from lower forms. As life has assumed in series ever higher and higher embodiment, so history, institutions, constitutions, and customs are the result of ideas which have been developing from the beginning of human experience. Life and belief are both vital processes. Development by natural and artificial selection of the fittest organism and the fittest belief is the modern formula of life and opinion. Caliban, in Browning's poem, has formulated a theology which is based, like all his ideas, upon observation of his island home and upon his own nature and experience. He affirms that Setebos is such an one as himself; and as Caliban would act in his own mimic world, so would the god. In the fiftieth psalm of the Psalter the singer proclaims the majesty of his God who said to the wicked: 'Thou thoughtest that I was such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee.' This reproof of 'animism' is heard late |