Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Brontë family
The forms that move through these battles are obscure. You can pick out
many of the Gondal poems by the recurring names of heroes and of lands.
But where there are no names of heroes and of lands to guide you it is
not easy to say exactly which poems are Gondal poems and which are not.
But after careful examination and comparison you can make out at least
eighty-three of them that are unmistakable, and ten doubtful.
All the battle-pieces and songs of battle, the songs of mourning and
captivity and exile, the songs of heroism, martyrdom, defiance, songs,
or fragments of songs, of magic and divination, and many of the love
songs, belong to this cycle. What is more, many of the poems of
eighteen-forty-six and of eighteen-fifty are Gondal poems.
For in the Gondal legend the idea of the Doomed Child, an idea that
haunted Emily Brontë, recurs perpetually, and suggests that the Gondal
legend is the proper place of "The Two Children", and "The Wanderer from
the Fold", which appear in the posthumous Selections of eighteen-fifty.
It certainly includes three at the very least of the poems of
eighteen-forty-six: "The Outcast Mother", "A Death-Scene", and "Honour's
Martyr".
It does not look, I own, as if this hunt for Gondal literature could
interest a single human being; which is why nobody, so far as I know,
has pursued it. And the placing of those four poems in the obscure
Gondal legend would have nothing but "a bibliographical interest" were
it not that, when placed there, they show at once the main track of the
legend. And the main track of the legend brings you straight to the
courses of _Wuthering Heights_ and of the love poems.
The sources of _Wuthering Heights_ have been the dream and the despair
of the explorer, long before Mrs. Humphry Ward tried to find them in the
_Tales of Hoffmann_. And "Remembrance", one of the most passionate love
poems in the language, stood alone and apart from every other thing that
Emily Brontë had written. It was awful and mysterious in its loneliness.
But I believe that "Remembrance" also may be placed in the Gondal legend
without any violence to its mystery.
For supreme in the Gondal legend is the idea of a mighty and disastrous
passion, a woman's passion for the defeated, the dishonoured, and the
outlawed lover; a creature superb in evil, like Heathcliff, and like
Heathcliff tragic and unspeakably mournful in his doom. He or some hero
like him is "Honour's Martyr".
To-morrow, Scorn will blight my name,
And Hate will trample me,
Will load me with a coward's shame--
A traitor's perjury.
False friends will launch their covert sneers
True friends will wish me dead;
And I shall cause the bitterest tears
That you have ever shed.
Like Heathcliff, he is the "unblessed, unfriended child"; the child of
the Outcast Mother, abandoned on the moor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account