They are both failures as novels or romances,
but they are valuable as autobiographies. Instead of laying the scene
in Germany, which he had never seen and yet yearned for,
Lanier brings Germany to America. There are long disquisitions
on the place of music and science in the modern world, many crude fancies,
some striking descriptions of nature, some of which have already been quoted.
Above all, there is Lanier's idea of what a musician or a poet ought to be, --
a study, therefore, of himself.
Perhaps the best single passage on music is that describing
Phil's playing of the flute. "It is like walking in the woods,
amongst wild flowers, just before you go into some vast cathedral.
For the flute seems to me to be peculiarly the woods-instrument:
it speaks the gloss of green leaves or the pathos of bare branches;
it calls up the strange mosses that are under dead leaves;
it breathes of wild plants that hide and oak fragrances that vanish;
it expresses to me the natural magic of music. Have you ever
walked on long afternoons in warm, sunny spots of the woods,
and felt a sudden thrill strike you with the half fear
that a ghost would rise out of the sedge, or dart from behind the next tree,
and confront you?"*
--
* `Tiger Lilies', p. 28.
--
Two passages may be cited to show the author's tendency
to use personifications and his insight into the "burthen of the mystery
of all this unintelligible world": --
"A terrible melee of winged opposites is forever filling the world
with a battle din which only observant souls hear: Love contending
with Impurity; Passion springing mines under the calm entrenchment of Reason;
scowling Ignorance thrusting in the dark at holy-eyed Reverence;
Romance deathfully encountering Sentimentality on the one side
and Commonplace on the other; young Sensibility clanging swords
with gigantic maudlin Conventionalities.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94