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are themselves spirits of beauty and of love . Though the waters drown him , he will die in the arms of the fond Ondines ; and in their voices , those very billows of destruction will murmur his melodious dirge . The bard in whose soul , from that soul ' s infirmity , the genius of poetry is not strong or lofty enough to sustain him in the sphere of perpetual peace and brightness , may
perish by the insolence of pride , and the poison of calumny , and the blows of unscrupulous hostility , and the clashings of interests , and the neglect of indifference , and the collision of his own susceptibility with the coldness of cold natures , and with the hardness of hard natures ; but even in perishing , he will see more and better things , in the powers that destroy him , than they themselves are conscious of ; and in the waters that ingulph his dying limbs will
feel the embraces of the beautiful and immortal Ondines . ' The Tormented Spirit , ' No . 5 . is one of those instances in which
the inspiration of art presents an analogy with the inspiration of religion . The prophets , we are told , did not always themselves understand the oracles which they delivered . They spoke that which heaven impressed upon their minds , with lips that would have failed to expound entirely the high truths they uttered . And so it is with genius . ^ Campbell cannot read his own poems ; Retzsch does not , in this instance , perfectly describe his own fancies . And Mrs . Jameson follows her leader , when that
reflection , of which she is so capable , might have enabled her to comment in the manner of Warburton upon Pope . The ' Tormented Spirit / is ' a good angel , or genius , vainly struggling in the power of two demons , who are tearing the plumes from his outstretched wings , and shake their infernal torches over his head . The Tormented Spirit looks upward for aid , but sees , interposing between himself and compassionate heaven , the fiend by whose mandate he is thus afflicted . ' And the explanation is , ' that
there are those among the best and most gifted of human spirits , who suffer for a term under the agonizing influence of evil thoughts and unknown sin . ' Now looking at the sketch with this exposition , we really cannot feel satisfied with it . The fiend above is certainly a magnificent fiend in his way ; he is a sullen , mali gnant rascal , cursing and accursed . His imps are a poor pair of stage demons ; German brothers with their masks and torches , from Der Preyschutz , or Azor and Zemira . Why such a pure and plumed spirit as that should so submit to be kicked and cuffed about , we cannot imagine . It can only endure by oblivion of its own powers . With a single bound , his pinions , though
ruffled , could spring above any elevation to which the demons could be borne by those bat-like parachutes upon their shoulders ; and one spurn of his foot would send down to the regions of fog and mist their cloud-cinctured master , as he passed him in his a « cent . What Retzsch thought he was illustrating is superstition , and not religion ; and the incompatibility of the figure of his tor-
Untitled Article
Retzsch * * Fancies . 681
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 681, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/5/
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