Chapter VIII: “barabbas”--A “passion Play” in Prose

“Why should women’s writings be in any respect inferior to that of men if they are only willing to follow out _the same method of self-education_?” asked Charles Kingsley. This was of the nature of a prophecy, for had Kingsley lived until to-day he would have seen the verification of his words. Women, as a rule, do not self-educate themselves. They will not try to walk alone. They understand only just the easy verse and rhyme of existence. Some few understand to-day a higher phase by self-conviction. Marie Corelli is certainly one.

To write prose, _perfect_ prose; to stir the heart and move the soul, is the highest phase of mental reasoning. It is the air and melody of spiritual conception, the so-called “supernatural.” All our lives we can talk prose, but to grasp tersely your brain’s creation, to fix upon your different dream characters and embody them with life, with passion, and with naturalness--the naturalness which has existed from creation--is the highest prose, for it is poetry and prose hand-in-hand, an achievement, a oneness of the two.

This was Marie Corelli’s idea in penning “Barabbas.” Setting her mind hard and fast to face creeds and defy criticism; true to the instincts which permeated her mind throughout her pristine works, she went on following her soul impression, her inspiration to see “good” in most things, nobility in men and women who might be scourged by the world. And thus “Barabbas,” though a robber, might have had some strong points, and though of an evil nature must certainly, from scriptural evidence, have had the sympathy of the populace. That sympathy gave the author the keynote to produce the human drama, which is lived over and over again to-day and forever,--and which is aptly called _A Dream of the World’s Tragedy_.

Marie Corelli, true to her colors in this later work, still adheres to poetic spirituality, the “ideal,” the sublime, the free, the sympathetic, mingled with the rendering of a forcible and traitorous character in that of “Judith” (the heroine of the book) in its full strength of weakness and evil, and in its final magnificent revulsion from _a past_ to the glory of a holy repentance and in finding the King, in the symbol of the cross. Take this scene, where after madness and despair, she meets her death:

“The sun poured straightly down upon her,--she looked like a fair
startled sylph in the amber glow of the burning Eastern noonday.
Gradually an expression of surprise and then of rapture lighted her
pallid face,--she lifted her gaze slowly, and, with seeming wonder
and incredulity, fixed her eyes on the near grassy slope of the
Mount of Olives, where two ancient fig-trees twining their gnarled
boughs together made an arch of dark and soothing shade. Pointing
thither with one hand, she smiled,--and once more her matchless
beauty flashed up through form and face like a flame.

“‘Lo there!’ she exclaimed joyously,--‘how is it that ye could not
find Him? There is the King!’

“Throwing up her arms, she ran eagerly along a few steps, ...
tottered, ... then fell face forward in the dust, and there lay;
... motionless forever! She had prayed for the pardon of
Judas,--she had sought,--and found--the ‘King!’”

The conception of the character of “Judith” in “Barabbas” is fret with strong and sympathetic points. She is the mainspring of the work. The idea of the “Betrayal” emanates from her, yet the æsthetic treatment at the finale with the symbol of the cross, while closing her eyes in death, is poetry in itself.

Listen to Peter’s definition of a lie:

“The truth, the truth,” cried Peter, tossing his arms about; “lo
from henceforth I will clamor for it, rage for it, die for it!
Three times have I falsely sworn, and thus have I taken the full
measure of a Lie! Its breadth, its depth, its height, its worth,
its meaning, its results, its crushing suffocating weight upon the
soul! I know its nature,--’tis all hell in a word! ’tis a ‘yea’ or
‘nay,’ on which is balanced all eternity! I will no more of it,--I
will have truth, the truth of men, the truth of women,--no usurer
shall be called honest,--no wanton shall be called chaste,--to
please the humor of the passing hour! No--no, I will have none of
this, but only truth! The truth that is seen as a shining, naked
simitar in the hand of God, glistening horribly! I, Peter, will
declare it!--I who did swear a lie three times, will speak the
truth three thousand times in reprisal of my sin! Weep, rave, tear
thy reverend hairs, unreverent Jew! Thou who as stiff-necked,
righteous Pharisee, didst practice cautious virtue and self-seeking
sanctity, and now through unbelief art left most desolate!”

The critics were as usual up in arms over “Barabbas,” but in spite of them its sale has been immense. The book has made such headway since its publication that it has been translated into more foreign tongues than any other novel of either the past or present--the translations comprising thirty to forty languages. As a matter of original conception, tragical effect and clearness of diction, “Barabbas” is considered by many the best of Marie Corelli’s works.

In “Barabbas” there is no loitering by the way, as it were, to argue, although the moral throughout is strong enough. The author’s sensibility grasps the situation of that potent day in the World’s era with a subtle reasoning of how to-day things are precisely the same, and would be precisely the same at the advent of a new Christus, save possibly as regards the execution. For our lunatic asylums afford an infinitely better kind of torture than the cross.

The character of Jesus of Nazareth, “the dreamy Young Philosopher” of his short day, is the poem of the tragedy. Barabbas himself is a character of much force, despite his weakness in the hands of Judith. The soliloquies of Melchior throughout the first part of the book are somewhat drastic, though the character bears out well its own mission.

There is extreme spirituality in the sayings of this somewhat important creation. He might be the Cicero of the work. One of his replies to Barabbas, showing the vesture of his thoughts, occurs again thus:

“If thou dost wait till thou canst ‘comprehend’ the mysteries of
the Divine Will, thou wilt need to grope through æons upon æons of
eternal wonder, living a thinking life through all, and even then
not reach the inner secret. Comprehendest thou how the light finds
its sure way to the dry seed in the depths of earth and causes it
to fructify?--or how, imprisoning itself within drops of water and
grains of dust, it doth change these things of ordinary matter into
diamonds which queens covet? Thou art not able to ‘comprehend’
these simplest facts of simple nature,--and nature being but the
outward reflex of God’s thought, how should’st thou understand the
workings of His interior Spirit which is Himself in all? Whether He
create a world, or breathe the living Essence of His own Divinity
into aerial atoms to be absorbed in flesh and blood, and born as
Man of virginal Woman, He hath the power supreme to do such things,
if such be His great pleasure. Talkest thou of miracles?--thou art
thyself a miracle,--thou livest in a miracle,--the whole world is a
miracle, and exists in spite of thee! Go thy ways, man; search out
truth in thine own fashion; but if it should elude thee, blame not
the truth which ever is, but thine own witlessness which cannot
grasp it!”

A terse reasoning out of the living essence of the supreme, and an almost matchless soliloquy.

Here is another of Melchior’s speeches:

“Men are pigmies,--they scuttle away in droves before a storm or
the tremor of an earthquake,--they are afraid of their lives. And
what are their lives? The lives of motes in a sunbeam, of gnats in
a mist of miasma,--nothing more. And they will never be anything
more, till they learn how to make them valuable. And that lesson
will never be mastered save by the few.”

It was Marie Corelli’s idea in this particular work evidently to clothe her characters in the real _human_, that which is changeless and unchangeable as cycles in the world’s eye; and to show that the mind of man in its essentials _does not change_, and that its perfection is gained only by the spiritual side of things, overcapping the material and the so-called animal. That God intends men and women to attain this superiority over matter is one of the æsthetic treasures of Marie Corelli’s literature, generally not particularly well received, still less understood, but haply none the less welcome, as it is a conception of its own peculiar originality by no means local. The fictional character of Caiaphas in all his sycophancy and sacerdotal arrogancy occupies a measure of the romance, furnishing a tone of treachery throughout.

“Once dead,” whispered Caiaphas, with a contemptuous side-glance at
the fair-faced enemy of his craft, the silent “Witness unto the
Truth,”--“and, moreover, slain with dishonor in the public sight,
he will soon sink out of remembrance. His few disciples will be
despised,--his fanatical foolish doctrine will be sneered down, and
we,--_we_ will take heed that no chronicle of his birth or death or
teaching remains to be included in our annals. A stray street
preacher to the common folk!--how should his name endure?”

Naturally the description of the Magdalen is full of extraordinary beauty. It is the beauty of a regenerated soul, a soul of love and greatness, emancipated from the material, yet bearing the same. The death of the one Magdalen, and the rising therefrom of the new Mary, is pathetically described in her own words to Barabbas:

“Friend, I have died!”--she said.--“At my Lord’s feet I laid down
all my life. Men made me what I was; God makes me what I am!”

* * * * *

“Thou’rt man”--she answered.--“Therefore as man thou speakest! Lay
all the burden upon woman,--the burden of sin, of misery, of shame,
of tears; teach her to dream of perfect love, and then devour her
by selfish lust,--slay her by slow tortures innumerable,--cast her
away and trample on her even as a worm in the dust, and then when
she has perished, stand on her grave and curse her, saying--‘Thou
wert to blame!--thou fond, foolish, credulous trusting soul!--thou
wert to blame!--not I!’”

If Miss Corelli was bold in attacking so vast and so controversial a subject as the tragedy of the Christ, she was none the less inspired in her conception of the situation. The description of Jesus of Nazareth, upon whom the story centres and concludes, is simplicity itself. It teaches charity, love, brotherhood, and yet preaches humility; not humility of a universal ignorance, but that “humility” which puts even dignity in the shade, since it is dignity in another name. The pathetic touches are the cream of her story. It is not a long study, but what there is, is strange and touching with the wholesomeness of real pathos, not of one particular class, not mythical, but a tender theme as it were from a woman’s tender heart, possessing the faculty of a noble sympathy for the world’s greatest tale of inimitable love and sorrow therefrom. The chapter on the resurrection is one of the highest aims of the work, and has been read frequently as a “lesson” in the Churches on Easter day. The peculiar and idealistic spirituality of the angels at the tomb is told in a fashion distinctive of the writer. The scene of the resurrection, indeed, is worth giving in its entirety:

“A deep silence reigned. All the soldiers of the watch lay
stretched on the ground unconscious, as though struck by lightning;
the previous mysterious singing of the birds had ceased; and only
the lambent quivering of the wing-like glory surrounding the two
angelic Messengers, seemed to make an expressed though unheard
sound as of music. Then, ... in the midst of the solemn hush, ...
the great stone that closed the tomb of the Crucified trembled, ...
and was suddenly thrust back like a door flung open in haste for
the exit of a King, ... and lo!... a Third great Angel joined the
other two! Sublimely beautiful He stood,--the Risen from the Dead!
gazing with loving eyes on all the swooning, sleeping world of men;
the same grand Countenance that had made a glory of the Cross of
Death, now, with a smile of victory, gave poor Humanity the gift of
everlasting Life! The grateful skies brightened above Him,--earth
exhaled its choicest odors through every little pulsing leaf and
scented herb and tree; Nature exulted in the touch of things
eternal,--and the dim pearly light of the gradually breaking morn
fell on all things with a greater purity, a brighter blessedness
than ever had invested it before. The man Crucified and Risen, now
manifested in Himself the mystic mingling of God in humanity; and
taught that for the powers of the Soul set free from sin, there is
no limit, no vanquishment, no end! No more eternal partings for
those who on the earth should learn to love each other,--no more
the withering hopelessness of despair,--the only “death” now
possible to redeemed mortality being “the bondage of sin”
voluntarily entered into and preferred by the unbelieving. And from
this self-wrought, self-chosen doom not even a God can save!”

This appeals fully to the poetic imagination, and it seems to quicken a kind of personal interest as to the marvelous mystery of that stupendous occasion.

Marie Corelli’s Christ embodies much of the human--the human that is divinely magnetic, almost, if not quite, undefinable, yet not exclusive, not idolatrous, but simply and gently _human_. The creation of the character of Jesus of Nazareth possesses no atom of bigotry. It teaches love and does not seek to embitter hate. The aura of the master character permeates each living character throughout the work. It preaches Love, Charity, and Brotherhood; it ignores the Church (_i.e._, sectarian misnomer), so it should have, as it has through so many tongues, its mission.

There is no new creed, no new passion, no new deed under the sun to-day. There is only the same recapitulation in a fresh garb. Our Saints still live to-day. It sounds drastic enough, but Miss Corelli feels this and knows that midst the fair field of fairness there is also the thorn and the poisonous flower any one may cull, or the simple field lily that lifts its face to Heaven, and sees only Heaven in its purity.

Kingsley said, “The history of England is the literature of England.” Possibly so. The strong advance of women writers ever since that excellent man’s passing has proved much of this. It is to the honor of women to-day. It is proved in the fine grasp of subjects, the faculty of dealing poetically with a theme, so widely known yet always fresh, under new lens, and without which this world to many would be a finite and a joyless place. There is just another quotation from “Barabbas,” quite at the conclusion of this remarkable book, which weighs in with this and also with the author’s idea,--just an exoneration of the Great Tragedy, a simplification of the whole story. It is the finale and in itself not only teaches powerfully, but is an invitation, as it were, from a potent mind to those to whom it sends its own message:

“‘It is God’s symbolic teaching,’ he said, ‘which few of us may
understand. A language unlettered and vast as eternity itself! Upon
that hill of Calvary to which thou, Simon, turnest thy parting
looks of tenderness, has been mystically enacted the world’s one
Tragedy--the tragedy of Love and Genius slain to satisfy the malice
of mankind. But Love and Genius are immortal; and immortality must
evermore arise: wherefore in the dark days that are coming let us
not lose our courage or our hope. There will be many forms of
faith,--and many human creeds in which there is no touch of the
Divine. Keep we to the faithful following of Christ, and in the
midst of many bewilderments we shall not wander far astray. The
hour grows late,--come, thou first hermit of the Christian
world!--let us go on together!’

“They descended the hill. Across the plains they passed slowly,
taking the way that led towards the mystic land of Egypt, where the
Pyramids lift their summits to the stars, and the Nile murmurs of
the false gods forgotten. They walked in a path of roseate radiance
left by a reflection of the vanished sun; and went onward steadily,
never once looking back till their figures gradually diminished and
disappeared. Swiftly the night gathered, and spread itself darkly
over Jerusalem like a threatening shadow of storm and swift
destruction; thunder was in the air, and only one pale star peeped
dimly forth in the dusk, shining placidly over the Place of Tombs,
where, in his quiet burial-cave, Barabbas slept beside the
withering palm.”