(Macmillan’s Magazine, July 1871)
Armgart was written in 1870, just before Eliot embarked on Middlemarch. It is a dramatic poem about a woman singer who first refuses marriage for her art and then loses her voice, and with it her art. It opens with Armgart flushed with triumph after singing Gluck’s Orpheus; the leading character is a male artist (though the part is written for a female voice) who defies death in search of his dead wife, is destroyed and sings in death. We print the scene in which Armgart refuses the Graf, whom she loves, for her art. When she despairs at the loss of her voice, her old teacher Leo and her maid Walpurga teach her that there is still a life of devotion to others.
The singer is one type of the woman artist in early female fiction, as Ellen Moers shows in her studies of Madame de Staël’s Corinne and George Sand’s Consuelo, an early favourite of Eliot’s (Literary Women: The Great Writers, 1977). The figure recurs in Daniel Deronda, divided between the delicate-voiced Mirah, who becomes Daniel’s wife and shares his mission, and Daniel’s mother, the Alchirisi, a great singer who destroys her affections and abandons her son in order to exercise her genius.
SCENE 2
The same Salon, morning. ARMGART seated, in her bonnet and walking dress. The GRAF standing near her against the piano.
GRAF: Armgart, to many minds the first success
Is reason for desisting. I have known
A man so various, he tried all arts,
But when in each by turns he had achieved
Just so much mastery as made men say,
‘He could be king here if he would,’ he threw
The lauded skill aside. He hates, said one,
The level of achieved pre-eminence,
He must be conquering still; but others said –
ARMGART: The truth, I hope: he had a meagre soul,
Holding no depth where love could root itself.
‘Could if he would?’ True greatness ever wills –
It breathes in wholeness like an unborn child,
And all its strength is knit with constancy.
GRAF: He used to say himself he was too sane
To give his life away for excellence
Which yet must stand, an ivory statuette
Wrought to perfection through long lonely years,
Huddled in the mart of mediocrities.
He said, the very finest doing wins
The admiring only; but to leave undone,
Promise and not fulfil, like buried youth,
Wins all the envious, makes them sigh your name
As that fair Absent, blameless Possible,
Which could alone impassion them; and thus,
Serene negation has free gift of all,
Panting achievement struggles, is denied,
Or wins to lose again. What say you, Armgart?
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through;
I think this sarcasm came from out its core
Of bitter irony.
ARMGART: It is the truth
Mean souls select to feed upon. What then?
Their meanness is a truth, which I will spurn.
The praise I seek lives not in envious breath
Using my name to blight another’s deed.
I sing for love of song and that renown
Which is the spreading act, the world-wide share,
Of good that I was born with. Had I failed–
Well, that had been a truth most pitiable.
I cannot bear to think what life would be
With high hope shrunk to endurance, stunted aims,
Like broken lances ground to eating-knives,
A self sunk down to look with level eyes
At low achievement, doomed from day to day
To distaste of its consciousness. But I –
GRAF: Have won, not lost, in your decisive throw.
And I too glory in this issue; yet,
The public verdict has no potency
To sway my judgement of what Armgart is:
My pure delight in her would be but sullied,
If it o’erflowed with mixture of men’s praise.
And had she failed, I should have said, ‘The pearl
Remains a pearl for me, reflects the light
With the same fitness that first charmed my gaze –
Is worth as fine a setting now as then.’
ARMGART (rising): O you are good! But why will you rehearse
The talk of cynics, who with insect eyes
Explore the secrets of the rubbish heap?
I hate your epigrams and pointed saws
Whose narrow truth is but broad falsity.
Confess, your friend was shallow.
GRAF: I confess
Life is not rounded in an epigram,
And saying aught, we leave a world unsaid.
I quoted, merely to shape forth my thought
That high success has terrors when achieved–
Like preternatural spouses whose dire love
Hangs perilous on slight observances:
Whence it were possible that Armgart crowned
Might turn and listen to a pleading voice,
Though Armgart striving in the race was deaf.
You said you dared not think what life had been
Without the stamp of eminence; have you thought
How you will bear the poise of eminence
With dread of sliding? Paint the future out
As an unchecked and glorious career,
’Twill grow more strenuous by the very love
You bear to excellence, the very fate
Of human powers, which tread at every step
On possible verges.
ARMGART: I accept the peril.
I choose to walk high with sublimer dread
Rather than crawl in safety. And, besides,
I am an artist as you are a noble:
I ought to bear the burthen of my rank.
GRAF: Such parallels, dear Armgart, are but snares
To catch the mind with seeming argument –
Small baits of likeness ’mid disparity.
Men rise the higher as their task is high,
The task being well achieved. A woman’s rank
Lies in the fullness of her womanhood:
Therein alone she is royal.
ARMGART: Yes, I know
The oft-taught Gospel: ‘Woman, thy desire
Shall be that all superlatives on earth
Belong to men, save the one highest kind –
To be a mother. Thou shalt not desire
To do aught best save pure subservience:
Nature has willed it so!’ O blessed Nature!
Let her be arbitress; she gave me voice
Such as she only gives a woman child,
Best of its kind, gave me ambition too,
That sense transcendent which can taste the joy
Of swaying multitudes, of being adored
For such achievement, needed excellence,
As man’s best art must wait for, or be dumb.
Men did not say, when I had sung last night,
‘’Twas good, nay, wonderful, considering
She is a woman’ – and then turn to add,
‘Tenor or baritone had sung her songs
Better, of course: she’s but a woman spoiled.’
I beg your pardon, Graf, you said it.
GRAF: No!
How should I say it, Armgart? I who own
The magic of your nature-given art
As sweetest effluence of your womanhood
Which, being to my choice the best, must find
The best of utterance. But this I say:
Your fervid youth beguiles you; you mistake
A strain of lyric passion for a life
Which in the spending is a chronicle
With ugly pages. Trust me, Armgart, trust me:
Ambition exquisite as yours which soars
Toward something quintessential you call fame,
Is not robust enough for this gross world
Whose fame is dense with false and foolish breath.
Ardour, atwin with nice refining thought,
Prepares a double pain. Pain had been saved,
Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned
As woman only, holding all your art
As attribute to that dear sovereignty –
Concentering your power in home delights
Which penetrate and purify the world.
ARMGART: What, leave the opera with my part ill-sung
While I was warbling in a drawing-room?
Sing in the chimney-corner to inspire
My husband reading news? Let the world hear
My music only in his morning speech
Less stammering than most honourable men’s?
No! tell me that my song is poor, my art
The piteous feat of weakness aping strength –
That were fit proem to your argument.
Till then, I am an artist by my birth –
By the same warrant that I am a woman:
Nay, in the added rarer gift I see
Supreme vocation: if a conflict comes,
Perish – no, not the woman, but the joys
Which men make narrow by their narrowness.
O I am happy! The great masters write
For women’s voices, and great Music wants me!
I need not crush myself within a mould
Of theory called Nature: I have room
To breathe and grow unstunted.
GRAF: Armgart, hear me.
I meant not that our talk should hurry on
To such collision. Foresight of the ills
Thick shadowing your path, drew on my speech
Beyond intention. True, I came to ask
A great renunciation, but not this
Towards which my words at first perversely strayed,
As if in memory of their earlier suit,
Forgetful…
Armgart, do you remember too? the suit
Had but postponement, was not quite disdained –
Was told to wait and learn – what it has learned –
A more submissive speech.
ARMGART (with some agitation): Then it forgot
Its lesson cruelly. As I remember,
’Twas not to speak save to the artist crowned,
Nor speak to her of casting off her crown.
GRAF: Nor will it, Armgart. I come not to seek
Other renunciation than the wife’s,
Which turns away from other possible love
Future and worthier, to take his love
Who asks the name of husband. He who sought
Armgart obscure, and heard her answer, ‘Wait’ –
May come without suspicion now to seek
Armgart applauded.
ARMGART (turning towards him): Yes, without suspicion
Of aught save what consists with faithfulness
In all expressed intent. Forgive me, Graf –
I am ungrateful to no soul that loves me –
To you most grateful. Yet the best intent
Grasps but a living present which may grow
Like any unfledged bird. You are a noble,
And have a high career; but now you said
’Twas higher far than aught a woman seeks
Beyond mere womanhood. You claim to be
More than a husband, but could not rejoice
That I were more than wife. What follows, then?
You choosing me with such persistency
As is but stretched-out rashness, soon must find
Our marriage asks concessions, asks resolve
To share renunciation or demand it.
Either we both renounce a mutual ease,
As in a nation’s need both man and wife
Do public services, or one of us
Must yield that something else for which each lives
Besides the other. Men are reasoners:
That premiss of superior claims perforce
Urges conclusion – ‘Armgart, it is you.’
GRAF: But if I say I have considered this
With strict prevision, counted all the cost
Which that great good of loving you demands –
Questioned my stores of patience, half-resolved
To live resigned without a bliss whose threat
Touched you as well as me – then finally,
With impetus of undivided will
Returned to say, ‘You shall be free as now;
Only accept the refuge, shelter, guard,
My love will give your freedom’ – then your words
Are hard accusal.
ARMGART: Well, I accuse myself.
My love would be accomplice of your will.
GRAF: Again – my will?
ARMGART: O your unspoken will.
Your silent tolerance would torture me,
And on that rack I should deny the good
I yet believed in.
GRAF: Then I am the man
Whom you would love?
ARMGART: Whom I refuse to love!
No, I will live alone and pour my pain
With passion into music, where it turns
To what is best within my better self.
I will not take for husband one who deems
The thing my soul acknowledges as good –
The thing I hold worth striving, suffering for,
To be a thing dispensed with easily,
Or else the idol of a mind infirm.
GRAF: Armgart, you are ungenerous; you strain
My thought beyond its mark. Our difference
Lies not so deep as love – as union
Through a mysterious fitness that transcends
Formal agreement
ARMGART: It lies deep enough
To chafe the union. If many a man
Refrains, degraded, from the utmost right,
Because the pleadings of his wife’s small fears
Are little serpents biting at his heel, –
How shall a woman keep her steadfastness
Beneath a frost within her husband’s eyes
Where coldness scorches? Graf, it is your sorrow
That you love Armgart. Nay, it is her sorrow
That she may not love you.
GRAF: Woman, it seems,
Has enviable power to love or not
According to her will.
ARMGART: She has the will –
I have – who am one woman – not to take
Disloyal pledges that divide her will.
The man who marries me must wed my art –
Honour and cherish it, not tolerate.
GRAF: The man is yet to come whose theory
Will weigh as nought with you against his love.
ARMGART: Whose theory will plead beside his love.
GRAF: Himself a singer, then? who knows no life
Out of the opera books, where tenor parts
Are found to suit him?
ARMGART: You are bitter, Graf.
Forgive me; seek the woman you deserve,
All grace, all goodness, who has not yet found
A meaning in her life, or any end
Beyond fulfilling yours. The type abounds.
GRAF: And happily, for the world.
ARMGART: Yes, happily.
Let it excuse me that my kind is rare:
Commonness is its own security.
GRAF: Armgart, I would with all my soul I knew
The man so rare that he could make your life
As woman sweet to you, as artist safe.
ARMGART: O I can live unmated, but not live
Without the bliss of singing to the world,
And feeling all my world respond to me.
GRAF: May it be lasting. Then, we two must part?
ARMGART: I thank you from my heart for all. Farewell!