BARBARIANS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21198, 23 June 1934, Page 15

BARBARIANS

FLAUBERT'S MASTERPIECE i (SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE I'KESS.) fP,.v -\r. H. HOLCROFT.] •, "Salammbo" is a spectacle. Its nioveme-:' : is like that of a Roman j,.;_rnph, when the streets are chcl:ed viUi*sU , ange peoples, chained or r tc''ether, clacl in skins or the ts oi military gear, and staring £;0 a„ thorn with wild eyes of.sur-pt-v;. Their leaders are downcast ..-.a sul on. too burdened with dei;2t to ieel any in cere:-1 in the ! of Rome; and henceforth the ' world has no variety for them: they i fciow that death waits at the end of ; the long procession. Something is ! a dded from the watching people. They shout and applaud in their holiday excitement. The mere con- : tact of the crowd is a fever in itself; but now there is a sight of enemies 1 w ho have been dreaded when ! rumours came from the frontier; and in its release from fear the i populace swings savagely into rei action. Something of this atmo- ; sphere of strain—of unnatural ; tension —undoubtedly pervades "Sal- ! ammbo." As with the Roman ■ citizens on holiday, we see the ; people in abnormal and distorted • attitudes. The captured barbarian holds himself stiffly or fiercely while [ he knows himself under the gaze 1 of the streets, and will give curse : f o r curse and shouted defiance while ■ there remains any spirit in him; and ; in much the same way Matho moves ■ before us, aroused and .distracted by ' his passion for Salammbo, involved fa a leadership for which he has no natural genius and trying to impose ' his will upon a loose, disordered mass of soldiers who come from many different countries arid are united only in their impotent hate for Carthage. J At no time is he allowed to sink \ back from the strain and the pos- > turing and be merely himself. One ' suspects that the real Matho is a ! light-hearted fellow, a great fighter, ' and a good companion; but we do ! not meet him until the moment that ; Salammbo's influence falls across ; his life. It is in the gardens of 1 Hamilcar Barca, the great general ; of Carthage, and father of Hanni- • bal. The barbarian mercenaries are ! being feasted by the order of the ; Rich, chiefly to keep them in a good ■ humour under the delays and ex- ! cuses of the leaders of the republic, ; who are short of money and would I like to dismiss these followers with- ! out their wages. Salammbo ap- ; pears from her father's palace as i the feast grows riotous. The trees are alight; thousands of men are feasting and drinking; some are fighting, and a few are dead. S o 'ammbo comes into the smoky V-'a r e of torchlight, descending hor rairways like a visitor from the Matho stares at her j—arrested in the midst of by a new and keener appeHt irdonation is dear to l-... shows him the spirit r" "*-< vomqn: her rich clothing a-d ;■ —v f-.c"»i na t e him, and he is snbv subtle perfumes as sh<? 1 to offer the goblet of The Conflict Fvom this time until the traeic i Ma'ho is under a spell. The I r?be]lion of the mercenaries flames CD around him and becomes a war

against Carthage, and, under the influence of the escaped slave Soendius, Matho becomes one of the leaders, and finally the moving spirit of the commotion. Ke is not fitted for the task. In his Libyan greatness of nature he is a born fighter; but the details of the war are a trouble to him, his strategy is child's play against the masterly tactics of Hamilcar; and then, too, he is oppressed all the time by his memory of Salammbo, slowly consuming in his passion for her. There are memorable episodes. He enters Carthage under the guidance of Spendius and steals the sacred Zaimph, the mantle of the goddess Tanit—thereby robbing the Carthaginians of good fortune. In the alarm that follows the killing of a priest, Matho is left to find his way through the hostile city, bearing with him the almost celestial drapery from the sanctuary of the god.

It is here that we see him at his best. He is aroused far beyond the normal—still the barbarian in the streets of Rome—but as yet he B free, and in the greatness of his danger he is superb; an incarnation of the courage and strength which Were the supreme virtues of his Wee and generation. There is time to show himself before Salammbo, startling her out of sleep with a sudden vision of the Zaimph and avowing his love, clumsily and Passionately, from the midst of sacrilege. Then the alarm sweeps over the town, and slaves and junuchs copie racing up the terraces. But when they see the jnantle of the Goddess they dare not •ouch him: "The sun had risen as Matho descended the roads, glaring about him with terrible eyej, like escaping lion." In this way he comes nearer to his fate, receiving ®e curse of Salammbo while rehis love for her. The war drags on. There are batJjss on the plain beyond Tunis, and we barbarians lose heavily. They are by the recovery of the Zaimph by Salammbo, who comes to the tent of Matho. passion overcomes her; but afterwards she escapes in the night and arries the sacred veil to her father's Ncampment. Massacres follow, and t would seem that Hamilcar's immediate triumph is certain. But the umour of rebellion has spread c ross the untamed world that lies the provinces, and all "ica seems to be emptying her Jicouth peoples towards the walls p . , r th a ge. The city is besieged; d e / * s * n the last agony of the jL , ce ' when the mercenaries seem coo to conquer—as they have W+u* so °ften before, failing only ~® e tack of inspired leadership ti * Hamilcar is greatest. He enenem y away from the plain hnS a P s 40,000 men within a sealed of The living decay tow s *—described with a cleardeta'i eV i n more dreadful than the of tiT carnage—means the end tho ~ War> A final battle destroys e remnants.

| . Carthage 1 seem > then, that this is § cfoji? e r of those stories of old 1 of 2 lons peril from the inflow 1 * lat« *^ ian races - Like Rome in I'aihteHi, e^, Carthage has & rown I tfafwl i' * s very rich, a genI tim °* .merchant princes learned 9 Wit ln the ways of commerce, I ttlriTj u * earlier vigour I ve their Phoenician fore--9 „ on daring keels along the

unknown coasts. There has been time to develop the arts, so that tnese merchants and land-owners live m magnificent palaces. They are collectors of gems and precious stuns and have a cultivated taste in food and furnishings. The palace of Hamilcar, described in this book with a command of detail and a completeness of outline not often found together, is a sort of wonderland, its warehouses filled with the products of many lands, its secret chambers crammed with metals and gems, its manufactories of perfumes and great flour-mills steamin,r; and grinding almost without pause. Dwellings and store-places merge together beneath roofs and terraces into a beautiful symmetry, and the -gardens are pleasure grounds where the dreams of a summer's day can fade through a surprised awakening to a deeper loveliness. All this, however, is surface. The palace is filled with eunuchs; the stone cylinders of the mills revolve upon the agony of half-starved slaves who are whipped to their tasks; the gardens have pits which shelter lions and elephants, and the shadowy walks are sometimes awakened by the cries of wretches being dragged to punishment. It becomes clear that the barSarians are within Carthage as well as without. These lords of commerce with their mobile, Semitic faces are savages beneath their purple robes. Thev snarl at one another in the hour of common danger, and although in'terror of the enemy, are so used to jealousy and dissension that they are incapable of uniting to support a leader. Religion has beccie a gross refinement of fear and lust; the shadows of many cults lie thick upon the lives of the people. Only Tanit, the chaste goddess identified with the moon, seems to offer \y hope of gentleness or peace. And even she, as the war enters the streets of Carthage, falls : nto neglect and disfavour and is blotted o of the popular imagination by the growing shadow of Moloch. The monstrous god is dragged into a central square of the city and prepared for the sacrifice of children. Hamilcar has had his son Hannibal reared in secrecy, but word has crept about of his return to . the city. The leader's enemies are eager for him to suffer bereavement with the rest, and when the dark-robed priests of Moloch come to take the child there is little time to think or act. In an agony of dread he hides Hannibal and sends for a slave-child of the same age. The boy is washed and dressed in finery and taken down to the waiting priests. There follows this encounter:

Abreast of the ergastulum, under a palm tree, a voice rose, a lamenting, supplicating voice, murmuring, "Master! oh. master!" Hamilcar turned, and saw at his side a man most abject in appearance—cue of the wretches who lived at hazard in his gardens. "What do you want? the SufTete. The slave, trembling horribly, stammered: "I am his father!"

Hamilear walks on, unheeding, and the slave grows bolder in his grief, asking in dreadful suspense if his child is to be passed through the fire, and pleading for mercy. His master is surprised. Only a few minutes earlier he himself has been racked by the same agony of grief and fear; but then he is Ihe Suifete the leader of armies, and the greatest of his countrymen. An heroic grief is something in the nature of a patrician prerogative —if only that he might be able to exercise his LU'eng 11 and pricie wni e suoduiiig it. Hamilear steps over the slave, and delivers the child as a substitute for his own. .in tne eariier parts of the book this underlying savagery of the Carthaginians is not so noticeable. For a time we almost accept the colours of the surface, and begin to think of these people as somehow civilised. But war strips them. The smell of blood gets into the air, and as fear and rage drive them to new excesses they come to look like barbaric strangers, newly- settled in the homes of an earlier, polished race. A significant passage ends the chapter, which describes the day of Moloch:

The tumultuous noise and vast illumination had attracted the Barbarians to the very foot of the walls. Climbing upon the ruins of the helepolis, they looked on, gaping with horror. The Survivor In a booic of this kind there is much to be resisted. We see that It is all a spectacle, that these are heroic and unreal figures who show a mere similitude of suffering. Their wounds and sudden deaths are picturesque rather than terrible; and then, too, they have so little to say for themselves. They do not describe their feelings in the face of battle, neither do they have any thoughts on life or death that are worth the uttering. They die as they have lived, riotously or dumbly, and there is really no need to pity them. Yet we lose this comfortable detachment. There are episodes that disturb us, and sometimes we seem to catch as it were the drift of a ! speechless anguish. The mercenaries in the defile of the Battle-Axe merely look at one another when they realise that they are trapped; and when their leaders are enticed and captured by Hamilcar they stand before him in silence. And so, as we recognise those fears that come too near the source of life to make words anything but superfluous, we begin to look beneath the colour and barbaric splendour of. the warlike show and discover the essential experience of mankind, emphasised and distorted perhaps, and not altogether true in its concentrated and localised force, but containing enough of the common lot to bring a sort of unwilling recognition. "Salammbo" is first and last a work of art, admirably objective, and pointing no moral deliberately. And yet there comes i~to it a strange depth and force and almost a terror, as if the realistic reconstruction of that old framework and the movement within it of men and incident has somehow attracted the lasting residue of actual experience. At the end we are shaken and afraid, and seem to feel the ineluctable wave of human destiny snatching at us as we linger on the margins; and we know that the old barbarian lurks somewhere still within us, and will shake his javelin again.