The Word in Stone The Role of Architecture in

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The Word in Stone The Role of Architecture in the
National Socialist Ideology Robert R. Taylor Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Robert R. Taylor
ISBN(s): 9780520021938, 0520366662
Edition: Reprint 2020
File Details: PDF, 32.21 MB
Year: 1974
Language: english
THE WORD IN STONE
THE WORD
IN STONE
The Role of Architecture
in the National Socialist Ideology

Robert R. Taylor

U N I V E R S I T Y OF C A L I F O R N I A PRESS
BERKELEY, LOS A N G E L E S , L O N D O N
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
Copyright © 1974, by
The Regents of the University of California
ISBN: 0-520-02193-2
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-186110
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Jean Peters
For
Marjory and Angus
Taylor
 Contents

P R E F A C E AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

1 T H E S I G N I F I C A N C E OF " N A T I O N A L S O C I A L I S T "
ARCHITECTURE 1

2 ADOLF H I T L E R AND A R C H I T E C T U R E 15

3 IDEOLOGUES AND ARCHITECTS 55

4 T H E N A T I O N A L I S T V I E W OF A R C H I T E C T U R E 78

5 C O N T E M P O R A R Y ATTITUDES TO G E R M A N
ARCHITECTURE I O O O - 1 8 5 O : "SUPPRESSION" 90

6 C O N T E M P O R A R Y ATTITUDES TO G E R M A N
ARCHITECTURE SINCE 1 8 5 0 : "DECADENCE" 103

7 A R C H I T E C T U R E R E P R E S E N T A T I V E OF T H E
NEW GERMANY 126

8 " C O M M U N I T Y " ARCHITECTURE 157

9 A R C H I T E C T U R E FOR SOCIAL ORDER AND U N I T Y 182

1 0 A R C H I T E C T U R E FOR VOLKISCH H E A L T H 219

1 1 THE NEW GERMAN CITY 250

1 2 T H E " W O R D " F A L L S ON D E A F EARS 270

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY 281

INDEX 289
Preface and Acknowledgments

As T H I S study is based primarily on books about architecture, I

owe a special debt of gratitude to Miss Sylvia Osterbind, Refer-
ence Librarian at Brock University and to her efficient assistants
working on interlibrary loan. The staff of the West German Fed-
eral Archives in Koblenz were also helpful as were the librarians
of the Rare Book Room at the Library of Congress in Washington,
D.C. The Institute für Zeitgeschichte in Munich supplied me with
very useful microfilmed material. Mr. Charles Thomas and Mr.
James Trimble of the Still Photograph Division of the National
Archives in Washington, and Mr. Jerry Kearns of the Prints and
Photographs Division of the Library of Congress gave me invalu-
able assistance in seeking illustrations. Dr. Roland Klemig of the
Bildarchiv in Berlin's Staatsbibliothek was also patient with my
inquiries. The Audio-visual Department of Brock University, es-
pecially Mr. Wayne Windjack, quickly and correctly handled my
requests'for photoduplication. My typists, Mrs. Sally Pardy, Mrs.
Jean Czop, Miss Lynne Teather, and my wife, Anne Taylor, did
superior work, even under pressure.
Special thanks are owed to Herr Albert Speer, who unhesi-
tatingly answered a host of queries and who shed an invaluable
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 Locke was writing during the dreary Dryden period, when poetry had so greatly
degenerated since the brilliant Elizabethan epoch. He himself evidently had no
interest in poetry. We know that he did not appreciate Milton (whose Paradise Lost
appeared in 1667, when Locke was in his prime).
Compare with the above quotation p. 357.

Weeping, we hold Him fast, who wept

For us, we hold Him fast,
And will not let Him go, except
He bless us first or last.

Christina Rossetti.

INDWELLING.

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,

Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say, “This is not dead,”
And fill thee with Himself instead:

But thou art all replete with very thou.

And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says, “This is enow
Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”

T. E. Brown (1830-1897).
 Oh! ever thus from childhood’s hour,
I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower,
But ’twas the first to fade away.
I never nursed a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die!

Thomas Moore (Lalla Rookh).

As in other cases mentioned in the Preface, I find that these lines, so familiar in
my day, appear to be unknown to younger men.

ON BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES.
In taking leave of our Author (Sir William Blackstone) I finish
gladly with this pleasing peroration: a scrutinizing judgment,
perhaps, would not be altogether satisfied with it; but the ear is
soothed by it, and the heart is warmed.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) (A Fragment of Government).

I think it worth while quoting from my notes this amusing piece of sarcasm
aimed by a young man of twenty-eight at the most renowned legal writer of the
time. A Fragment of Government (1776), the first of Bentham’s works, not only
showed the utter folly of Blackstone’s praise of the English constitution, but also
laid the foundation of political science. (The passage, which the quotation refers
to, is in Sec. 2 of the Introduction to the Commentaries, “Thus far as to the right
of the supreme power to make law ... public tranquillity.”)
Not only was the English constitution a subject of eulogy in Bentham’s day, but
also English law, then in a most barbarous state, was alleged to be the perfection
of human reason! Through the efforts of this great and original thinker many
dreadful abuses were removed, but it is a remarkable illustration of the blind
strength of English conservatism that his wise counsel has not yet been followed
in many exceedingly important directions.
In the seventy-eighty period, with which this book mainly deals there was a
strong agitation for law reform, which had some results.

It was the boast of Augustus, that he found Rome of brick and left
it of marble. But how much nobler will be our Sovereign’s boast
when he shall have it to say that he found law dear, and left it
cheap; found it a sealed book—left it a living letter; found it the
patrimony of the rich—left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the
two-edged sword of craft and oppression—left it the staff of honesty
and the shield of innocence!
Lord Brougham (1778-1868) (Speech in Parliament, 1828).

It would indeed be a proud boast—but not one of these objects has yet been
achieved.

When Lord Ellenborough was trying one of the Government

charges against Horne Tooke, he found occasion to praise the
impartial manner in which justice is administered. “In England, Mr.
Tooke, the law is open to all men, rich or poor.” “Yes, my lord,”
answered the prisoner, “and so is the London Tavern.”
Henry S. Leigh (Jeux d’Esprit).

The same story is told in Rogers’ Table Talk, but a different judge is named.
(Probably both are wrong, but it is immaterial.) The London Tavern was where
Horne Tooke’s Constitutional Society met, and must have been often referred to
during the trial; but of course the meaning simply is that the throne of justice
cannot be approached with an empty purse.
 Revenons à nos moutons.
(Let us return to our sheep.)
(La Farce de Maistre Pierre Patelin, Anon. 15 Cent.).

In the farce, a cloth merchant, who is suing his shepherd for stolen sheep,
discovers also that the attorney on the other side is a man who had robbed him of
some cloth. Dropping the charge against the shepherd, he begins accusing the
lawyer of his offence; and, to recall him to the point, the judge impatiently
interrupts him with Sus revenons à nos moutons, “Come, let us get back to our
sheep.”
Compare Martial VI, 19: “My suit has nothing to do with assault, or battery, or
poisoning, but is about three goats, which, I complain, have been stolen by my
neighbour. This the judge desires to have proved to him; but you, with swelling
words and extravagant gestures, dilate on the Battle of Cannae, the Mithridatic
war, and the perjuries of the insensate Carthaginians, the Syllae, the Marii, and the
Mucii. It is time, Postumus, to say something about my three goats.”
The reference to the French play I owe to King’s Classical and Foreign
Quotations.

(The wife of a poor man deserted him for another man, and he
married again. On being convicted for bigamy Mr. Justice Maule
sentenced him as follows:) Prisoner at the bar: You have been
convicted of the offence of bigamy, that is to say, of marrying a
woman while you had a wife still alive, though it is true she has
deserted you and is living in adultery with another man. You have,
therefore, committed a crime against the laws of your country, and
you have also acted under a very serious misapprehension of the
course which you ought to have pursued. You should have gone to
the ecclesiastical court and there obtained against your wife a
decree a mensa et thoro. You should then have brought an action in
the courts of common law and recovered, as no doubt you would
have recovered, damages against your wife’s paramour. Armed with
these decrees, you should have approached the legislature and
obtained an Act of Parliament which would have rendered you free
and legally competent to marry the person whom you have taken on
yourself to marry with no such sanction. It is quite true that these
proceedings would have cost you many hundreds of pounds,
whereas you probably have not as many pence. But the law knows
no distinction between rich and poor. The sentence of the court
upon you, therefore, is that you be imprisoned for one day, which
period has already been exceeded, as you have been in custody
since the commencement of the assizes.
Sir W. H. Maule (1788-1858).

This fine piece of irony, well known to lawyers, materially helped to end the old
bad state of the law of divorce. We need more men of the same stamp to draw
attention to other abuses.

Is this pleading causes, Cinna? Is this speaking eloquently to say

nine words in ten hours? Just now you asked with a loud voice for
four more clepsydrae.[26] What a long time you take to say nothing,
Cinna!
Martial VIII, 7.

In Racine’s comedy, Les Plaideurs, Act III, Sc. III, a prolix advocate begins his
speech by referring to the Creation of the world. “Avocat, passons au déluge” (Let
us get along to the Deluge), says the judge. See also The Merchant of Venice, Act
I, Sc. I:—
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing; more than any man in all Venice. His
reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all
day ere you find them; and, when you have them, they are not worth the search.
 “There’s nae place like hame,” quoth the de’il, when he found
himself in the Court o’ Session.
Scottish Proverb.

I understand that the original wording was “‘Hame’s hamely,’ quoth the de’il,
etc.” Perhaps the only English Institution which the Hindu appreciates is that of
English Law—but not as a system of Justice. To his acute mind it is a remarkably
clever and most ingenious gambling game. It is said that two Hindus will even
fabricate mutual complaints, the one against the other, to bring before the Courts
—and that it is almost equivalent to a patent of nobility to have had a case taken
to the Privy Council. The following incident actually happened to a friend of mine
who was Resident in a Native State. Sitting in his judicial capacity he reproved a
Hindu gentleman for his excessive litigiousness. The latter retorted that it was a
case of the pot calling the kettle black; that he had seen the Resident put his
rupees on the totalisator the day before; and the British race-course wasn’t a bit
more of a gamble than the British Law Courts. For his part he preferred to have
his flutter on the latter.

BALDER’S RETURN TO EARTH[27]

He sat down in a lonely land
Of mountain, moor, and mere,
And watch’d, with chin upon his hand,
Dark maids that milk’d the deer.

And while the sun set in the skies,

And stars shone in the blue,
They sang sweet songs, till Balder’s eyes
Were sad with kindred dew.

He passed along the hamlets dim

With twilight’s breath of balm,
And whatsoe’er was touch’d by him
Grew beautiful and calm....

He came unto a hut forlorn

As evening shadows fell,
And saw the man among the corn,
The woman at the well.

And entering the darken’d place,

He found the cradled child;
Stooping he lookt into its face,
Until it woke and smiled!

Then Balder passed into the night

With soft and shining tread,
The cataract called upon the height,
The stars gleam’d overhead.

He raised his eyes to those cold skies

Which he had left behind,—
And saw the banners of the gods
Blown back upon the wind.

He watched them as they came and fled,

Th hi di i f ll
 Then his divine eyes fell.
“I love the green Earth best,” he said,
“And I on Earth will dwell!” ...

Then Balder said, “The Earth is fair, and fair

Yea fairer than the stormy lives of gods,
The lives of gentle dwellers on the Earth;
For shapen are they in the likenesses
Of goddesses and gods, and on their limbs
Sunlight and moonlight mingle, and they lie
Happy and calm in one another’s arms
O’er-canopied with greenness; and their hands
Have fashioned fire that springeth beautiful
Straight as a silvern lily from the ground,
Wondrously blowing; and they measure out
Glad seasons by the pulses of the stars.”...

And Balder bends above them, glory-crown’d.

Marking them as they creep upon the ground.
Busy as ants that toil without a sound,
With only gods to mark.

But list! O list! what is that cry of pain,

Faint as the far-off murmur of the main?
Stoop low and hearken, Balder! List again!
“Lo! Death makes all things dark!”

Ay me, it is the earthborn souls that sigh,

Coming and going underneath the sky;
They move, they gather, clearer grows their cry—
O Balder, bend, and hark!...

(Oh, listen! listen!) “Blessed is the light,

We love the golden day, the silvern night, ...

“And yet though life is glad and love divine,

This Shape we fear is here i’ the summer shine,—
H bli ht th f it l k th th t i
 He blights the fruit we pluck, the wreath we twine,
And soon he leaves us stark.

“He haunts us fleetly on the snowy steep,

He finds us as we sow and as we reap,
He creepeth in to slay us as we sleep,—
Ah, Death makes all things dark.”

Bright Balder cried, “Curst be this thing

Which will not let man rest,
Slaying with swift and cruel sting
The very babe at breast!

“On man and beast, on flower and bird,

He creepeth evermore;
Unseen he haunts the Earth; unheard
He crawls from door to door.

“I will not pause in any land,

Nor sleep beneath the skies,
Till I have held him by the hand
And gazed into his eyes!”...

He sought him on the mountains bleak and bare

And on the windy moors;
He found his secret footprints everywhere,
Yea, ev’n by human doors.

All round the deerfold on the shrouded height

The starlight glimmer’d clear;
Therein sat Death, wrapt round with vapours white
Touching the dove-eyed deer.

And thither Balder silent-footed flew,

But found the Phantom not;
The rain-wash’d moon had risen cold and blue
Above that lonely spot.
 Then as he stood and listen’d, gazing round
In the pale silvern glow,
He heard a wailing and a weeping sound
From the wild huts below.

He marked the sudden flashing of the lights

He heard cry answering cry—
And lo! he saw upon the silent heights
A shadowy form pass by.

Wan was the face, the eyeballs pale and wild,

The robes like rain wind-blown,
And as it fled it clasp’d a naked child
Unto its cold breast-bone.

And Balder clutch’d its robe with fingers weak

To stay it as it flew—
A breath of ice blew chill upon his cheek,
Blinding his eyes of blue.

’Twas Death! ’twas gone!—All night the shepherds sped,

Searching the hills in fear;
At dawn they found their lost one lying dead
Up by the lone black mere.

...

R. Buchanan (Balder the Beautiful).

I retain this extract from Buchanan’s poem for the reason set out in the preface.
 How many an acorn falls to die
For one that makes a tree!
How many a heart must pass me by
For one that cleaves to me!

How many a suppliant wave of sound

Must still unheeded roll,
For one low utterance that found
An echo in my soul.

John Banister Tabb (b. 1845)

I have “Compensation” as the title of these verses, but it must surely be

incorrect. If a man passes through life unrecognised by kindred souls, it is the
reverse of ‘compensation’ to him if he also fails to recognise other sympathetic
natures.
The author is, or was, an American Catholic priest.

What we gave, we have;

What we spent, we had;
What we left, we lost.

(Epitaph on Earl of Devonshire, about 1200 A.D.)

ALL SUNG
What shall I sing when all is sung
And every tale is told,
And in the world is nothing young
That was not long since old?

Why should I fret unwilling ears

With old things sung anew
While voices from the old dead year
Still go on singing too?

A dead man singing of his maid

Makes all my rhymes in vain,
Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,
And mine shall sing again.

Why should I strive thro’ weary moons

To make my music true?
Only the dead men know the tunes
The live world dances to.

R. le Gallienne.
 Mr. le Gallienne was not the first to complain that poetic subjects were
exhausted. A recent Spectator quotes the following from Choerilus, a Samian poet
of the Fifth Century, B.C. (2,000 years before Shakespeare): “Happy was the
follower of the muses in that time, when the field was still virgin soil. But now
when all has been divided up and the arts have reached their limits, we are left
behind in the race, and, look where’er we may, there is no room anywhere for a
new-yoked chariot to make its way to the front.” (St. John Thackeray, Anthologia
Graeca).

Go out into the woods and valleys, when your heart is rather
harassed than bruised, and when you suffer from vexation more
than grief. Then the trees all hold out their arms to you to relieve
you of the burthen of your heavy thoughts; and the streams under
the trees glance at you as they run by, and will carry away your
trouble along with the fallen leaves; and the sweet-breathing air will
draw it off together with the silver multitudes of the dew. But let it
be with anguish or remorse in your heart that you go forth into
Nature, and instead of your speaking her language, you make her
speak yours. Your distress is then infused through all things and
clothes all things, and Nature only echoes and seems to authenticate
your self-loathing or your hopelessness. Then you find the device of
your sorrow on the argent shield of the moon, and see all the trees
of the field weeping and wringing their hands with you, while the
hills, seated at your side in sackcloth, look down upon you prostrate,
and reprove you like the comforters of Job.
Robert Alfred Vaughan (1823-1857) (Hours with the Mystics).

If this fine writer had lived, much might have been expected of him. He is one
of the many instances of “the fatal thirty-fours and thirty-sevens.”
 First man appeared in the class of inorganic things,
Next he passed therefrom into that of plants,
For years he lived as one of the plants,
Remembering nought of his inorganic state so different;
And, when he passed from the vegetive to the animal state,
He had no remembrance of his state as a plant,
Except the inclination he felt to the world of plants,
Especially at the time of spring and sweet flowers;
Like the inclination of infants towards their mothers,
Which know not the cause of their inclination to the breast.
Again, the great Creator, as you know,
Drew man out of the animal into the human state.
Thus man passed from one order of nature to another,
Till he became wise and knowing and strong as he is now.
Of his first souls he has now no remembrance,
And he will be again changed from his present soul.[28]

Masnair (Bk. IV) of Jalal ad Din (13th century).

The gases gather to the solid firmament; the chemic lump arrives
at the plant and grows; arrives at the quadruped and walks; arrives
at the man and thinks.
Emerson (Uses of Great Men).

HIAWATHA’S PHOTOGRAPHING
 From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
This he perched upon a tripod—
Crouched beneath its dusky cover—
Stretched his hand, enforcing silence—
Said, “Be motionless, I beg you!”
Mystic, awful was the process.
All the family in order
Sat before him for their pictures:
Each in turn, as he was taken,
Volunteered his own suggestions,
His ingenious suggestions.
First the Governor, the Father:
He suggested velvet curtains
Looped about a massy pillar;
And the corner of a table,
Of a rosewood dining-table.
He would hold a scroll of something,
Hold it firmly in his left-hand;
He would keep his right-hand buried
(Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat;
He would contemplate the distance
With a look of pensive meaning,
As of ducks that die in tempests.
Grand, heroic was the notion:
Yet the picture failed entirely:
Failed, because he moved a little,
Moved, because he couldn’t help it,
Next, his better half took courage;
She would have her picture taken,
She came dressed beyond description,
Dressed in jewels and in satin
Far too gorgeous for an empress.
Gracefully she sat down sideways,
With a simper scarcely human,
Holding in her hand a bouquet
Rather larger than a cabbage.
All the while that she was sitting,
Still the lady chattered, chattered,
Like a monkey in the forest,
“Am I sitting still?” she asked him
“Is my face enough in profile?
Shall I hold the bouquet higher?
Will it come into the picture?”
And the picture failed completely.
Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab
He suggested curves of beauty,
Curves pervading all his figure,
Which the eye might follow onward,
Till they centered in the breast-pin,
Centered in the golden breast-pin.
He had learnt it all from Ruskin
And perhaps he had not fully
Understood his author’s meaning;
But, whatever was the reason,
All was fruitless, as the picture
Ended in an utter failure.
Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little,
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of “passive beauty.”
Her idea of passive beauty
Was a squinting of the left-eye,
Was a drooping of the right-eye,
Was a smile that went up sideways
To the corner of the nostrils.
Hiawatha, when she asked him,
Took no notice of the question,
Looked as if he hadn’t heard it;
But, when pointedly appealed to,
Smiled in his peculiar manner,
Coughed and said it “didn’t matter,”
Bit his lip and changed the subject.
Nor in this was he mistaken,
As the picture failed completely.
So in turn the other sisters.
Last, the youngest son was taken:
Very rough and thick his hair was,
Very round and red his face was,
Very dusty was his jacket,
Very fidgety his manner.
And his overbearing sisters
Called him names he disapproved of:
Called him Johnny, “Daddy’s Darling,”
Called him Jacky, “Scrubby School-boy.”
And, so awful was the picture,
In comparison the others
Seemed, to his bewildered fancy,
To have partially succeeded.
Finally my Hiawatha
Tumbled all the tribe together,
(“Grouped” is not the right expression).
And, as happy chance would have it,
Did at last obtain a picture
Where the faces all succeeded:
Each came out a perfect likeness.
Then they joined and all abused it,
Unrestrainedly abused it,
As “the worst and ugliest picture
They could possibly have dreamed of.
Giving one such strange expressions—
Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.
Really any one would take us
(Any one that did not know us)
For the most unpleasant people!”
(Hiawatha seemed to think so,
 Seemed to think it not unlikely).
All together rang their voices,
Angry, loud, discordant voices,
As of dogs that howl in concert,
As of cats that wail in chorus.
But my Hiawatha’s patience,
His politeness and his patience,
Unaccountably had vanished,
And he left that happy party.
Neither did he leave them slowly,
With the calm deliberation,
The intense deliberation
Of a photographic artist:
But he left them in a hurry,
Left them in a mighty hurry,
Stating that he would not stand it,
Stating in emphatic language
What he’d be before he’d stand it.
Thus departed Hiawatha.

Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson) 1832-1898.

It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man’s

death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too,—as if it
were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to the
brother who has to climb the whole toilsome steep with us, and all
our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that
hard journey.
George Eliot (Janet’s Repentance).
 It has been said by Schiller, in his letters on aesthetic culture, that
the sense of beauty never farthered the performance of a single
duty.
Although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly be
accepted by any one in so many terms, seeing that there are few so
utterly lost but that they receive, and know that they receive, at
certain moments, strength of some kind, or rebuke from the
appealings of outward things; and that it is not possible for a
Christian man to walk across so much as a rood of the natural earth,
with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving strength
and hope from stone, flower, leaf or sound, nor without a sense of a
dew falling upon him out of the sky; though I say this falsity is not
wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to be partly and
practically so in much of the doing and teaching even of holy men,
who in the recommending of the love of God to us, refer but seldom
to those things in which it is most abundantly and immediately
shown; though they insist much on his giving of bread, and raiment,
and health (which he gives to all inferior creatures), they require us
not to thank him for that glory of his works which he has permitted
us alone to perceive: they tell us often to meditate in the closet, but
they send us not, like Isaac, into the fields at even; they dwell on
the duty of self-denial, but they exhibit not the duty of delight.[29]
John Ruskin (Modern Painters, III, I, XV).
 Not on the vulgar mass
Called “work” must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world’s coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount:

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All, I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped,

So, take and use thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.

Robert Browning (Rabbi ben Ezra).

“All (that) I could never be, All (that) man ignored in me.” All that the world
could not know, a man’s thoughts, desires, and intentions, all that he wished or
tried to be or do, although unknown to his fellows, have their value in God’s eyes.
Man is the Cup, whose shape (i.e., character) has been formed by the wheel of
the great Potter, God. See further as to this Eastern metaphor.
 The late Mrs. A. W. Verrall, widow of Doctor Verrall and herself a brilliant scholar,
pointed out in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, June, 1911, a
probable connection between “Rabbi ben Ezra,” and “Omar Khayyam,” and I do
not think that her interesting views have been published elsewhere.
Both poems centre round the idea of man as a Cup, but treat the metaphor
from very different standpoints. Omar’s cup (quoting from the first edition) is to be
filled with “Life’s Liquor” (ii), with “Wine! Red Wine!” (vi), with what “clears To-Day
of past regrets” (xx); the object is to drown the memory of the fact that “without
asking” we are “hurried hither” and “hurried hence” (xxx); the “Ruby Vintage” is to
be drunk “with old Khayyam,” and “when the Angel with his darker Draught draws
up” to us we are to take that draught without shrinking (xlviii). On the other hand
Rabbi ben Ezra’s Cup is to be used by the great Potter. We are told to look “not
down but up! to uses of a cup” (30). The Rabbi asks “God who mouldest men ...
to take and use His work” (32) and the ultimate purpose of the Cup, when it has
been made “perfect as planned,” is to slake the thirst of the Master.
The comparison of man to the Clay of the Potter in both poems is not sufficient
in itself to show any connection between them. Such a comparison is found, as
Fitzgerald reminds us, “in the Literature of the World from the Hebrew Prophets to
the present time”[30]; and it is as appropriately employed by the Hebrew as by the
Persian thinker. But Mrs. Verrall has other grounds:
The little pamphlet in its brown wrapper containing the Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam was first published by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859, and, as is well known,
attracted so little attention that, although there were only 250 copies, it found its
way into the two-penny boxes of the book-sellers, (It now sells for about £50!)
But, nevertheless, the poem was eagerly read and enthusiastically praised by a
small group, among whom were Swinburne and Rossetti. In 1861 Robert Browning
came to live in London, and often saw Rossetti, who was his friend. It is,
therefore, very improbable that he did not learn of the poem, which had so
impressed Rossetti. In 1864 “Rabbi ben Ezra” was published in the volume called
Dramatis Personae.
Again, there is intrinsic evidence that Browning intended a direct refutation of
Omar’s theory of life. Compare verses 26 and 27 of “Rabbi ben Ezra” with verses
xxxvi and xxxvii of “Omar Khayyam” (first edition).
Omar says that he “watched the Potter thumping his wet clay,” and, thereupon
advises:
 Ah, fill the Cup;—what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!

Rabbi ben Ezra says:

... Note that Potter’s wheel.

That metaphor!

and proceeds:

Thou, to whom fools propound,

When the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize To-day!”

Fool! all that is, at all,

Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.

Although the “carpe diem” (“seize to-day”) theory of life is no doubt common to
all literatures, the cumulative effect of Mrs. Verrall’s argument is strong, although
not conclusive.
As regards the above verses, compare the next quotation.
From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, Thy dread
Sabaoth:
I will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth
To look that, even that, in the face too? Why is it I dare
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
This:—’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man
Would do!

R. Browning (Saul).

Sabaoth, armies, hosts. “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”

Let the thick curtain fall;

I better know than all
How little I have gained.
How vast the unattained.

Not by the page word-painted

Let life be banned or sainted;
Deeper than written scroll
The colours of the soul.

Sweeter than any sung

My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.

J. G. Whittier (My Triumph).

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