Father Joseph, he has to admit, was apt to make regrettable confusions of moods after declarative verbs and in indirect interrogations. At the same time the copulative conjunction is all too frequently separated from the negation. As for his prosody, it shows too many elisions of monosyllables, while there is persistence of the short syllable in no less than fortyfour sigmatisms. Nor is the Turciad entirely above reproach in matters of scansion. Thus, concidit is treated as a dactyl, when in fact it is an antibacchius. Worse still, inscitiam, which is manifestly an epitrite III, is made to do duty as a coryambus. Grave offences! But let those who are without sin in the matter of false quantities throw the first stone.
Of more interest than the linguistic form of Father Joseph’s epic is its extraordinary substance. The Turciad is one of those things in virtue of which plain history is always so much odder than the most romantic of historical novels. A novelist might possibly invent a character who was simultaneously a power politician and a practising mystic. But to fabricate someone who, besides being a power politician and a practising mystic, should also have composed the four thousand six hundred and thirty-seven hexameters of the Turciad, is a feat beyond the powers of any literary artist, however greatly gifted. Every human being is an individual slice of history, unique and unrepeatable; but the majority of such slices belong to one or other of a number of familiar and recognizable classes. This is not the case with exceptional individuals. These represent the wildest improbabilities, such as only life can make actual; for life alone possesses the resources and the patience to go on playing the lotteries of heredity and environment until the necessary number of one-in-amillion chances turn up simultaneously, and an exceptional individual appears and runs his course. That is why truth is so much stranger, richer and more interesting than fiction.
The Turciad opens with the description of a public meeting of angels called by the Second Person of the Trinity. Addressing the meeting, Christ expresses his distress at Mohammedan supremacy in the Near and Middle East, and urges the heavenly powers to do something about it. Even the Virgin, it is indicated, would be glad to participate in a Crusade, if such a thing were proper to her station. From this opening the speaker proceeds to an account of the life of Mohammed, considerably more picturesque than historical. Near Mecca, he tells his auditors, is a cave from which a chimney goes down directly into hell. One day the young Mohammed found his way into this cave and was there kindly received and instructed in the arts of mischief by Lucifer. This instruction was easy to give; for round the chimney there ran a series of galleries which had been fitted up by the devils as a kind of Museum of Evil.
In them had been placed such interesting objects as the tooth of the serpent which tempted Eve; Cain’s club; the first iron weapons, invented by Tubal-cain; the emblems of Venus and of Bacchus; all the rich apparatus of sorcery and magic; material illustrative of all the heresies from that of Arius to that of Calvin; and finally the armament, already prepared for future contingencies, to be used in the campaigns of Antichrist. Duly enlightened by his visit to this chamber of horrors, Mohammed was sent home to write the Koran and plan the conquest of the Holy Places.
Having obtained the support of the heavenly hierarchies for a crusade, Christ next sets out to work upon the princes of Europe, especially Louis XIII and Philip IV of Spain. By means of a dream?- he explains to them why a holy war is so urgently necessary. At this point, for no particular reason, the author of the epic appears on the scene and asks permission to pass on to the general public the substance of what has been imparted to the princes. Leave is given, and he at once embarks upon a theological lecture. After briefly explaining the Holy Trinity, the creation, the fall, free will, angelology, the beatific vision and the New Jerusalem, he concludes, at the end of some seven hundred and fifty lines, with an exhortation to the potential crusaders to ally themselves immediately with the forces of heaven.
The next five hundred and seventy lines are devoted to the account of another public meeting in heaven. This time the audience consists, not of angels, but of saints, who are seated, tier upon tier, in a kind of amphitheatre, in whose arena stand two golden thrones. From the earth comes a squadron of cherubim transporting the European princes, who enjoy the spectacle from a kind of hovering platform composed of the angels’ wings. Among the nine choirs of saints, those most useful to crusaders are pointed out to the new arrivals. The list closes with St. Francis, whom Father Joseph relates, by means of an elegant pun, to France.
Sihi nam cognata cokaerent,
Francia, Franciscus, fatalia nomina Turcis.19
Suddenly the Second Person of the Trinity appears again, accompanied by the Virgin. All rise and make obeisance, while the two take their places on the thrones prepared for them. In the ensuing silence, Christ calls for the Duke of Nevers. The Archangel Michael picks up the last of the Palaeologi from where he is sitting on the platform of angels’ wings, swoops into the arena and deposits him, more dead than alive with terror, at the foot of the thrones. After the Virgin has comforted him with a few reassuring words, Christ proceeds to harangue the duke at some length, reminding him of his imperial origins and the duties they impose on him, reminding him also of his faults and that a crusader must be a man of exemplary conduct.
Much moved, Nevers vows to devote the rest of his life to a crusade against the Turks. Whereupon the Virgin invests him with the insignia of the Christian Militia. The proceedings are brought to a close by a long procession of all the heroes who have fought for the Lord against his enemies. Moses and Joshua head the parade, which winds on chronologically through Godefroy of Bouillon to Don John of Austria and the heroes of Lepanto.
Needless to say, this is a golden opportunity for Father Joseph to bring out one of those sonorous lists of names, so clear to all writers of epics. With what gusto the pontifical critic must have rolled around his tongue such lines as ‘Hunneades sollers et Scanderbegius acer’. News of this meeting is brought to Satan and fills him with considerable apprehension. Wistfully, he yearns for the coming of Antichrist; but, as Antichrist shows no signs of appearing, he does what he can on his own account by starting the war in Bohemia. It was a successful manreuvre -just how successful Father Joseph was to discover during the remaining years of his life.
In 1625, when the Turciad was completed, he would only admit a local and temporary set-back. The troubles which the fiend had stirred up would soon be settled; united Europe would utterly destroy the Turk and, by this war to end war, inaugurate a golden age of universal peace -under the leadership of France. And the poem ends with yet another dream, a dream in which the author is addressed by the personification of his country, by that France which, because he believed her to be the instrument of divine providence, he was able, with a good conscience and without suspecting that he was committing idolatry, to worship as though she were God.
Thus baldly analysed, the Turciad seems almost uniquely preposterous. But apply the same process to Paradise Lost, discount the style, strip away the ornaments, reduce the poem to its naked subject-matter, and you have something only a little less absurd. Public meetings of angels, theological discussions -between the First and Second Persons of the Trinity, angelic battles, complete with three-dimension-strategy, infernal artillery and the divine equivalent of the tank. Was it all merely a matter of literary convention, of a self-conscious imitation of the poetical machinery of another age? Were these strangely materialistic accounts of life in heaven regarded by their authors as being as completely fabulous as that, pathetic tale of young Prince Syphilis, which Fracastoro had composed a hundred years before? It would be comforting to believe it; but I am afraid that we are not justified in so believing.
In some ineffably Pickwickian way Paradise Lost and the Turciad and the Apotheosis of Charles V were probably conceived by Titian, and Father Joseph and Milton as being something more than merely fantastic. In the case of Titian and Milton this was comprehensible enough; both, in their different ways, were men of exoteric religion. Not so Father Joseph. That he had had some direct, unmediated experience of ultimate reality is unquestionable. In his Introduction to the Spiritual Life he had described the soul’s union with God. A few years later, and evidently with no sense of incongruity, he was writing the Turciad and writing it in the conviction that, by so doing, he was serving, and in some way telling the
