TheImitation OfChrist
Features of Great Work by Old Thomas à Kempis – Meditations of a Flemish Monk Which Have Not Lost Their Influence in Five Hundred Years
The great books of this world are not to be estimated by size or by the literary finish of their style. Behind every great book is a man greater than his written words, who speaks to us in tones that can be heard only by those whose souls are in tune with his. In other words, a great book is like a fine opera – it appeals only to those whose ears are trained to enjoy the harmonies of its music and the beauty of its words. Such a book is lost on one who reads only the things of the day and whose mind has never been cultivated to appreciate the beauty of spiritual aspiration, just as the finest strains of the greatest opera, sung by a Caruso or a Calve, fail to appeal to the one who prefers ragtime to real music.
In this world, in very truth, you reap what you sow. If you have made a study of fine music, beautiful paintings and statuary and the best books, you cannot fail to get liberal returns in the way of spiritual enjoyment from the great works in all these arts. And this enjoyment is a permanent possession, because you can always call up in memory and renew the pleasure of a great singer's splendid songs, the strains of a fine orchestra, the impassioned words of a famous actor, the glory of color of an immortal painting, or the words of a poem that has lived through the centuries and has stimulated thousands of readers to the higher life.
One of the smallest of the world's famous books is The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. It may be slipped into one's coat pocket, yet this little book is second only to the Bible and Shakespeare in the record of the souls it has influenced. It may be read in two hours, yet every paragraph in it has the potency of spiritual life. Within the cloister, where it was written, it has always been a favorite book of meditation, surpassing in its appeal the Confessions of St. Augustine.
In the great world without, it has held its own for five hundred years, gaining readers from all classes by sheer force of the sincerity and power of the man, who put into it all the yearnings of his soul, all the temptations, the struggles and the victories of his spirit. It was written in crabbed Latin of the fifteenth century, without polish and without logical arrangement, much as Emerson jotted down the thoughts which he afterward gathered up and strung together into one of his essays. Yet the vigor, truth, earnestness and spiritual passion of the poor monk in his cell fused his language into flame that warms the reader's heart after all these years.
Thomas à Kempis was plain Thomas Haemerken of Kempen, a small town near Cologne, the son of a poor mechanic, who had the great advantage of a mother of large heart and far more than the usual stock of book learning. Doubtless it was through his mother that Thomas inherited his taste for books and his desire to enter the church. He followed an elder brother into the cloister, spending his novitiate of seven years at the training school of the Brothers of the Common Life at Deventer, in the Netherlands. Then he entered as postulant the monastery of Mount St. Agnes, near Zwolle, of which his brother John was prior. This monastery was ruled by the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, and it was filled by the Brothers of the Common Life. For another seven years he studied to fit himself for this life of the cloister, and finally he was ordained a priest in 1413. As he entered upon his religious studies at the tender age of 13, he had been employed for fourteen years in preparing himself for his life work in the monastery.
The few personal details that have been handed down about him show that he was of unusual strength, with the full face of the people of his race, and that he kept until extreme old age the strength of his voice and the fire of his eye. For sixty years he remained a monk, spending most of his time in transcribing the Bible and devotional treatises and in teaching the neophytes of his own community. His devotion to books was the great passion of his life and doubtless reconciled a man of so much native strength of body and mind to the monotony of the cloister. His favorite motto was: "Everywhere have I sought for peace, but nowhere have I found it save in a quiet corner with a little book." The ideal of the community was to live as nearly as possible the life of the early Christians. The community had the honor of educating Erasmus, the most famous scholar of the Reformation.
Thomas à Kempis drew most of the inspiration for The Imitation of Christ from the Bible, and especially from the New Testament. The book is a series of eloquent variations on the great central theme of making one's life like that of Christ on earth. And with this monk, who lived in a community where all property was shared in common and where even individual earnings must be put into the general fund, this idea of reproducing the life of Christ was feasible. Cut off from all close human ties, freed from all thought of providing for food and shelter, the monastic life in a community like that of the Brothers of the Common Life was the nearest approach to the ideal spiritual existence that this world has ever seen. To live such a life for more than the ordinary span of years was good training for the production of the Imitation, the most spiritual book of all the ages.
Every page of this great book reveals that the author had made the Bible a part of his mental possessions. So close and loving had been this study that the words of the Book of Books came unwittingly to his lips. All his spiritual experiences were colored by his Biblical studies; he rests his faith on the Bible as on a great rock which no force of nature can move. So in the Imitation we have the world of life and thought as it looked to a devout student of the Bible, whose life was cut off from most of the temptations and trials of men, yet whose conscience was so tender that he magnified his doubts and his failings.
Over and over he urges upon his readers to beware of pride, to cultivate humility, to keep the heart pure and the temper meek, so that happiness may come in this world and the assurance of peace in the world to come. Again and again he appeals to us not to set our hearts upon the treasures of this world, as they may fail us at any time, while the love of worldly things makes the heart callous and shuts the door on the finest aspirations of the soul.
In every word of this book one feels the sincerity of the man who wrote it. The monk who jotted down his thoughts really lived the life of Christ on earth. He gained fame for his learning, his success as a teacher and his power as a writer of religious works; but at heart he remained as simple, sincere and humble as a little child. All his thoughts were devoted to gaining that perfection of character which marked the Master whom he loved to imitate; and in this book he pours out the longings that filled his soul and the joys that follow the realization of a good and useful life. In all literature there is no book which so eloquently paints the success of forgetting one's self in the work of helping others.
The Imitation, like the Bible, should be read day by day, if one is to draw aid and inspiration from it. Read two or three pages each day, and you will find it a rare mental tonic, so foreign to all present-day literature, that its virtues will stand out by comparison. Read it with the desire to feel as this old monk felt in his cell, and something of his rare spirit will come to you, healing your grief, opening your eyes to the many chances of doing good that lie all about you, cleansing your heart of envy, greed, covetousness and other worldly desires. Here are a few passages of the Imitation, selected at random, which will serve to show the thought and style of the book:
"Many words do not satisfy the soul; but a good life giveth ease to the mind, and a pure conscience inspireth great confidence in God.
"That which profiteth little or nothing we heed, and that which is especially necessary we lightly pass over, because the whole man doth slide into outward things, and unless he speedily recovereth himself he willingly continueth immersed therein.
"Here a man is defiled by many sins, ensnared by many passions, held fast by many fears, racked by many cares, distracted by many curiosities, entangled by many vanities, compassed about with many errors, worn out with many labors, vexed with temptations, enervated by pleasures, tormented with want. When shall I enjoy true liberty without any hindrances, without any trouble of mind or body?"
Many famous writers have borne testimony to the great influence of The Imitation of Christ upon their spiritual development. Matthew Arnold often refers to the work of Thomas à Kempis, as do Ruskin and others. Comte made it a part of his Positivist ritual, and General Gordon, that strange soldier of fortune, who carried with him what he believed to be the wood of the true cross, and who represented the ideal mystic in this strenuous modern life, had The Imitation of Christ in his pocket on the day that he fell under the spears of the Mahdi's savage fanatics at Khartoum. Perhaps the most eloquent tribute to the power of the Imitation is found in George Eliot's novel, The Mill on the Floss. The great novelist makes Maggie Tulliver find in the family garret an old copy of the Imitation. Then she says:
"A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir, while hers was in a stupor. She knew nothing of doctrines and systems, of mysticism or quietism; but this voice of the far-off ages was the direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an unquestioned message. And so it remains to all time, a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who ages ago felt and suffered and renounced, in the cloister; perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with a fashion of speech different from ours, but under the same silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same stirrings, the same failures, the same weariness."
Many editions of The Imitation of Christ have been issued, but for one who wishes to make it a pocket companion none is better than the little edition in The Macmillan Company's Pocket Classics, edited by Brother Leo, professor of English literature in St. Mary's College, Oakland. This accomplished priest has written an excellent introduction to the book, in which he sketches the life of the old monk, the sources of his work and the curious controversy over its authorship which raged for many years. Buy this inexpensive edition and study it, and then, if you come to love old Thomas, get an edition that is worthy of his sterling merit.
TheRubá'iyát of OmarKhayyám
Popularity of an Old Persian's Quatrains – Splendid Oriental Imagery Joined to Modern Doubt Found in This Great Poem
A few of the world's greatest books have been given their popularity by the genius of their translators. Of these the most conspicuous example is The Rubá'iyát of Omar Khayyám, which has enjoyed an extraordinary vogue among all English-speaking people for more than a half century since it was first given to the world by Edward FitzGerald, an Englishman of letters, whose reputation rests upon this free translation of the work of a minor Persian poet of the twelfth century. What has given it this extraordinary popularity is the strictly modern cast of thought of the old poet and the beauty of the version of the English translator. Each quatrain or four-line verse of the poem is supposed to be complete in itself, but all are closely linked in thought, and the whole poem might well have been written by any skeptic of the present day who rejects the teachings of the various creeds and narrows life down to exactly what we know on this earth.
The imagery of the poem is Oriental and many of the figures of speech and the illustrations are purely Biblical; but in its essence the poem is the expression of a materialist, who cannot accept the doctrine of a future life because no one has ever returned to tell of the "undiscovered country" that lies beyond the grave. Epicureanism is the keynote of the poem, which rings the changes on the enjoyment of the only life that we know; but the poem is saved from rank materialism by its lofty speculative note and by its sense of individual power, that reminds one of Henley's famous sonnet.
Omar Khayyám was born at Naishapur, in Persia, and enjoyed a good education under a famous Imam, or holy man, of his birthplace. At this school he met two pupils who strangely influenced his life. One was Nizam ul Mulk, who in after years became Vizier to the Sultan of Persia; the other was Malik Shah, who gained unenviable notoriety as the head of the Assassins, whom the Crusaders knew as "The Old Man of the Mountains." These three made a vow that should one gain fortune he would share it equally with the other two.
When Nizam became Vizier his schoolmates appeared. Hassan was given a lucrative office at court, but soon became involved in palace intrigues and was forced to flee. He afterward became the head of the Ismailians, a sect of fanatics, and his castle in the mountains south of the Caspian gave him the name which all Christians dreaded. His emissaries, sent out to slay his enemies, became known as Assassins. Omar made no demand for office of his old friend, but begged permission to live in "a corner under the shadow of your fortune." So the Vizier gave him a yearly pension, and Omar devoted his remaining years to the study of astronomy, in which he became very proficient, and which earned him many favors from the Sultan.
Omar became widely celebrated for his scientific knowledge and his skill in mathematics, and he formed one of the commission that revised the Persian calendar. His heretical opinions, shown in the Rubá'iyát, gained him many enemies among the strict believers, and especially among the sect of the Sufis, whose faith he ridiculed. But the poet was too well hedged about by royal favor for these religious fanatics to reach him. So Omar ended his life in the scholarly seclusion which he loved, and the only touch of romance in his career is furnished by the provision in his will that his tomb should be in a spot where the north wind might scatter roses over it. One of his disciples relates that years after Omar's death he visited Naishapur and went to his beloved master's tomb. "Lo," he says, "it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them."
Edward FitzGerald, the translator, who made Omar known to the western world, and especially to English-speaking readers, was one of the quaintest Englishmen of genius that the Victorian age produced. A college chum of men like Tennyson, Thackeray and Bishop Donne, he so impressed these youthful friends with his rare ability and his engaging personal qualities that they remained his warm admirers throughout life. Apparently without ambition, FitzGerald studied the Greek and Latin classics and made several noteworthy translations in verse, which he printed only for private circulation. Through a friend, Professor Cowell, a profound Oriental scholar, FitzGerald mastered Persian, and it was Cowell who first directed his attention to Omar's Rubá'iyát, then little known even to scholars.
The poem evidently made a profound impression on FitzGerald and in 1858 he gave the manuscript of his translation of the Rubá'iyát to the publisher, Quaritch. It was printed without the translator's name, but soon gained notice from the praises of Rossetti, Swinburne, Burton and others who recognized the genius of the anonymous author. Ten years later FitzGerald revised his first version and added many new quatrains, but the text as we have it today was the fifth which he gave to the public. Unlike Tennyson, FitzGerald appeared to improve everything he labored over, with the single exception of the first quatrain of the Rubá'iyát. In the commonly printed fifth edition he omits a splendid figure because he happened to use it in another poem. Aside from this the changes are all improvements, which is more than can be said for the revisions of Tennyson.
The authorship of the Rubá'iyát, which soon ceased to be a secret, gave FitzGerald great fame during the closing years of his life. FitzGerald also translated a work of Jami, a Persian poet of the fifth century, and he put into English verse a free version of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, two Œdipus dramas of Sophocles, and several plays by Calderon, the great Spanish dramatist.
The Rubá'iyát is far longer than Gray's Elegy, but it occupies much the same position in English literature as this classic of meditation, because of the finish of its verse and a certain beguiling attraction in its thought. The reader of the period who makes a study of the Rubá'iyát cannot escape the conviction that old Omar is secretly laughing at his readers. In fact, we come to the conclusion that he had much of FitzGerald's quizzical humor, and consequently believed in few of the heresies that he voices so poetically in his work.
That he was an epicurean and a materialist is very difficult to believe when one considers the simple life that he led and the fact that he voluntarily gave up high official place and the means of securing much wealth. To live the life of a scholar, to dwell in the world of thought and abstraction is not the habit of the man who loves pleasure for its own sake. Hence, though Omar indulges in many panegyrics on the juice of the grape, it is pretty safe to say, from the record left by his disciples, that he cared little for wine and less for kindred pleasures of the senses that he sings of so well. That he could not accept the mystical Moslem faith of his day is not strange, for he had a modern cast of mind. His religion was that of thousands today who long to believe in a future life, but who have not the faith to accept it on trust.
This lack of faith is finely expressed in several quatrains, which might have been written by a poet of today so modern are they in tone, so thoroughly do they embody the new doctrine that happiness or misery depends upon one's own character and acts. The man who cheats and over-reaches his neighbor, who lies and deceives those who trust him, who indulges in base pleasures through lack of self-restraint, such a man lives in a real hell on earth, plagued by fears of exposure and ever in a mental ferment of unsatisfied desires. Old Omar Khayyám has pictured this doctrine in these two exquisite quatrains, which give a good idea of the quality of his thought, as well as the beauty of FitzGerald's version:
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road
Which to discover we must travel too.
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."
The best known quatrain of the Rubá'iyát, the one which is always quoted as typical of Omar's epicurean attitude toward life, is this:
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Here we will take leave of Omar. His Rubá'iyát is good to read because FitzGerald has clothed his Oriental imagery in beautiful words that appeal to any one fond of melodious verse. If you wish to see what a great artist can evoke from the thoughts of this Persian poet, look over Elihu Vedder's illustrations of the Rubá'iyát– a series of memory-haunting pictures that are as full of majesty and beauty as the visions of the poet of Naishapur.