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(Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times )
A Musical Instrument
High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem opens with a question, “What was he doing, the great god Pan/Down in the reeds in the river?” She seems to be teasing or taunting us, as if her work contained a symbolic meaning beyond its descriptive beauty. But what could this be?
The “great god Pan” enters the poem in rambunctious style. He is “spreading ruin and scattering ban,” creating destruction and hurling curses at the heart of life. He breaks the “golden lilies," as if gleefully smashing apart the stagnancy of perfection.
Who is Pan? In Greek myth, he is half-god, half-goat. His horns and cloven feet align him with the beasts, yet he personifies the elemental powers of the groves and glens. His name derives from “pasture,” suggesting pastoral peace, yet also relates to the English for “panic.” In Roman myth, he is Faunus—a presence we glimpse in the flora and fauna all around us, from the lowliest pot plant to the most tangled forest.
Our short extract begins with Pan “high on the shore.” He seems utterly supreme—utterly superb in his disdain for peace and quiet, for law and order. The river flows “turbidly,” meaning cloudy and confused. He has brought disquiet to nature. He attacks the poor “patient reed.” His “hard bleak steel” carries no pity, though the reed sacrifices itself to his demands. Soon there is nothing left of leaf or life.
At this point, Pan appears to be the king of chaos. The reed, once so “tall” has been reduced to a stump. As if in a perverse rite, he draws out the “pith,” the very tissue. He takes out the “heart”—recalling scenes of pagan sacrifice atop temples drenched in blood. But in his act of desecration, there is a sense of craft. He notches the “poor dry empty thing” with holes. From emptiness something promises to emerge.
Then, to our surprise, Pan speaks. The thug turns eloquent. He reveals that his intention is benign: to turn the reed into a pipe and “make sweet music.” As he blows into the “sad empty thing,” his powerful breath becomes a force of inspiration.
The poem goes on to describe the sweet music that flows from the reed. It is not just sweet, but “piercing sweet.” And it is not just piercing sweet, but “blinding sweet.” It is so sweet, so overwhelming, that the sun is stopped from setting. The lilies once torn are whole. Amid decay and death, the spark of life revives.
At the conclusion, Barrett Browning states her hidden theme. As Pan hacks and hews at a reed to fashion a pipe, so the muse makes a “poet out of a man.” Perhaps, therefore, it is only from intense suffering that transcendent art is born. Only the gods remain to mourn the cost. (Here we may think of poets such as Keats, Hart Crane, or Sylvia Plath, whose fractured lives left us flawless verse. Barrett Browning was herself afflicted with an undiagnosed physical illness that left her an invalid.)
Yet this poem is not merely about artists. It touches on the duality of existence itself. In the figure of Pan, all extremes meet. He is both goat and god. He destroys and yet creates. His cruelty results in sweetness. Pain and pleasure are one. Nor is there anything to suggest that the circle of chaos and perfection doesn’t go round one more time—twice, thrice, and eternally.
Reciting this strange and hypnotic poem, with its combination of sweet, neat rhymes and rude, rough repetition, we give new life to the one Greek god who died. For a moment, he is magically before us, a symbol of our radically split, yet radically unified human nature.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) was an English poet, most famous for her verse novel, "Aurora Leigh," exploring life and art from a female perspective.
Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
