Coming with a shock upon the classic days of German poetry, it met with
a stern rebuke from the great Goethe. But a century later we must surely
halt in following the lead of so severe a censor. The beauty of diction
alone seems a surety of a sound content,--as when Penthesilea exclaims:
"A hero man can be--a Titan--in distress,
But like a god is he when rapt in blessedness."
An almost convincing symbolism has been suggested of the latent meaning
of the poem by a modern critic,[A]--a symbolism that seems wonderfully
reflected in Wolff's music. The charge of perverted passion can be based
only on certain lines, and these are spoken within the period of madness
that has overcome the heroine. This brings us to the final point which
may suggest the main basic fault in the poem, considered as art. At
least it is certainly a question whether pure madness can ever be a
fitting subject in the hero of a tragedy. Ophelia is an episode;
Hamlet's madness has never been finally determined. Though the Erinnys
hunted Orestes in more than one play, yet no single Fury could, after
all, be the heroine of tragedy. Penthesilea became in the crisis a pure
Fury, and though she may find here her own defense, the play may not
benefit by the same plea. On the other hand, the madness is less a
reality than an impression of the Amazons who cannot understand the
heroine's conflicting feelings. There is no one moment in the play when
the hearer's sympathy for the heroine is destroyed by a clear sense of
her insanity.
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