But Maturin's reading was not strictly
confined to the school of terror. He had studied Shakespeare's
tragedies, and these may have suggested to him the idea of
enhancing the interest of his story by dissecting human motive
and describing passionate feeling. In depicting the remorse of
the count and his wife Zenobia, who had committed a murder to
gratify their ambition, and who are tormented by ugly dreams,
Maturin inevitably draws from _Macbeth_. Zenobia, the stronger
character, reviles her husband for indulging in sickly fancies
and strives to embolden him:
"Like a child you run from a mask you have yourself painted."
He replies in a free paraphrase of _Hamlet_:
"It is this cursed domestic sensibility of guilt that makes
cowards
of us all."
Maturin is distinguished from the incompetent horde of
romance-writers, whom Scott condemned, by the powerful eloquence
of his style and by his ability to analyse emotion, to write as
if he himself were swayed by the feeling he describes. His insane
extravagances have at least the virtue that they come flaming hot
from an excited imagination. The passage quoted by
Scott--Orazio's attempt to depict his state of mind after he had
heard of his brother's perfidy--may serve to illustrate the force
and vigour of his language:
"Oh! that midnight darkness of the soul in which it
seeks for something whose loss has carried away every
sense but one of utter and desolate deprivation; in
which it traverses leagues in motion and worlds in
thought without consciousness of relief, yet with a
dread of pausing.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130