Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/237

 a drama of poignant beauty and memorable reality on the betrayal, trial and crucifixion of Jesus, "The Dark Hours." Whether any other poet in America could have approached his achievement on this theme, I do not know. No one has. He has accomplished what I had thought was impossible: He has thoroughly dramatized the chief narrative of the New Testament, developing with marked originality several of the principal characters, notably Judas, and freely inventing incidents and speeches for subordinate figures, yet—to my sense, which is reasonably sensitive—without striking a note which is not in harmony with the tone and atmosphere of the Gospels. In the case of the central figure, he attempts no interpretation that devi ates a hair's breadth from the Christian tradition. The character and personality of the Son of Man, the Son of God, are left quite inviolate; and this makes the more marvelous the congruity of his own developments. His feeling about the delicate ethical and artistic questions involved in handling this material he discusses with admirable taste and insight.

I have almost nothing strictly parallel to compare with the effect of "The Dark Hours" except a Passion Play which I saw a few years ago solemnly presented in a canyon of southern California, with the Crucifixion dim on the hilltop above it. With its elaborate reproduction of Palestinian dwellings, costumes and scenery, it was pictorially correct, like the colored illustrations in a modern Bible, of which it constantly reminded me, and the lines were gravely and eloquently recited, yet somehow it seemed remote and it left me cold—as cold as a colored picture in a Bible.

"The Dark Hours," on the other hand, even silently read, is of a seizing and transporting reality. Its tre-