EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA is a dramatic poem by Matthew Arnold, based on legendary accounts of a Greek philosopher who lived in Agrigentum, Sicily, in the 5th century before Christ. Thesinterest of the drama centres in the philosophical despair of Empedocles and his suicide, which he accomplishes by leaping into the crater of the volcano. Before his death he discourses at length on the consolations of philosophy for the benefit of his friend, the physician Pausanias, who accompanies him part way to the summit. Dramatic relief and con trast are provided by Callicles, a young harp player, who on the lower slopes of the mountain sings with unshaken faith in the traditional divinities and the eternal freshness and delight fulness of nature.
Arnold first published this drama in 1852, but the volume in which it was contained was withdrawn from circulation before 50 copies were sold. He reprinted fragments of it in 1853, '54, '55, '57, and in 1867 revived it in its entirety at the instigation of Robert Browning. In an interesting preface to a volume of verse pub lished in 1853 he explains both why he wrote the poem and why he withdrew it. He had been attracted to the theme because Empedocles, like Arnold himself, was a troubled spirit wander ing between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born—"the calm, the cheerful ness, the disinterested objectivity have disap peared; the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we wit ness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of Faust." He had seized upon this parallelism
between his position in the 19th century and that of the Greek philosopher in the 5th cen tury B.C. to express with penetrating power the profound melancholy of religious disillusion which sorely afflicted his early manhood. As a critic, however, he felt bound to condemn as morbid, monotonous and painful the representa tion of a situation '