Convalescence is a purification, a new birth. Never is life so sweet as after the pangs of physical suffering, and never is the human soul so inclined towards purity and faith as after having had a glimpse into the abyss of death.
After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit--like another man, like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom; his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.
The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation of pure things.
August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and supernatural. The wide amphitheatre of hills, clothed with olives, oranges and pines and all the noblest forms of Italian vegetation, embraced the silent sea, and seemed not a multiplicity of things, but a single vast object under the all-pervading sunshine.
Lying on the grass, or sitting on a rock or under a tree, the young man felt the river of life flow within him; as in a trance, he seemed to feel the whole universe throb and palpitate in his breast; in a species of religious rapture, he felt that he possessed the infinite. That which he experienced was ineffable, divine. The vista before him opened out by degrees into a profound and long continued vision, the branches of the trees overhead supported the firmament, filling the blue, and shining like the garlands of immortal poets. And he gazed and listened and breathed with the sea and the earth, placid as a god.
Where were now all his vanities and his cruelties, his schemes and his duplicities? What had become of all his loves and his illusions, his disappointments and his disgusts, and the implacable reaction after pleasure? He remembered none of them. His spirit had renounced them all, and with the absence of desire, he had found peace.
Desire had abandoned its throne and intellect was free to follow its proper course, and reflect the objective world purely from the outside point of view; things appeared clearly and precisely under their true form, in their true colours, in all their real significance and beauty; every personal sentiment was in abeyance.
'_Die Sterne, die begehrt man nicht--Man freut sich ihrer Pracht._'
One desires not the stars, but rejoices in their splendour--and for the first time in his life the young man really recognised the poetic harmony of summer skies at night.
These were the last nights of August, and there was no moon. Innumerable in the deep starry vault, the constellations throbbed and palpitated with ardent life. The two Bears, Hercules, Cassiopeia, glittered with so rapid a palpitation that they seemed almost to approach the earth, to penetrate the terrestrial atmosphere. The Milky Way flowed wide like a regal aerian river, a confluence of the waters of Paradise, over a bed of crystal between starry banks. Brilliant meteors cleft the motionless air from time to time, gliding lightly and silently as a drop of water over a sheet of glass. The slow and solemn respiration of the sea sufficed to measure the peace of the night without disturbing it, and the pauses were almost sweeter than the music.
In every aspect of the things around him he beheld some analogy to his own inner life. The landscape became to him a symbol, an emblem, a sign to guide him through the labyrinthine passes of his own soul. He discovered secret affinities between the visible life around him and the intimate life of his desires and memories. 'To me, high mountains are a _feeling_'--and as the mountains were to Byron, so the sea was to him a _sentiment_.
Oh, that limpid September sea! Calm and guileless as a sleeping child, it lay outstretched beneath the pearly sky--now green, the delicate and precious green of malachite, the little red sails upon it like flickering tongues of fire, now intensely--almost one might call it heraldically--blue, and veined with gold like lapis-lazuli, with pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate, and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the background of a Giotto picture.
Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence, as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain, his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?
For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.
But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp the meaning of the incomprehensible.
But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon, the vast and terrible silence when all life seems suspended, a sudden glimpse into his own heart revealed shuddering abysses, inextinguishable desires, ineffaceable memories, accumulations of suffering and regret--all the wretchedness he had gone through, all the inevitable scars of his vices, all the results of his passions. He seemed to be witnessing the shipwreck of his whole life. A thousand voices cried to him for succour, imploring aid, cursing death--voices that he knew, that he had listened to in days gone by. But they cried and implored and cursed in vain, feeling that they were perishing, choked by the hungry waves; then the voices grew faint, broken, irrecognisable--and died away into silence.
He was alone. Of all his youth, of all his boasted fulness of inner life, of all his ideality, not a vestige remained; within--a black and yawning abyss, around him--impassive nature, endless source of pain to solitary souls. Every hope was dead, every voice mute, every anchor gone--what use was life?
Suddenly the image of Elena rose up before him, then that of other women whom he had known and loved. Each of them smiled a hostile smile, and each one, as she vanished, seemed to carry away something of him--what, he could not definitely say. An unspeakable distress weighed upon him, an icy breath of age swept over him, a tragic, warning voice rang through his heart--Too late! Too late!
All his recent comfort and peace seemed now a vain delusion, a dream that had flown, a pleasure enjoyed by some other spirit. Every wound he had ruthlessly dealt to his soul's dignity bled afresh; every degradation he had inflicted upon his conscience started out and spread like a leprosy. Every violation he had committed upon his ideality roused an endless, despairing, terrible remorse in him. He had lied too flagrantly, had deceived, debased himself beyond all power of redress. He loathed himself and all his evil works--Shame! Shame! Nothing could wipe out those dishonouring stains, no balm could ever heal those wounds, he must for ever endure the torment of that self-loathing.--Shame!----
His eyes filled with tears, and dropping his head upon his arms he abandoned himself to the weight of his misery, prostrate as a man who has no hope of salvation.
With the new day, he awoke to new life, one of those awakenings, so fresh and limpid, that are only vouchsafed to adolescence in its triumphant springtide. It was a marvellous morning--only to breathe the air was pure delight. The whole earth rejoiced in the living light; the hills were wrapped about with a diaphanous silvery veil and seemed to quiver with life, the sea appeared to be traversed by rivulets of milk, by rivers of crystal and of emerald, by a thousand currents forming the rippling intricacies of a watery labyrinth. A sense of nuptial joy and religious grace emanated from the concord between earth and sky.
And he breathed and gazed and listened, not a little surprised During his sleep the fever had left him. He had slumbered, lulled by the voice of the waters as if by the voice of a faithful friend--and he who sleeps to the sound of that lullaby enjoys a repose that is full of healing peace.
He gazed and listened mutely, fondly, letting the flood of immortal life penetrate to his heart's core. Never had the sacred music of a great master--an Offertory of Haydn, a Te Deum of Mozart--produced in him the emotion caused now by the simple chimes of the distant village churches, as they greeted the rising of the sun into the heavens. His soul swelled and overflowed with unspeakable emotion. Some vision, vague but sublime, hovered over him like a rippling veil through which gleamed the splendour of the mysterious treasure of ultimate felicity. Up till now, he had always known exactly what he wished for, and had never found any pleasure in desiring vainly. Now, he could not have named his desire, but he had no doubts that the thing wished for was infinitely sweet, since the very act of wishing was bliss. The words of the Chimera in 'The King of Cyprus'--old world, half-forgotten verses, recurred to him with all the force of a caressing appeal--
'Would'st thou fight? Would'st kill? would'st thou behold rivers of blood? Great heaps of gold? white herds of captive women? Slaves? other, and far other spoils? Would'st thou Bid marble breathe? Would'st thou set up a temple? Would'st fashion an immortal hymn? Would'st (hearken, Hearken, O youth, hearken!)--would'st thou divinely Love?'
He smiled faintly to himself. 'Whom should I love?--Art?--a woman?--what woman?' Elena seemed far removed from him, lost to him, a stranger--dead. The others--still further off, dead for evermore. Therefore he was free. But why renew a pursuit so useless and so perilous? Why stretch out his hand again towards the tree of knowledge? 'The tree of knowledge has been plucked--all's known!' as Byron said in Don Juan. What he desired, at the bottom of his heart, was to give himself freely, gratefully to some higher and purer being. But where to find that being was the question.
Truly his salvation in the future lay rather in the practice of caution, prudence, sagacity. His tone of mind seemed to him admirably expressed in a sonnet of a contemporary poet, whom, from a certain affinity of literary tastes and similar aesthetic education, he particularly affected--
'I am as one who lays himself to rest Under the shadow of a laden tree; Above his head hangs the ripe fruit, and he Is weary of drawing bow or arbalest.
He shakes not the fair bough that lowliest Droops, neither lifts he hand, nor turns to see; But lies, and gathers to him indolently The fruits that drop into his very breast.
In that juiced sweetness, over-exquisite, He bites not deep; he fears the bitterness; Yet sets it to his lips, that he may smell,
Sucks it with pleasure, not with greediness, And he is neither grieved nor glad at it. This is the ending of the parable.'
Art! Art! She was the only faithful mistress--forever young--immortal; there was the Fountain of all pure joys, closed to the multitude but freely open to the elect; that was the precious Food which makes a man like unto a god! How could he have quaffed from other cups after having pressed his lips to that one?--how have followed after other joys when he had tasted that supreme one?
'But what if my intellect has become decadent?--if my hand has lost its cunning? What if I am no longer _worthy_?' He was seized with such panic at the thought, that he set himself wildly to find some immediate means of proving to himself the irrational nature of his fears. He would instantly compose some difficult verses, draw a figure, engrave a plate, solve some problem of form. Well--and what then? Might not the result be entirely fallacious? The slow decay of power may be imperceptible to the possessor--that is the terrible thing about it. The artist who loses his genius little by little is unaware of his progressive feebleness, for as he loses his power of production he also loses his critical faculty, his judgment. He no longer perceives the defects of his work--does not know that it is mediocre or bad. That is the horror of it! The artist who has fallen from his original high estate is no more conscious of his failings than the lunatic is aware of his mental aberration.
Andrea was seized with terror. Better--far better be dead! Never, as at this moment, had he so fully grasped the divine nature of that _gift_, never had the _spark_ of genius appeared to him so sacred. His whole being was shaken to its foundations by the mere suggestion that that gift might be destroyed, that spark extinguished. Better to die!
He lifted his head and shook off his inertia, then he went down to the park and walked slowly under the trees, unable to form a definite plan. A light breeze rippled through the tree tops, now and again the leaves rustled as if a band of squirrels were passing through them; patches of blue sky gleamed between the branches like eyes beneath their lids. Arrived at a favourite spot of his, a sort of tiny _lucus_ presided over by a four-fronted Hermes plunged in quadruple meditation, he stopped and seated himself on the grass, with his back against the pedestal of the statue and his face turned to the sea. Before him the tree-trunks, straight but of uneven height, like the pipes of the great god Pan, intercepted his view of the sea; all around him the acanthus spread the exquisite grace of its foliage, symmetrical as the capitals of Callimachus.
He thought of the words of Salamis in the _Story of the Hermaphrodite_,
'Noble acanthus, in the woods of Earth Tokens of peace, high-flowering coronals, Of most pure form; O ye, the slender basket That Silence weaves with light, untroubled hand To gather up the flowers of woody dreams, What virtue have ye poured on this fair youth Out of those dusky and sweet-smelling leaves? Naked he sleeps; his arm supports his head.'
Other lines came back to him, and yet others--a riot of verse. His soul was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet--Verse is everything!
A perfect line of verse is absolute, immutable, deathless. It encloses a thought as within a clearly marked circle which no force can break; it belongs no more to the poet, it belongs to all and yet to none, as do space, light, all things intransitory and perpetual. When the poet is about to bring forth one of these deathless lines he is warned by a divine torrent of joy which sweeps over his soul.
Andrea half closed his eyes to prolong this delicious tremor which with him was ever the forerunner of inspiration, and more especially of poetic inspiration, and he determined in a moment upon the metrical form into which he would pour his thoughts, like wine into a cup--the sonnet.
While composing Andrea studied himself curiously. It was long since he had made verses. Had this interval of idleness been harmful to his technical capacities? It seemed to him that the lines, rising one by one out of the depths of his brain, had a new grace. The consonance came of itself, and ideas were born of the rhymes. Then suddenly some obstacle would intercept the flow, a line would rebel and the whole verse would be displaced like a shaken puzzle; the syllables would struggle against the constraint of the measure; a musical and luminous word which had taken his fancy had to be excluded by the severity of the rhythm, do what he would to retain it, and the verse was like a medal which has turned out imperfect through the inexperience of the caster, who has not calculated the proper quantity of metal necessary for filling the mould. With ingenious patience he poured the metal back into the crucible and began all over again. Finally the verse came out full and clear, and the whole sonnet lived and breathed like a free and perfect creature.
Thus he composed--now slow, now fast--with a delight never felt before. As the day grew, the sea cast luminous darts between the trees as between the columns of a jasper portico. Here Alma Tadema would have depicted a Sappho with hyacinthine locks, seated at the foot of the marble Hermes, singing to a seven-stringed lyre and surrounded by a chorus of maidens with locks of flame, all pallid and intent, drinking in the pure harmony of the verses.
Having accomplished the four sonnets, he heaved a sigh and proceeded to recite them silently but with inward emphasis. Then he wrote them on the quadrangular pedestal of the Hermes, one on each surface in the following order--
I
'Four-fronted Hermes, to thy four-fold sense Have these my marvellous tidings been made known? Suave spirits, singing on their way, have flown Forth from my heart, light-hearted; and from thence
Have cast forth every foul intelligence, And every foul stream dammed, and overthrown The old unguarded bridges, stone by stone, And quenched the flame of my impenitence.
Singing, the spirits ascend; I know the voice, The hymn; and, inextinguishable and vast, Delighting laughters from my heart arise.
Pale, but a king, I bid my soul rejoice To hearken my heart's laughter, as at last Low in the dust the conquered evil lies.
II
The glad soul laughs, because its loves have fled, Because the conquered evil bites the dust Which into intertangled fires had thrust, As into fiery thickets, feet now led
Into the circle human sorrows tread; It leaves the treacherous labyrinths of lust, Where the fair pagan monsters lure the just, In hyacinth robes, a novice, garmented.
Now may no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare, No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds, No Siren lull it on a sleepy coast;
But, at the circle's summit, see, a fair White woman, in the act of worship, holds In her pure hands the sacrificial Host.
III
Beyond all harm, all ambush, and all hate, Tranquil of face, and strong at heart, she stands, And knows till death, and scorns, and understands All evil things that on her passage wait.
_Thou hast in ward and keeping every gate, The winds breathe sweetness at thy sweet commands, Might'st thou but take, when with these restless hands I lay at thine untroubled feet my fate!_
_Even now there shines before me in thy meek And holy hands the Host, like to a sun. Have I attained, have I then paid the price?_
She, that is favourable to all that seek, Lifting the Host, declares: _Now is begun And ended the eternal sacrifice!_
IV
_For I_, she saith, _am the unnatural Rose, I am the Rose of Beauty. I instil The drunkenness of ecstasy, I fill The spirit with my rapture and repose_.
_Sowing with tears, sorrowful still are those That with much singing gather harvest still. After long sorrow, this my sweetness will Be sweeter than all sweets thy spirit knows._
So be it, Madonna; and from my heart outburst The blood of tears, flooding all mortal things, And the immortal sorrow be yet whole;
Let the depths swallow me, let there as at first Be darkness, so I see the glimmerings Of light that rain on my unconquered soul!
Die XII. Septembris MDCCCLXXXVI.'