Intentions
with such fervent moments of ecstasy or of joy, it all seems to be a
dream and an illusion. What are the unreal things, but the passions that
once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the
things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things?
The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with
shadows, like a puppet-master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to
us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some
noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our
days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place,
and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we
find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at
the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and
so madly kissed.
ERNEST. Life then is a failure?
GILBERT. From the artistic point of view, certainly. And the chief
thing that makes life a failure from this artistic point of view is the
thing that lends to life its sordid security, the fact that one can never
repeat exactly the same emotion. How different it is in the world of
Art! On a shelf of the bookcase behind you stands the _Divine Comedy_,
and I know that, if I open it at a certain place, I shall be filled with
a fierce hatred of some one who has never wronged me, or stirred by a
great love for some one whom I shall never see. There is no mood or
passion that Art cannot give us, and those of us who have discovered her
secret can settle beforehand what our experiences are going to be. We
can choose our day and select our hour. We can say to ourselves,
‘To-morrow, at dawn, we shall walk with grave Virgil through the valley
of the shadow of death,’ and lo! the dawn finds us in the obscure wood,
and the Mantuan stands by our side. We pass through the gate of the
legend fatal to hope, and with pity or with joy behold the horror of
another world. The hypocrites go by, with their painted faces and their
cowls of gilded lead. Out of the ceaseless winds that drive them, the
carnal look at us, and we watch the heretic rending his flesh, and the
glutton lashed by the rain. We break the withered branches from the tree
in the grove of the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds
with red blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries. Out of a
horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us, and when from his sepulchre of flame
the great Ghibelline rises, the pride that triumphs over the torture of
that bed becomes ours for a moment. Through the dim purple air fly those
who have stained the world with the beauty of their sin, and in the pit
of loathsome disease, dropsy-stricken and swollen of body into the
semblance of a monstrous lute, lies Adamo di Brescia, the coiner of false
coin. He bids us listen to his misery; we stop, and with dry and gaping
lips he tells us how he dreams day and night of the brooks of clear water
that in cool dewy channels gush down the green Casentine hills. Sinon,
the false Greek of Troy, mocks at him. He smites him in the face, and
they wrangle. We are fascinated by their shame, and loiter, till Virgil
chides us and leads us away to that city turreted by giants where great
Nimrod blows his horn. Terrible things are in store for us, and we go to
meet them in Dante’s raiment and with Dante’s heart. We traverse the
marshes of the Styx, and Argenti swims to the boat through the slimy
waves. He calls to us, and we reject him. When we hear the voice of his
agony we are glad, and Virgil praises us for the bitterness of our scorn.
We tread upon the cold crystal of Cocytus, in which traitors stick like
straws in glass. Our foot strikes against the head of Bocca. He will
not tell us his name, and we tear the hair in handfuls from the screaming
skull. Alberigo prays us to break the ice upon his face that he may weep
a little. We pledge our word to him, and when he has uttered his
dolorous tale we deny the word that we have spoken, and pass from him;
such cruelty being courtesy indeed, for who more base than he who has
mercy for the condemned of God? In the jaws of Lucifer we see the man
who sold Christ, and in the jaws of Lucifer the men who slew Cæsar. We
tremble, and come forth to re-behold the stars.
In the land of Purgation the air is freer, and the holy mountain rises
into the pure light of day. There is peace for us, and for those who for
a season abide in it there is some peace also, though, pale from the
poison of the Maremma, Madonna Pia passes before us, and Ismene, with the
sorrow of earth still lingering about her, is there. Soul after soul
makes us share in some repentance or some joy. He whom the mourning of
his widow taught to drink the sweet wormwood of pain, tells us of Nella
praying in her lonely bed, and we learn from the mouth of Buonconte how a
single tear may save a dying sinner from the fiend. Sordello, that noble
and disdainful Lombard, eyes us from afar like a couchant lion. When he
learns that Virgil is one of Mantua’s citizens, he falls upon his neck,
and when he learns that he is the singer of Rome he falls before his
feet. In that valley whose grass and flowers are fairer than cleft
emerald and Indian wood, and brighter than scarlet and silver, they are
singing who in the world were kings; but the lips of Rudolph of Hapsburg
do not move to the music of the others, and Philip of France beats his
breast and Henry of England sits alone. On and on we go, climbing the
marvellous stair, and the stars become larger than their wont, and the
song of the kings grows faint, and at length we reach the seven trees of
gold and the garden of the Earthly Paradise. In a griffin-drawn chariot
appears one whose brows are bound with olive, who is veiled in white, and
mantled in green, and robed in a vesture that is coloured like live fire.
The ancient flame wakes within us. Our blood quickens through terrible
pulses. We recognise her. It is Beatrice, the woman we have worshipped.
The ice congealed about our heart melts. Wild tears of anguish break
from us, and we bow our forehead to the ground, for we know that we have
sinned. When we have done penance, and are purified, and have drunk of
the fountain of Lethe and bathed in the fountain of Eunoe, the mistress
of our soul raises us to the Paradise of Heaven. Out of that eternal
pearl, the moon, the face of Piccarda Donati leans to us. Her beauty
troubles us for a moment, and when, like a thing that falls through
water, she passes away, we gaze after her with wistful eyes. The sweet
planet of Venus is full of lovers. Cunizza, the sister of Ezzelin, the
lady of Sordello’s heart, is there, and Folco, the passionate singer of
Provence, who in sorrow for Azalais forsook the world, and the
Canaanitish harlot whose soul was the first that Christ redeemed.
Joachim of Flora stands in the sun, and, in the sun, Aquinas recounts the
story of St. Francis and Bonaventure the story of St. Dominic. Through
the burning rubies of Mars, Cacciaguida approaches. He tells us of the
arrow that is shot from the bow of exile, and how salt tastes the bread
of another, and how steep are the stairs in the house of a stranger. In
Saturn the soul sings not, and even she who guides us dare not smile. On
a ladder of gold the flames rise and fall. At last, we see the pageant
of the Mystical Rose. Beatrice fixes her eyes upon the face of God to
turn them not again. The beatific vision is granted to us; we know the
Love that moves the sun and all the stars.
Yes, we can put the earth back six hundred courses and make ourselves one
with the great Florentine, kneel at the same altar with him, and share
his rapture and his scorn. And if we grow tired of an antique time, and
desire to realise our own age in all its weariness and sin, are there not
books that can make us live more in one single hour than life can make us
live in a score of shameful years? Close to your hand lies a little
volume, bound in some Nile-green skin that has been powdered with gilded
nenuphars and smoothed with hard ivory. It is the book that Gautier
loved, it is Baudelaire’s masterpiece. Open it at that sad madrigal that
begins
Que m’importe que tu sois sage?
Sois belle! et sois triste!
and you will find yourself worshipping sorrow as you have never
worshipped joy. Pass on to the poem on the man who tortures himself, let
its subtle music steal into your brain and colour your thoughts, and you
will become for a moment what he was who wrote it; nay, not for a moment
only, but for many barren moonlit nights and sunless sterile days will a
despair that is not your own make its dwelling within you, and the misery
of another gnaw your heart away. Read the whole book, suffer it to tell
even one of its secrets to your soul, and your soul will grow eager to
know more, and will feed upon poisonous honey, and seek to repent of
strange crimes of which it is guiltless, and to make atonement for
terrible pleasures that it has never known. And then, when you are tired
of these flowers of evil, turn to the flowers that grow in the garden of
Perdita, and in their dew-drenched chalices cool your fevered brow, and
let their loveliness heal and restore your soul; or wake from his
forgotten tomb the sweet Syrian, Meleager, and bid the lover of Heliodore
make you music, for he too has flowers in his song, red pomegranate
blossoms, and irises that smell of myrrh, ringed daffodils and dark blue
hyacinths, and marjoram and crinkled ox-eyes. Dear to him was the
perfume of the bean-field at evening, and dear to him the odorous
eared-spikenard that grew on the Syrian hills, and the fresh green thyme,
the wine-cup’s charm. The feet of his love as she walked in the garden
were like lilies set upon lilies. Softer than sleep-laden poppy petals
were her lips, softer than violets and as scented. The flame-like crocus
sprang from the grass to look at her. For her the slim narcissus stored
the cool rain; and for her the anemones forgot the Sicilian winds that
wooed them. And neither crocus, nor anemone, nor narcissus was as fair
as she was.
It is a strange thing, this transference of emotion. We sicken with the
same maladies as the poets, and the singer lends us his pain. Dead lips
have their message for us, and hearts that have fallen to dust can
communicate their joy. We run to kiss the bleeding mouth of Fantine, and
we follow Manon Lescaut over the whole world. Ours is the love-madness
of the Tyrian, and the terror of Orestes is ours also. There is no
passion that we cannot feel, no pleasure that we may not gratify, and we
can choose the time of our initiation and the time of our freedom also.
Life! Life! Don’t let us go to life for our fulfilment or our
experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its
utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which
is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament.
It makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the
meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.
ERNEST. Must we go, then, to Art for everything?
GILBERT. For everything. Because Art does not hurt us. The tears that
we shed at a play are a type of the exquisite sterile emotions that it is
the function of Art to awaken. We weep, but we are not wounded. We
grieve, but our grief is not bitter. In the actual life of man, sorrow,
as Spinoza says somewhere, is a passage to a lesser perfection. But the
sorrow with which Art fills us both purifies and initiates, if I may
quote once more from the great art critic of the Greeks. It is through
Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through