Limanora the island of progress
one of the unpremeditated, unguided functions of our system; as soon as
it calls for attention, it is deranged; as long as we are unconscious
of it, it is healthful and strong, acting in every way as it should,
without shadow or broken light, without indefiniteness of meaning or
mistaken suggestion.
Nor should a language even in its commonest thoroughfares be devoid
of music. How false must be the rendering of a thought, if for the
sake of melody he who is called a poet should have to reject all but
musical expressions in a language which has little music in it! How
artificial must be the labours of this professional word-monger, when
he must sit amongst the débris of his vocabulary, and pick and choose
with weary exertion the words that will fit into his poem! With most
of his language unsuited to his purpose, as being invented or moulded
by unmusical people, he is like a mosaic-worker who has to make his
work out of common stone, or out of fragments of pottery thrown into
the rubbish-heap of the ages. Most languages sound like the rasping of
a file over iron, or the shooting of débris over a precipice, or at
best the crackle and hiss of fireworks. And it is not surprising; for
their individual words are made out of anything that is ready to hand
by men who care nothing for the sound of them, whether it is harsh or
melodious. Now and again if a word or phrase becomes current out of the
range of literary products, it will get its harsh grating syllables
ground off, or rounded and polished in the torrent of common speech.
Thus are prepared the only elements of the language that are fit for
the fine mosaic-work of Western poets. They rescue these time-smoothed
pebbles from their gross or vulgar surroundings and place them in a
setting that will make them seem beautiful for a time.
It is only for a time; again the fair structure they have made falls
into ruin, and fragments are whirled into the eddies of everyday speech
and abandon their beauty of form and meaning for something their
original maker would never recognise. Then begins the old process; the
débris of forgotten works, rounded and smoothed in the current of time,
serves as the rubble to be concreted into the artistic works of a new
age. Alas for the artists who have such a task before them! Out of
the rubbish heap of the past they must mould what will please the new
times. And where is there room for true harmony in the result of such a
process? The materials depend for their form on the caprice of chance;
the artists depend for the form they give on the caprice of the age in
which they work, certain to be antiquated by the next new fashion. As
long as a literary product depends on its form for its lasting effect,
it must be comparatively ephemeral; for form is nothing if it does not
suit the fancy of the age to which it appeals, and the fancy of one age
conflicts with most others. Artificial means may seem to keep it alive,
an ecclesiastical or political movement, the aid of an extraneous art,
or the ambition of scholars and critics; but the life is only galvanic,
and not from the heart of the people. No true music can come out of
that which is essentially unmusical.
CHAPTER VI
INSPIRATION
I ABANDONED the effort to defend the literature of Christendom, and
came to the conclusion that a people that so scorned all word-mongering
could not have any literature. I was soon disabused of the idea. One
day, after my education had advanced into the final stage of its
earlier course, and my loyalty to the race had been tested in many
ways, my proparents bade me accompany them to the production of a new
book. After what I had heard in depreciation of literature such as
I had been accustomed to in Europe, I was somewhat startled at this
invitation. But they said nothing to explain the anomaly, although they
knew well the nature of the discussion I had had with Thyriel.
I had thought that, during my long residence in the island and in my
countless flights over it, I had come to know every public institution
existing on it. But I was mistaken again. In our course we chose a
direction that for a space was one I had several times taken. But
soon we bent out of the usual track up Lilaroma, and turning one of
its western spurs, made for a deep valley which was concealed from
view, except to voyagers towards the sunset. Here we found the air
filled with wings and airships streaming onwards. It was a beautiful
sight, this navy of the sky fleeting across the snows of Lilaroma, or
winnowing the depths of the azure. We had been on the adjoining coast
of the island, and had not to strike far upwards in order to reach our
destination. So the air-fleet moved far above us, most of it having to
round the heights of the gleaming mountain. Nothing could surpass the
grace with which they took their way through the heaven, now to this
point, now to that; and after a time I could hear the movement of their
wings, like the rustle of silken sails.
In gazing dreamily upwards, I had allowed myself to drop too near the
earth, and in order to reach the goal of our flight exactly I had
to take another long rise. Thereafter my gaze was bent earthwards
on a still more beautiful sight beneath me. A broad valley narrowed
coastwards to a deep gorge and mountainwards into a rift in the rocks.
The river which had sculptured this singular amphitheatre had been
deflected by an artificial channel into the centre of force, but was
allowed at times to sweep its old bed free of the débris of rocks and
vegetation. Up each side vibrated in the air tier upon tier of their
automatic rests, enough to accommodate a nation. All lay open to the
sky; yet there was a subdued light down in the hollow of the vale, that
soothed the eyes tired with the gleam of the blue and snow above; and
this twilight deepened into gloom towards the head and the exit of the
valley. Only in the afternoon, as the sun westered, it shot its level
rays through the chasm at the entrance, and mellowed the gloom even
of the ravine at the upper end with its golden light. And at sunset
the concentration of the many-coloured rays through the gorge had a
striking effect upon the whole amphiteatre; it was as if a theatrical
artist were lighting it up for some supernatural scene.
The afternoon sunlight indeed soon revealed to our eyes, as we settled
on the slopes, an immense stage that shot out of the ravine on the
mountain-side. It was, I could see, the natural theatre of the island,
cut out by other than human powers. And from side to side the gentlest
whisper would carry, yet without recoil; while the sound of the moving
stage, as it rolled forth, rose along the tiers and without break or
repercussion died away into the open sky above our heads. It must have
been here, I thought, that the architects of Limanoran buildings had
learned the acoustic secrets of nature. Never a sound was lessened or
confused in passing to the farthest corner of any of their vast halls.
Nor was it from any mechanical contrivance underneath the roof, but
simply from the shape of the enclosure. Nature had formed this valley
into a perfect theatre, in the highest tier of which not one listener
could miss the smallest sound. Yet by a singular contrivance, by means
of which a globe of irelium was kept over the stage, every sound was
tenfold magnified lest the merest whisper should escape, whilst every
hearer had at hand a margol, which would soften sounds that carried too
loudly to the ear. Another strange effect of this irelium shell was
that it magnified to the eye everything upon the stage a hundredfold;
it acted as a powerful microscope, so that each spectator was far
nearer to the inner structure of any object than mere human eye-power
could bring him.
We had not to wait long for the purpose of these preparations. There
entered upon the stage two figures that underneath the globe seemed
gigantic beside the bodies of Limanoran men and women. They had
Limanoran outlines, but transmuted into something more ethereal than
aught I had seen. There was a grace of form and a beauty of face
beyond any of those around me on the slope of the hill. And even to
my eyes, untrained and limited as they were in their powers, there
was a transparency in the tissue of their bodies which revealed the
movements of their organs; I saw their hearts pulsate, and the currents
of the blood move quicker or slower along their veins as they walked
or stood still. We could even watch the effect of their emotions in
their systems, and the excited or tranquil movement of thoughts in the
tissues of their brains. The impulses that travelled along their nerves
from brain to hand or foot, and the reports that kept journeying from
the various senses to the nerve-centres, seemed all to be made plain
to us; and seemed the work of a magician, so marvellous was it, so far
above mere human achievement.
But still greater marvels were to follow. These two beings or automata
or moving shadows of beings, or whatever they might be, enacted a
scene, the significance of which I comprehended only after many days’
thought. My immediate impressions and my subsequent conclusions and
knowledge have so amalgamated that it is difficult to separate the two
elements. These two beings were chosen friends, the complements of
each other, with tendencies and tastes and loves all in unison. Such
perfect fitting of nature to nature was not as yet to be found even
in Limanora. Thought sprang to thought, and emotion to emotion, and
yet there was a spontaneity and origination in both that made each a
separate fountain of life and action. How independent the characters
and powers, and yet how mutually adapted! The scene was meant to
picture a friendship that was a true and perfect marriage.
The two had grown year by year closer in harmony till at last the
mutual sympathy had culminated in a yearning to see an individuality
that would combine the best peculiarities of each and perpetuate the
combination. We could see the thought flame into a passion in the two
systems, and then we could hear the friends talk around the longing
till it grew definite, into a common project. We saw them gather the
materials needed for the formation of the body. With intricacies of
furnace and crucible and machinery they moulded these into the skeleton
of a man, flawless and strong in every part. They tried every bone
with numberless tests, till they found it all to their satisfaction.
Then they started on the cartilages that kept the bones in place or
moved them, giving permanence and life to each, as they made it, by
the magnetism they communicated to it. Tissue by tissue they built up
the internal organs, modelling them with loving care on those they
saw at play beneath their own eyes, and testing them to see that they
performed their functions perfectly. What delicate artistic energy they
spent upon the upper tissues of the body, upon the brain and ear and
eye! Each created and developed the quality loved and admired in the
other. There was nothing they omitted to make the new being complete
and happy in all his functions. On the minute nerves and tissues they
worked under powerful microscopes, and the minutiæ of every sense and
organ and function were examined and tested again and again with the
same magnifying power turned on them. The figure they made most noble
and symmetrical in proportions and outlines, the face they made as
beautiful as human face could look. The stuff in which they worked was
ethereal in its texture and constituents. It was difficult to discern
it with our senses even under the great magnifying globe. It seemed
to be of air or some product of the ether; for it flowed underneath