by Gustave Kahn
“O master Sun, O divine Sun, the color of love and the scepter.”
“Crazy avalanches of joy and worlds of mist are swept away by my two hands, and I stand directly before you and contemplate you.”
“And the white immortality of the gulf grips me momentarily.”
“Yes, Samuel, for an instant, telling me, however, that I love you, I love you.”
“For all the mourning of the past, for the happiness of the present, for the enchantment of the future, for all the caprice of my soul.”
“Yes, for all the caprice of my soul and all the permanent dream of your soul, and your hands, and your forehead, and your ivory caress and for your forgetful eyes.”
“Forgetful of what?”
“Oh, if we’re immortal, we have only to forget; by virtue of all the beliefs of the past and future, I love you.”
“Good, I love you too; you shall tell the world that Samuel loved you, in the world that is here, in the world in rebirth or remembering, in the world that might give back a moment of youth.”
“I’m going away, Samuel; I can feel the snow in my hair.”
“Illusion, Rizpah—you’re imagining it. Oh my beloved, my caresses are doing you harm.”
“No, Samuel, but that wasn’t immortality, at least for me. Be calm, listen to another kiss.”
“This life is criminal if the black hair of a moment ago was only a mirage.”
“It was a gift. Stay here—oh, I see cruelty in your eyes, and you believe that the magicians of that moment are due some vengeance. On the contrary; they were good. Without them, could we have expected that happiness of a minute’s rebirth? For myself, I thank them.
“Listen, very closely, listen—do you want me to laugh in your eyes? No, you’re afraid of the vitrified dawn rising in my eyes; listen with your ears.
“There was for me a moment of happiness, before you would admit all that you loved in me, and over what pyres of dead flowers I rose to your fire of joy. I have cradled you, wounded, I have caressed you, convalescent; you have loved me with life, you shall love me all alone.
“This is the night that is coming within me, more gently because I sense that the Sun is turning around us; this is the night which is overtaking my caressing hands; they are dying entirely, and the night is rising over my eyes, which are dying entirely.
“Now I’m leaning over; a mist is spreading over my valley, where my kisses flower as white daises; I’m holding your fingers like the iron ring on the quay where a barge bearing perfumes shelters; I have given them the slowest and most distant countries of flesh and memory.
“Friend, this is death that is throwing its cloak over my valley. Oh, it’s not the hard chisel that you dread, Samuel; one might think that a soul more beautiful than me is holding out a cup, and I am drinking from it.”
And a marble languor settled over her face.
“Rizpah, Rizpah—I’ll follow you.”
Then a large form, taller the living Rizpah, all white and white-clad, the eyes ardent in the bloodless face haunted by every sadness, seized Samuel’s hands. “I am still Rizpah,” she said.
“Who are you?” dreamed Samuel.
“Mobed the benevolent, color of your dreams and your eyes.”
And she led him, like a child, into the next room, laid him down, and with a gesture of her hand over his eyes, put him to sleep.
BALTHAZAR AND ASVERUS TALK
“Oh yes, the crazy story of Palamedes,23 a grain of wheat, from one grain four, eight, sixteen, and forests in the granaries, all human sweat and divine fecundity gradually put in store.”
“Ah, wise words, Master Asverus; a determination, added to a determination, and obscure worlds grow.”
“And the luminous worlds decrease.”
“According to other doctrines.”
“No, by contrast in the same doctrine.”
“Humans sow the seed of their belief, and one day reap harvests of tares full of flowers, the seed of that tare having been nourishing wheat.”
“I’ve scarcely seen anything but tares, Sire King since I’ve been roaming the world and the world has been chattering in my ears. By dint of wandering, Sire King, my soul has taken on the color of the world. It is uncertain, it gives birth to versatile images; the background remains as solid as the rocks of the sea’s gulfs, but the play of light passes over it. Perhaps the principles of life and the world are fixed, but the appearances are variegated and transient.”
“There’s their house, Asverus, behind those trees; they haven’t lived according to that view, they’ve long expended all their strength of passion. They’ve felt the festival of renaissance pass. Perhaps they’ve seen the man who will serve the new truth, the truth stripped of its languages; perhaps He will make it known.”
“I’d like nothing better, Sire King, but I have been traveling the world for a long time now, and the only thing that has changed—often, admittedly—is fashion in capes and hats.”
“We shall see. You are doubt, Asverus.”
“Because I am the witness, Sire King.”
And they went around the clump of trees; the house was cheerful among the carob-trees and pomegranates, and the thrust of a vine embraced the whole.
“Let’s not go any further,” said Balthazar. “I can see her sitting on the threshold, her head between her hands.”
“She’s weeping,” said Asverus. “She weeps as the embodiment of Birth, or Love. She has become that of Death.”
“Let’s go back. Let’s go back quietly, so our footsteps won’t be heard. Death has triumphed over Love; the terrible principle of Mobed has triumphed over her principal of joy and florescence. We are old children, Asverus, feeble in her hands, and she is not the mistress of the work of her hands. Mobed the benevolent is the force that kills. Let’s go home, Asverus, let’s go home. Oh, that she might remember us, and embrace us as she has done for them.”
“No, Sire King,” said Asverus. “I want to get closer. I want to see; I want to hear.”
“But my friend, even if you get close to her, you’ll only perceive her reflection.”
Asverus launched himself forward, but the white, sad form was already thinning out, dissolving into the trees.
On the terrace overlooking the sea, the Sun blazes brutally; the slow blue waves fold up near the ship; the direct white fire of the marble steps is blinding.
The pilasters of the colonnade retained their proud altitude, but as if a disastrous wind had passed by, tearing away the small ornaments, and vases lay in pieces. The place of the frescoes was empty and bristling, fragments of mosaic scattered. Within the resistant frame of the palace, one walked upon the dust of memories. The Halt threatened ruin, before the broad road to elsewhere, ever open, ever monotonous, ever enigmatic.
And Balthazar cried: “Where are the kings who once traveled the world with me in search of marvels, of the flowers that grow unexpectedly between the stones of the village street or near the parvis of temples? We went from the Orient to the Occident, from the South to the North. Our orchestras have murmured, our poets have sung, and all the divine flowers have withered. We are more immortal than wisdom. Instinct, the need to seek, the thirst for spiritual adventure, the appetite of the human-god, curiosity regarding the well that sleeps in our soul and into which we can descend, the mines of our thoughts with intersecting corridors, the irreducible desire to see our souls come into the world and blossom, you were anterior to us. You traverse us, you prolong our weary and fastidious existence, and if our wish to die were granted, you would still endure: the quest for knowledge, the attempt to embrace us that is our self.”
“But why die, Sire King, if you must be reborn the same, with the same desire, less rich in our experiences?”
“Yes, die, Asverus, in order to recover the freshness of the search, which does not grow weary in a human lifetime, since it only lasts through one of the monotonous phases that we have accumulated. Are you not, Asverus, a man who would like to lie down i
n no matter what cradle, hear indistinct murmurs, songs that never end, and then sense the matrices of silence closing in?”
“Silence, Sire King, is the arduous mountain that you have climbed in order to contemplate the calvaries of the world from its summit. Look, little florets are growing here. They remain upright because the wind of the world stops respectfully here. This is the field of ideas, the garden of the songs of poets.”
“It’s meager; this heath is sterile and cold. Oh, Asverus, who will warn us up at this altitude, from which the world agitated in juxtaposed scenes, fables that have been repeating for such a long time. And why would it change?”
“And why wouldn’t it change, Sire King? Perhaps it isn’t intelligence that created the world. If there are no new flowers of wisdom, perhaps we should search for something else in the world and the sky.”
“But what, Asverus?”
“I don’t know, Sire King—but come with me. We’ll travel the world again, and ask for another light.”
“Of whom, Asverus? To be the vassals of Gold and Force?”
“The vassals, or the masters.”
“In the name of what, and with what objective? No, Asverus, there is nothing supreme but intelligence and its effort to know. Contemplation is everything; the rest is nothing. The rest is the road of futile turnings. I shall remain here with the Grail and the frescoes of goddesses.
“The Grail is extinct and the frescoes shattered.”
“When we traveled the world, we three kings, we had chosen those goddesses; our hearts carried them with us. We took a great deal of trouble creating them. They enclosed the contours of our wisdom. For us, they were the matrices of the world. The women who resembled them were fecund with prophets. Why have their reflections only created ephemeral mortals? Why have the goddesses not been able to take form? Is it not true, then, that a thought can give rise to a being?
“Thoughts doubtless die—after a life longer than a human being’s, but they do die; they’re remembered as shadows. Is that what will become of us, Asverus?”
“Not me! I’m ready to sail, Sire King. I’m going down the steps of the Castle of Silence; my vessel will take me back among the shadows that are humans. Devoted to amassing gold, they won’t see me, any more than they saw me in the past. I shall be amid their vague and futile chatter, shall see them get up, lose their breath and die. And among them, I shall be the Silence. And if some unexpected flower should spring up, a sail will bring me back to you.”
“You won’t come back; there is nothing unexpected; go, son of men, prepare to sail, and go toward the sunrise, toward the promises of the Sun; go, the golden mists are calling you. I shall envelop myself in the mists of the sunset.”
And on the departing ship, the coarse voice of a sailor sang:
Fly, agile ship, over the seas.
It has seen the thousand palaces
mirrored in the face of the waves
and the thousand minarets
which rise above the profound sea.
Its gaze is fixed again
on the little cloud
fleecy in a corner of the sky,
and its gaze grows wings.
It comes back discouraged,
there is still a little cloud,
amusing itself at the world’s masque;
it has seen the hundred thousand years
it has seen rope-makers’ fingers twist
long threads of years, and the withered stems
of centuries-old plants,
its gaze has not gripped again.
Fly, agile ship, over the seas.
And from the prow, as the ship turned slowly toward the open sea, Asverus bowed to King Balthazar, whose gesture blessed him.
THE WINGS OF SILENCE
“Azrael, Azrael!” cried King Balthazar. “I appeal to you—here I am alone, and no lamp any longer burns in the castle! Open the night to me, the eternal night. I reenter it more alone and slighter than in the morning of days; I am less rich in the hope of an objective. Answer my prayer; lead me into death, gather cherished shades around me. Animate my goddesses and my prophets amid my song. I have cried from the depths of years, I have cured wounds and despairs, and I have cured hopes; I have diverted the hunger of a few humans. I have held out cups; some have died with the certainty that they would see blazing tabernacles; others, thanks to me, have vanished over lips. In the circumnavigation of time, our hands are open; I have spread the manna that I believed to be certainty. Have I done well? Infinity, Unknown, have I done well?”
Infinity remained mute. Asverus’ ship bounded over the waves; the Sun sank toward the horizon.
“Unknown, Infinity, Uncertainty or Certainty which hides you from me, is Azrael, then, no longer your messenger? Let me see the fingernail that will strike me down. I want to die before time does. Oh, even if the radiant face of belief will rise up one single day from the depths of this vague multiformity, I’d prefer not to wait, for I’m so tired!
“Bounty, is that not the key to your enigma, Universe? Then may the waves of the air, the sea and the sand bury me, and if you are God, O Unknown, O Infinity, kill me now; kill my ambitious and curious soul, in order that it will not be born again in a human form. Don’t leave me to live, my presence compounded of misfortunes. Perhaps the science of Oblivion will escape from this unknown desert refuge, this palace so long-forgotten, as contagious as the plague, and pollens of misery will fly away to the four corners of the flora. Universe, if you are merely a décor, do not let the anxiety of souls live on. O Infinity, do you exist?”
Asverus’ ship disappeared in the distance. The heroes of the Sun descended toward the sea on sumptuous scarlet stairways.
“Mountains of silence, crush me forever. Let my quest end; it has been so futile. It seems to me that I collected a rose one day, and that I have spent the time remembering its perfume. Oblivion is all the routes that I have followed. An old king shivering on a deserted terrace is begging Infinity in vain, begging whatever there might be to appear, to listen, to reply. An old king weary of being himself, who wishes to see the vessel bearing his thirst for adventure—which is the human soul, which is all souls, since I am one of them and they are all equal—depart for the last time. Free me, Azrael!”
Dusk invaded the sea and the palace, and the long robe of evening extended over the world.
“O external powers, your negation is proof of your non-existence!
“O interior power, my soul, awake, awake for the supreme slumber, awake in Silence! I want to haunt, alone, this castle that is sinking slowly, stone by stone, with the sound of drops of molten lead, into an interminable lake. I want to haunt it with myself and my shadows. I want to walk here amid my creation, or sleep here. Silence, extreme and total word; Silence, which is the totality of God; Silence, my father, Silence, O arm of the embrace in which I shall awake the phantoms that will render me life.”
Momentarily, moving in the violet shadow in the indecisive corners of the terrace, Balthazar saw the tall forms of Mobed, Theano, Glyphtis, fecundity, death and certainty, and of unjust torture, beauty and unconsciousness.
The Grail lit up again, and old Joseph was holding it in his hands.
Dares glided forward, holding his iron lamp.
“Yes,” Balthazar said to himself, “it’s them, the shadows of yore. I can’t see Asverus, nor Samuel, nor Rizpah, those whose were true phantoms in life. Here are the characters of my soul coming to life again; we’re going to live.”
Summoning them to follow him with a gesture, he went inside the Palace.
Night extended over the world, and the pale disk of the Moon unswathed itself of its clouds.
The Silence was eternal.
Notes
1 Tr. in a Black Coat Press edition as The Wandering Jew’s Daughter, ISBN 978-1-932983-30-2.
2 Kahn uses the Hebrew spelling (Saba) but the word is used in the main text almost exclusively to refer to the individual known in English literature as “the Que
en of Sheba.” I have similarly substituted the spellings made familiar in English by the King James Bible for other places and characters drawn from the Old Testament. The warrant for Kahn’s frame-narrative is based on Isaiah 60:6, where the prophet predicts, in connection with the advent of the Messiah, that “all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense”—a reference construed by Christian commentators as an anticipation of the Mage-Kings’ interaction with Jesus.
3 Presumably Helen of Troy.
4 Considering the meaning of these verses to be more important than their rhyme-schemes, I have translated them directly, without making any attempt to reproduce their poetic formalities. All of Hahn’s vers libre is partially, but never entirely, rhymed, and sometimes exhibit a fugitive scansion, but translating it without rhyme or scansion does not pervert it unduly. The poetic sequence that follows, undistinguished by font or positional setting, similarly contains a few rhymes. I have reproduced its dearth of punctuation precisely, although I am not at all certain that it was fully intended, and I have taken the liberty of adjusting the punctuation of some of the subsequent poems and “songs,” where greater orthodoxy seems to have been attempted.
5 Horeb was, in some versions of the story, the mountain in which Moses received the Ten Commandments, so the “awakening” in question is to possession by divine fire.
6 Gaza, where Samson was taken after his betrayal by Delilah, was one of the principal cities of the Philistines before falling to David. Among the principal deities worshiped by the Philistines was Astarte, a moon-goddess worshiped in numerous eastern Mediterranean cultures, often equated by later scholars with the Egyptian Isis and other important goddesses; Kahn is fusing here with his fictitious primal goddess Mobed.
7 The capitalization of Heures [Hours] suggests that the reference is to the Greek Horae, goddesses of the seasons and time in general; their association with Isis is a further indication of Kahn’s syncretism is absorbing all the ancient goddesses of the Mediterranean into Balthazar’s eccentric Mobed-led trinity.