When all had ended, the moment came to express my opinion, and this time Giovanni stared straight in my face so that I would be forced to reveal my innermost feelings. Shifting nervously, as on a bed of thorns, how I managed I don’t quite know, but I proferred the conventional compliments and got out of that house as fast as I could. He, however, was not deceived by my gracious words, for afterwards he barely answered my greeting, thus showing that he was not even touched by doubts as to the excellence of his art. Then we lost sight of each other altogether.
That evening, as I was going home, I brooded over the obscure designs of nature’s cruelty which instills in one person a vivid passion for the things which he cannot do, while it fills another with dislike for those things he can do very well, and so on. Yet nature is also benevolent, because with one hand it gives back that which it has taken with the other (though one does not see why it took it away in the first place). After all, weren’t those two perfectly happy? Of their incapacity, nearly segregated from the world as they were, they had not the slightest suspicion and thus could, with the purest bliss, far from any menace, give themselves up to their passion—so true is it that our real abilities do not at all make up the substance of our existence. And one would have to prove that theirs was indeed an incapacity in the absolute sense. So I came to the definite conclusion that they were not only not humiliated but rather openly favored by fate—with which I was therefore for the moment reconciled.
However, this thread of thoughts then lacked an end which fell into my hands recently although I had lost all memory of Giovanni and everything connected with him. I heard that his young wife had suddenly died: she had burst a vein in her breast while singing. So Giovanni has in his turn been plunged into the gloomiest grief. And while waiting to tie together these far-reaching reflections, nothing remains for us but to adopt the explanation of the poet: Giovanni can quite well say of himself and his Annabel Lee:
“But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the winged seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee. . . .”
Let us hope that he may at least find the consolation—for some persons insufficient—that is mentioned further on in the poem.
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal
Sunstroke
L’éloquence ne tord pas son cou.
SUDDENLY the owl slackened her flight and alighted on a forked branch: a sense of tedium, a vague discomfort had begun to overcome her. Not that the dawn had begun to whiten the sky, though it was beginning to push up behind the horizon and the stars had grown a little pale to the east. The uproarious day was approaching, and a touch of brightness already veiled the most distant peaks from the owl’s eyes. There was no doubt: the baleful sun was loping like a wolf and soon would appear in greedy triumph behind the ridges.
The owl’s nausea and melancholy grew in response to the unrolling of that arc of sky, which carried with it that shadow of light. Now the east was already whitening and the feral pallor was spreading by imperceptible tremors. The dead turn white, and so does the night that dies. And now a benumbing sound, not yet fully uttered, dully swarmed at the valley’s borders: the voice of the light getting ready to scream its clangorous tumult.
The first murmur of the leaves erupted in the breeze, while the whiteness became more pronounced, impregnating the curtains of the air. The song of the first bird arose with a crash; it went on alone for a while, then other voices joined it, the chorus swelled. From this moment on it overflowed without check, rising from a murmur to a hum, a swarming and then a din. The olive trees turned silver, and then the sky, the wind, the clouds; they all became golden, and veiled themselves in blood. The dust of emeralds and jade swayed in the heights, and the coral dust of the cirrus. But at each instant an arcane fire blew over the faded mists and lit them up, transforming them into vivid slopes. In unison with the din, the day acclaimed itself.
Shrill chirpings, impatient moans lifted to meet the oncoming sun: the encircling shadows fled, and the last creatures of the night. Against this adverse element the owl shrank into herself, dismayed, and already the contours of things had blurred. She felt lost, because the tide poured roaring into her; she could not fight this and was compelled to seek her last refuge. Just as man in the shadows of night still preserves in the deepest part of himself a last flicker, a spark of light, so in the unleashed day the owl keeps lit the fire of darkness. But sometimes the small fire flickers, the spark threatens to go out, the shadows teem up like whirlpools of subterranean water from some dark gorge; or the darkness grows pale and in its place spread the light and din.
The sun was pressing through the crests of the mountains and, set in the sky, it looked like a luminous boil—which soon, in a moment, would burst. The owl waited with contracted lids for its loss of darkness. A long moment passed; it seemed incredible that the boil should last that long—the skin of the sky must surely split, it was so taut and shiny. And yet it still stretched and became even shinier, without bursting. An infinite gap of anguish—when a frightening evil threatens us, let it at least come quickly, so that we can throw ourselves into its arms!
The crested lord of the day suddenly emerged with a crash, quickly towering over the arid expanses of rock. Then the final dread overwhelmed the owl and blindness surrounded her. And with his appearance, the horde of ignoble courtiers began singing his praises with greater boldness; and his handmaidens, the lights and colors, began to sway, to flow, to dance, The purplish mists, the night’s residue, scattered, putting up a last despairing struggle. But the presence of the master instilled courage and arrogance in that whole pack of slovenly solar beings. Oh shameless roar, oh unleashed clashing of water, oh reeling of lightrays, of boughs, of leaves! At that moment you thought yourselves the masters of the earth, and of all the creatures of the woods, the air and sea! You are fat, proud progeny now, but when time has run out for your heavenly satyr, he will plunge sheerly behind the mountains or into the salty depths, and other somber, brown shadows will regain mastery over the world.
But this is the end for the owl. The roar deafens her, the flashes and glare blind her; she will die from this light and this din. Disheartened and hopeless, her eyes staring, she tries vainly to see through the agitated brightness and sways and sighs on her branch. None of the diurnal beings notice her and her muted sigh is swallowed by the air.
The clangor and the dazzle gather and grow compact. The shrieks and flashes are unbearable; ever more vivid, ever louder; tongues, blades of bellowing fire. They grow even more intense; and the flashes no longer flash but are a single flash, dilating fixed, immense and blinding, an intolerable, lacerating sight! The roar, the shriek is a howl, a yowl; high and swollen it fills the hollow of the sky. The fearful blacksmith of the day—and one can no longer tell whether it is light, sound or heat—hammers burningly at the eyes and entrails; the universe blazes up. The heart pounds frantically in the death agony.
A shot, a blinding, incandescent flare; the roar subsides into a hum and ceases; the owl plunges into the white light of death.
“Well, how do they work?”
“Eh, I’d thought they didn’t have enough gunpowder in them! Don’t you see? It dropped down alive. I’ll have to doctor these cartridges.”
But although she still fluttered there on the ground before a dog which was sniffing her suspiciously, and perhaps still tried feebly to fly, the owl no longer knew what was happening and was happy.
“Aren’t you going to pick it up?”
“What would I do with it?”
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal
A Romantic’s Letter on Gambling
To the memory of Châli
18. .
DEAR Ignazio:
Gambli
ng, yes gambling! And who would dare to reproach me for it? This life is mine! It is true, my nights are burnt away, my days are shut off from the sun and the gambols of the air; indeed they are spent in torpor and sleep. So what? May the envious sun perish and forever submerge in the ether’s gurgling abyss and a perpetual night stretch its wings over us. “Praised be the eternal night, praised be the eternal sleep.” But not the sleep, the nocturnal fever, the dark passions which rend and curse us, and among these darkest and most ardent, most sinister and sacred, the unquenchable fire of the shadows—divine and infernal gambling! Who would dare to be the first to reproach me? And why should I justify myself by pointing to my miserable life? Even if I were the greatest of the earth’s great and in my heart there shone a perennial springtime, even if I were peaceful and happy, I would still deny all earthly and heavenly fortune and willingly, indeed with disdain, throw them at the feet of that somber deity! Here great destinies are decided, here man, no longer alone but in his true country, amidst a thousand other fearful beings, awaits the touch of the hand which will lift him up or lay him low; here man does not pretend to be a creator, does not expect to attain his damnation or salvation by means of his mediocre anguish. Here he, utterly a creature, solicits, almost like the chalice of a flower open to the gifts and offenses of the sky, an immediate response, prepared to rebel, prepared to worship, prepared (if he is a real man) to worship even when struck down. And yet—miracle of grace—there is, unfathomable decree, something heroic in this situation: here blows the broad, voracious wind of the spaces which disperses the mean worries, the contemptible, tedious compromises; here for one instant king and emperor, the next instant a worm in the earth, the scion of man whether overwhelmed or triumphant, is in either case overwhelmed and therefore triumphant, if he bows his Head to the will of heaven with a pure heart. Here he, struck by religious awe, lives his gravest hours; here, at last, Adventure and Mystery, those supreme gifts of Providence, act out their free drama. So let us praise gambling, the highest activity of the human spirit!
But even if it were true, Ignazio, all that the petty whisper about this noble passion of the soul, in which man stakes himself with all his being and dignity; even if it were true what the uninitiated and fearful whisper, what can I do against that which ravishes me? Is it perhaps my fault, my dear friend, if of all the good God’s gifts which you list in your letter I can enjoy none unless I have pacified this devouring thirst, this anxiety, which swells within me and grows beyond all bounds, and demands ever new nourishment, almost like a monstrous animal nestling in my bowels, a cancer which sucks all my vital lymph? And, observe, it is the other face of the blissful or blissless mystery that there should be only one way to placate this surging wish—to lose. Years ago I even worked out a theory about this, about the ineluctable plot of which I am the victim. I will try to explain it to you. In the first place you ought to know that the world offers me nothing pleasant and tolerable if it is not connected in some way with this passion: wherever I go I have the secret hope of feeding it, whomever I approach I have the secret hope of convincing him to gamble with me. In short, by now I conceive of all existence in terms of gambling and it would seem emptier than it does if gambling were taken from me (so do not curse it: it helps me to live). Now, you speak of the rays of the sun, of the flights of the swallows, of kittens. Very well, these sights and impressions are perhaps so many blessings from heaven; but how could one—I have long been asking myself anxiously—how could one enjoy them, just like that, for themselves (though you seem to be able to)? How could one, if not in relation to something else, something different, their opposites? Provided, of course, you really love them. Or, if I must use the words consecrated by the vulgar, how can a pure man enjoy purity and a sinner sin? For example, I, a sinner, enjoy, the purity which is gambling. In short, what I mean to say is that only to him who comes out of the infernal abyss can the stars look virginal. But bear with me while I tell you something of myself—perhaps I’ll be able to be clearer, but don’t try to catch me in a contradiction.
I was in Venice; heavy velvet drapes had been closed over the windows against the invasion of the light of day and the first rays of the sun: the men intent around the oblong table reject every light but that of the low-hanging lamp. But I was forced to leave: I had lost everything, everything down to the last small coin, and I had no hopes from any quarter, I no longer dared look for help from anyone. I was alone and foresaken in a strange city, and lost forever—at least that’s what I thought.
I walked out onto the driveway in the dawn and sat down on a bench. Ignazio, if the unconquerable force which had dragged me along all night and had compelled me to caress that soft skin, the green felt, was impure, how could it now have been replaced by such a wonderful feeling of peace, a grave and dreamy serenity, a quiet, full enchantment? Never as then had I felt so conscious of myself and yet so wedded and merged with the elements. Never so tranquilly had the world opened up to me in harmonious appearances, in placid forms and features, yet rich with inner, radiant life, with promises and—I say it without hesitation—with hope. Above my head, alone, a little bird chirped in a calm tone, not vied with by any other voice, indeed supported by the subdued drone of the morning breeze among the leaves, through whose fringe the first incarnate rays of the sun were already playing. The sky and sea were both immaculate, each according to its fashion; the gravel of the driveway gleamed. Already by imperceptible throbs the thousand inhabitants of the earth swarmed all around; but above all rose that solitary, aerial voice. And it seemed the voice of the entire benumbed world, heavy with sleep in the dawn of its existence, when for the first time it awakens under the divine touch of the eternal; it sounded to me, Ignazio, like the very voice of the age of innocence. I was lost in that Eden, all excitement had by now left me and I wasn’t even striving for a lofty calm, for it was in me and pervaded me unbeknownst to myself; and I was a part of those dispersed yet fraternal elements. I was, finally, happy.
Later, on the lagoon, the boat caught up with and passed a gondola which was gliding alone, at a distance from the shore. It bore an old woman of noble aspect, who was quietly talking with the gondolier, and a young girl of great and shy beauty who, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin on the palms of her hands, gazed into the distance with an air of marvelous melancholy. We slowly left that gondola behind, and I did not even desire that she, the young girl, suddenly rousing herself from her dream, should extend her hand over the lagoon and say: “Look, I was waiting for you.” I enjoyed her even though she vanished and I shall never see her again, and not for a single moment did I desire more than had been granted me. For it seemed to me that even in this way she belonged to me, just as that entire morning did: I was no longer “I” but every other thing, or rather myself and at the same time in every other thing, and every other thing, while being itself, was me. And I had no desires, but not because I had an empty heart; indeed it overflowed with all that is good, and every desire was fulfilled at the very moment I felt it. I cannot explain to you what it was—it is so much easier to describe desperation than happiness. But I know and say to you that that morning I believed and prostrated myself in spirit to the Creator, and for the first time I thanked him for the life he had given me, for the world which he had composed around me, and for all the riches that it offers us, provided our good will might only know how to conquer them. The man who should have felt miserable and deserted and anxious, thanked the Creator; the man who was not sure of living, thanked Him for the life which could still be taken from him; the man who should have raised his fists in imprecation against heaven, worshipped—how do you explain this, Ignazio? I thanked Him also for having freed me.
But now I have come to the crux. Freed from what? Was not perhaps the secret and powerful surge of the evening before, the swelling of my passion, His work too? And why does He condemn His creatures (or only me?) not to enjoy His gifts unless they have first scorned or lost them? Why can one not enjoy any one thin
g unless one has gone through something else much different or even utterly opposed? Listen to me, Ignazio, could all this be blasphemy? And if, as I do believe, in the universal plot there is always to be found a swelling or tumescence followed by a detumescence or contraction; if every living thing (and thus everything) is subject to this fatal alternation; if it is wise to endure the swelling in order to achieve the lofty calm, and if for the one the other is an inescapable condition—shall we not admit the divine origin of that swelling, too? Even though it might represent the tangle of evil in contrast to the calm unfolding of good? Who would dare to deny its necessity, who could even prove the pre-eminence of the second experience?
I know that I should never have pronounced these words. Forgive me, Ignazio, I will not trouble you any more. But some other time perhaps I shall praise for you the cards themselves, those humble yet ethereal instruments of divine decisions. Have you ever looked at them? Some impassive and vivid, others diverse, others radiant, gay and silky like the skin of a woman, they figure immemorial tales, primordial legends. They embroider and adorn the depths of my nights just as the sagas of the North or the fairy tales of the Orient adorn the glittering shadow of childhood! Oh blessed petals fallen from the mystic rose! Oh vital and mortal dew! But this time I’m trying to amuse you. Addio, etc.
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