* * * * *
L’ENVOI.
AND what am I? My dear friends, I have told you, — an absintheur! Absintheur, pur et simple! — voilà tout! I am a thing more abject than the lowest beggar that crawls through Paris whining for a soul! — I am a slinking, shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, whose aspect is so vile, whose body is so shaken with delirium, whose eyes are so murderous, that if you met me by chance in the day-time, you would probably shriek for sheer alarm! But you will not see me thus — daylight and I are not friends. I have become like a bat or an owl in my hatred of the sun! — it shone gloriously when Héloïse was lying dead, — I have not forgotten that!... At night I live; at night I creep out with the other obscure things of Paris, and by my very presence, add fresh pollution to the moral poisons in the air! I gain pence by the meanest errands, — I help others to vice, — and whenever I have the opportunity I draw down weak youths, mothers’ darlings, to the brink of ruin, and topple them over — if I can. For twenty francs, you can purchase me body and soul, — for twenty francs I will murder or steal, — all true absintheurs are purchasable! For they are the degradation of Paris, — the canker of the city — the slaves of a mean insatiable madness which nothing but death can cure. Death! — that word reminds me, — I have the means of death in my power and yet — I cannot die! Strange, is it not?... A little while ago I came upon one of my class in dire distress, — he had been a noted chemist in his day, — but he is nothing now — nothing but an absintheur, who suffers grinding physical tortures when he has no money wherewith to purchase what has become the emerald life-blood of his veins. I found him in a fit of rage, rolling in his garret and howling imprecations on all mankind — he was just in the mood to do what I asked of him. It was a trifle! — a mere friendly exchange of poisons! I gave him the absinthe for which he craved so desperately, — and in return, he prepared for me a little phial of liquid, crystal-clear as a diamond, harmless-looking as spring-water, — a small draught, which if once I have the courage to swallow, will give me an instant exit from the world! Imagine it! — I shall not suffer I am told, — first a giddiness — then a darkness, — and that is all. I take it out often — that little glittering flask of death, — I look at it, — I wonder at it, — for it is the key to the Eternal Secret, — but I dare not drink its contents! I dare not, I tell you! — I am afraid — horribly afraid! — any condemned criminal is braver than I! For the longer I live, the more I realize that this death is not the actual end, — there is something afterwards! — and it is the Afterwards that appals me. Life is precious! — yes, even my life, surrounded with phantoms, darkened with delirium, enfeebled by vice and misery as it is, it is precious! I know its best and worst, — its value and worthlessness; — I can measure it and scorn it, — I can laugh at it and love it! — I can play with myself and it as a tiger plays with its torn and bleeding prey! — and knowing it, I cling to it — I do not want to be hurled into what I do not know! Some day perhaps — when a blind, dark fury overcomes my brain, — when spectres clutch at me and sense and memory reel into chaos, then I may drink the fatal draught I bear about with me; — but I shall be truly mad when I do! — too mad to realize my own act! I shall never part with life consciously, or while the faintest glimmer of reason remains in me, — be sure of that! I love life — especially life in Paris! — I love to think that I and my compeers in Absinthe are a blot and a disgrace on the fairest city under the sun! — I love to meditate on the crass stupidity of our rulers, who though gravely forbidding the sale of poisons to the general public, permit the free enjoyment of Absinthe everywhere! — I watch with a scientific interest the mental and moral deterioration of our young men, and I take a pride in helping them on to their downfall! — I love to pervert ideas, to argue falsely, to mock at virtue, to jeer at faith, and to instil morbid sentiments into the minds of those who listen to me; — and I smile as I see how “La revanche!” is dying out, and how content the absinthe-drinker is to crouch before the stalwart, honest, beer-bred Teuton! It is a grand sight! — and we are a glorious people! — just the sort of beings who are constituted to caper and make mouths at “perfide Albion” — and capture mild English tourists in mistake for German spies! All is for the best! — Let us drink and dream and dance and carouse and let the world go by! Let us make a mere empty boast of honour, — and play off sparkling witticisms against purity, — let us encourage our writers and dramatists to pen obscenities, — our painters to depict repulsive nudities — our public men to talk loud inanities — our women to practise all the wiles of wantons and cocottes! But with this, let us never forget to be enthusiastic when we are called upon to sing the “Marseillaise.” How does it go? —
“Amour sacré de la patrie
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs, —
Liberté, liberté cherie
Combats avec tes défenseurs!
Bous nos drapeaux que la Victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!”
Just so! Let us always glorify
Liberty, though we are slaves to a vice!
Lift up your voices, good countrymen, in chorus! —
“Aux armes citoyens! Formez vos battaillons!
Marchons! qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!”
Bravo! — Only let us roar this loudly enough, with frantic tossing of arms and waving of banners, — with blare of trumpets, with tears and emotional embraces, and we shall perhaps by noise and blague, if by nothing else, convince ourselves if we cannot convince other nations, that France is as great, as pure and as powerful as she was in her Lily-days of old! We can shut our eyes to her decaying intelligence, her beaten condition, — her cheap cynicism, her passive atheism, her gross materialism, — we can cheat ourselves into believing that a nation can thrive on Poison, — we can do anything so long as we hold fast to the Marseillaise and the Tricolor! Mere symbols! — and we scarcely trust them, — but nevertheless they are our last chance of safety! France is France still, — but the conqueror’s tread is on her soil — and we — we have borne it and still can bear it — we have forgotten — we forget! What should we want with Victory? — We have ABSINTHE!
The Soul of Lilith
Published by Bentley in 1892 in three volumes (the classic format for a Victorian novel), the novel is a return by Corelli to the esoteric as subject matter and on publication it had a mixed reception. In fact, the Pall Mall Gazette tore into the novel so fiercely that Corelli collapsed on reading the review and had to be put to bed. Little wonder, as the reviewer is unequivocal: “There is no single merit than we can discover” and the storyline is described as tawdry and too derivative of Disraeli’s early romances (13 April 1892). It must be borne in mind that the Pall Mall Gazette was what would now be labelled a tabloid newspaper and so it was intentionally “over-the-top” in every article it featured; also, as this novel includes a character familiar to Corelli’s devoted readers – Heliobas, who also appeared in Romance of the Two Worlds, Corelli was virtually guaranteed a warm reception from her admirers. As the 1903 biography by Coates and Bell points out, there were plenty in the novel-reading public who wished to learn what happens to them after “this vale of smiles and tears” and this book offers some speculation about that.
There is an introductory note in which Corelli states this story is not a novel. It is, instead, “… simply the account of a strange and daring experiment once actually attempted and is offered to those who are interested in the unseen “possibilities” of the Hereafter.” This is simply dramatic wordplay by Corelli; expect classic Corelli fantastic fiction, in all its wondrous grandiosity.
The story opens in a theatre, on the first night of a new performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The theatrical production is stunning, but of equal interest to the audience is a striking, white haired man with “night black” eyes and a charismatic, yet threatening demeanour in the stalls. This is El-Rami Zaranos
, a practitioner of the arts of healing drawn from the occult science of the ancient Egyptians. Also in the audience is the disingenuous daughter of a New York millionaire, who is fascinated but at the same time repelled by this mysterious man. She feels herself fortunate to find herself briefly in El Rami’s company, but the intriguing man, whose gifts seem to border on the supernatural, does not acknowledge her. There is only one young woman that interests El Rami – Lilith, the beautiful girl who lies in his house, in a deep, permanent sleep, stirring only lightly to speak to him from her slumbers. She has travelled in spirit beyond the stars and reports her amazing findings to her guardian. At first this is a magical scene, until we learn that El Rami is keeping Lilith from her true destiny – a peaceful death – using an exotic elixir, so that he can learn of existence beyond the pale of death; her soul is the “ Ariel of my wish and will,” sent on a mission into the universe to establish if evil is an entity beyond the actions of humankind – a line of questioning that was seen at the time as atheistic (if there is no evil, there can be no hell – ergo, no heaven). For six years he has kept Lilith hidden in his home in this state, hovering between life and death, her spirit drawn back to reality by the power of his will; also there yet very much alive is her mother and his younger brother, Feraz. El Rami continues obsessively with his experiment, until one day he is visited by an all-knowing monk, who dares to question his bizarre actions.
There are some brave touches in this story. The clergyman that consults El Rami about his undisclosed personal troubles is shocked to have them revealed to him first by the psychic powers of the mystic – the story is that the clergyman has become besotted with the wife of a neighbour and wants to give up holy orders in order to pursue his love for her. What will become of his eight children and invalid wife? We are assured by El Rami that what he has predicted will come to pass and no doubt some Victorian readers would have thrilled to this tabloid style story of wrong doing in the church. A feminist critique may point out how overbearingly paternalistic El Rami is, controlling the minds and souls of two young people and extending his powers of control to most of the people he encounters; he is almost a caricature of the Victorian paterfamilias. Corelli was a writer that, regardless of the consequences, would tackle the controversial issues that interested her. She was fortunate in having two key “themes” to her fiction – the esoteric and the much more straightforward tales of personal challenge and adventure. This duality of approach may polarise her readers, some preferring one genre over the over; to understand her fully as a writer, it is necessary to sample both and this story is a good example of her earlier fantastic storytelling.
An early edition
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
VOLUME 1
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
VOLUME 2
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
VOLUME 3
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
The first edition’s title page
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THE following story does not assume to be what is generally understood by a “novel.” It is simply the account of a strange and daring experiment once actually attempted, and is offered to those who are interested in the unseen “possibilities” of the Hereafter, merely for what it is, — a single episode in the life of a man who voluntarily sacrificed his whole worldly career in a supreme effort to prove the apparently Unprovable.
VOLUME 1
CHAPTER I.
THE theatre was full, — crowded from floor to ceiling; the lights were turned low to give the stage full prominence, — and a large audience packed close in pit and gallery as well as in balcony and stalls, listened with or without interest, whichever way best suited their different temperaments and manner of breeding, to the well-worn famous soliloquy in “Hamlet”— “To be or not to be.” It was the first night of a new rendering of Shakespeare’s ever puzzling play, — the chief actor was a great actor, albeit not admitted as such by the petty cliques, — he had thought out the strange and complex character of the psychological Dane for himself, with the result that even the listless, languid, generally impassive occupants of the stalls, many of whom had no doubt heard a hundred Hamlets, were roused for once out of their chronic state of boredom into something like attention, as the familiar lines fell on their ears with a slow and meditative richness of accent not commonly heard on the modern stage. This new Hamlet chose his attitudes well, — instead of walking or rather strutting about as he uttered the soliloquy, he seated himself and for a moment seemed lost in silent thought; — then, without changing his position he began, his voice gathering deeper earnestness as the beauty and solemnity of the immortal lines became more pronounced and concentrated.
“To die — to sleep; —
To sleep! — perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause...”
Here there was a brief and impressive silence. In that short interval, and before the actor could resume his speech, a man entered the theatre with noiseless step and seated himself in a vacant stall of the second row. A few heads were instinctively turned to look at him, but in the semi-gloom of the auditorium, his features could scarcely be discerned, and Hamlet’s sad rich voice again compelled attention.
“Who would fardels bear.
To grunt and sweat under a weary life.
But that the dread of something after death.
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment.
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.”
The scene went on to the despairing interview with Ophelia, which was throughout performed with such splendid force and feeling as to awaken a perfect hurricane of applause; — then the curtain went down, the lights went up, the orchestra recommenced, and again inquisitive eyes were turned towards the latest new-comer in the stalls who had made his quiet entrance in the very midst of the great philosophical Soliloquy. He was immediately discovered to be a person well worth observing; and observed he was accordingly, though he seemed quite unaware of the attention he was attracting. Yet he was singular-looking enough to excite a little curiosity even among modern fashionable Londoners, who are accustomed to see all sorts of eccentric beings, both male and female, æsthetic and common-place, and he was so distinctively separated from ordinary folk by his features and bearing, that the rather loud whisper o
f an irrepressible young American woman— “I’d give worlds to know who that man is!” was almost pardonable under the circumstances. His skin was dark as a mulatto’s, — yet smooth, and healthily coloured by the warm blood flushing through the olive tint, — his eyes seemed black, but could scarcely be seen on account of the extreme length and thickness of their dark lashes, — the fine, rather scornful curve of his short upper lip was partially hidden by a black moustache; and with all this blackness and darkness about his face, his hair, of which he seemed to have an extraordinary profusion, was perfectly white. Not merely a silvery white, but a white as pronounced as that of a bit of washed fleece or newly-fallen snow. In looking at him it was impossible to decide whether he was old or young, — because, though he carried no wrinkles or other defacing marks of Time’s power to destroy, his features wore an impress of such stern and deeply resolved thought as is seldom or never the heritage of those to whom youth still belongs. Nevertheless, he seemed a long way off from being old, — so that, altogether, he was a puzzle to his neighbours in the stalls, as well as to certain fair women in the boxes, who levelled their opera-glasses at him with a pertinacity which might have made him uncomfortably self-conscious had he looked up. Only he did not look up; he leaned back in his seat with a slightly listless air, studied his programme intently, and appeared half asleep, owing to the way in which his eyelids drooped, and the drowsy sweep of his lashes. The irrepressible American girl almost forgot “Hamlet,” so absorbed was she in staring at him, in spite of the sotto-voce remonstrances of her decorous mother, who sat beside her, — and presently, as if aware of, or annoyed by, her scrutiny, he lifted his eyes, and looked full at her. With an instinctive movement she recoiled, — and her own eyes fell. Never in all her giddy, thoughtless little life had she seen such fiery, brilliant, night-black orbs, — they made her feel uncomfortable, — gave her the “creeps,” as she afterwards declared; — she shivered, drawing her satin opera-wrap more closely about her, and stared at the stranger no more. He soon removed his piercing gaze from her to the stage, for now the great “Play scene” of “Hamlet” was in progress, and was from first to last a triumph for the actor chiefly concerned. At the next fall of the curtain, a fair, dissipated-looking young fellow leaned over from the third row of stalls, and touched the white-haired individual lightly on the shoulder.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 241