The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  He remembered these things when he shut himself away, at the approach of old age, in the catacombs of old Egypt, from which one emerged with trembling knees and a grey beard. For he was one of those, marked by an occult influence, who describe mysterious forms with a rattle in the cradle. They see veiled figures speaking in low voices in the dreams of the twelfth hour. And for such men, forever children, and yet old men from their very first hour, the astonishment of life increases incessantly. The human herd, turning their heads mechanically toward the stars or he dawn, is used to seeing life as a natural thing. The Sun rises and sets, one breathes, the trees are green, we see hatching in our souls, at every moment, the vision of the external world. How familiar all these things are, and is it not necessary that they should be? Those who think that an incomprehensible mystery, which renews itself with every heartbeat of life, but nevertheless remains a mystery, are eternally taken for madmen.

  In the meantime, they have lived, and their life and their disquiet is one. Isis is the only goddess. Make all instruments resonate and drink the wine of forgetfulness from cups of every form. Press against your scarlet-clad bosom slaves with trembling hands and beautiful hair. Can you hope—vain desire—to impose silence on the wild dog that bays at the Moon in your heart from dawn to dusk?

  Has the unknown goddess a face and can one take it in one’s hands? If we knew the unique substance we would be gods ourselves. Is it necessary to adore with Thales the formless water that coats all forms? Is it necessary to believe, with Heraclitus, in the divine principle, fire? We shall return one day to the bosom of the eternal flame, of which our illusory life is a temporary death. He who called himself Empedocles meditated on the decade and the luminous center of the universe. Pythagoras informed him that the Earth is endowed with a double movement. Heraclitus revealed to him that the ground devolved to humans is a plane surface. For Democritus, its hollow form resembled the edges of a cup. God is one, says Xenophanes, and the Earth is motionless on a base that plunges into the inferior abyss. When Zeno wanted to believe, all truth disappeared. It was necessary to doubt everything, even doubt, in order to be a philosopher.

  So he knew science and the principles of reasoning, and he knew that the elements are water, earth, subtle air, and the most powerful of all, fire. That was the one he worshipped, although well aware that terrestrial fire is only the image of the real fire. That which burned in his soul gave him the desire for immortal things. His name, from then on, wandered over the lips and through the thoughts of men. He was famous. People walked the monotonous roads to come and consult him. He travelled in Greece, and the walls of cities opened breaches, strewn with cloaks. Prodigies were attributed to him. One day, aided by the ardent faith of a numerous crowd around him, he resuscitated a dead man. Then he went on his way, sheltering the divine torch against the night wind in the folds of his robe.

  Sicily, fallen into the sea like an Egyptian pyramid, was one of the cradles of humankind. It was there that Empedocles, after his initiation, driven by a slightly vain desire to contemplate, as a mature and clear-seeing man, the scenes by which the child of the same name—who was no longer the same in anything but name—had been excited in some fashion. He came preceded by his renown, like a robust runner. The isle consecrated to Demeter gave an enthusiastic welcome to them man who might perhaps have encountered the goddess during his subterranean excursions. The people of Agrigentum wanted to make him king. But gold and silver, jasper and emerald, and other ornaments of the Sicilian soil found him disdainful. A more powerful wine than that of Syracuse intoxicates some hearts. He was one of those who prefer a temple for their future shade to palaces populated with beautiful slaves for their mortal body. In the sacred ground of the ones named the funereal Venus he was obliged to take refuge. The horses harnessed to the chariot on which Hades ravished his spouse, impatient, were whinnying still. Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus, Alastor!37 Their hooves hollow out the ground. Their hindquarters wrinkle at intervals, toward the flank, in regular pleats. You can take in hand the fawn-colored gold-embossed leather reins. The coiled serpents of the wheels roll over the road, toward the land of shadow watered by the rivers with the slow black waves. Throughout the nocturnal day, the strange accursed amours of human beings wander there, which alone pursue, vainly and sadly, hearts besotted with divine nothingness.

  From then on he informed those who surrounded him of the mysteries of old Egypt, such as he had understood them—for all truth is reflected in a soul, and everyone sees the face of pale Isis beneath a different shadow. Adolescents formed a crown of young hearts around him. Sometimes, by night, they came in the silent countryside to the familiar wheat-fields of Henna, where the goddess disappeared in the obscure hands of the rapist. No landscape was more apt for the unrolling of the scrolls of the occult tradition. The Earth does not float on the clouds, nor on the ocean wave, but springs forth like a spark from the ancient fire. Too distant, the voice of the stars cannot reach us. Each one is an animate sun. And the Earth in its turn is a body, having the genius of the planet for a soul. The sea, fecund in shipwrecks, is its sweat. The living beings on its surface are the molecules composing that great body. Beyond our Sun are other stars and other earths and other humankinds. A thousand immense torches are hidden behind the light finger that a traveler raises in front of his eyes by night. It is an abyss—but the other is more terrifying. The idea of the infinity that Anaxagoras set in everything makes everything into an infinity. In one of the supple hairs of a beloved woman other worlds and other suns orbit, and thus forever. A man hesitates between two follies when his eyes reach toward either of the two directions. He marches toward science along a passage narrower than the blade of a pointed sword, between two unfathomable gulfs. Each extremity of the passage is guarded by a black angel with blue eyes.

  And thus all our troubled thoughts are like the stems of flowers that the wind disperses. To reassemble our sadnesses and reconcile our soul to that infinity in which it wanders, lost, requires a red cord that reunites the flowers in a tight bunch. A single child, in his small hands, carries the red ribbon; he is Eros, the greatest of the gods. He reigns over the stars as over the invisible. The human being who raises his hands toward the mystery forms an angle whose branches extend to infinity, and of which, inversely, the obscure reflection descends into the depths. We are, by virtue of desire and love, incessantly at the very heart of the universe. Our soul is the crepuscular crossroads where two roads of pilgrimage intersect. Every human being is at the center of the cross, his gesture extended toward both of the immensities. It is the sign of the unknown and the problem, which is that of love. For a cry of love goes further than the stars, making its way toward eternity. It is the golden arrow that a messenger fires toward the universe. It is the terrestrial or divine fire. All things, at their origin, repose in the bosom and the unity, and if today’s stars are constellations, and if hearts suffer from being separated, every sigh and every amorous sadness restores the desirable marriage, as a child clad in black will guide the hands of pale fiancés toward the altar. It is not true that adieux exist. The tomb does not bury those who have once loved. We know that the gestures that separate us will one day reunite us, and that funerary crowns will be roses in the future. The beloved being always lives alongside the one who loved, by virtue of imperishable hope or divine regret, even when borne away to the shade of unknown trees on the most obscure of planets orbiting the most distant of suns.

  The one he loved was a shepherd in the Sicilian mountains. All descriptions of love are vain compared with the image of Eros. He came down, red-lipped, from the hills to the city, along paths where stones rolled, bordered by citrus trees. He chewed an insouciant flower, born of his breath, and his supple gestures, beneath the folds of his tunic, revealed his young body. Such a soul resembles empty urns that water-bearers take to springs. Whoever wanted to would cause the blue water of dreams and the red wine of love to tremble there. And his magnificent role was to provide a living image of th
e symbol, a statue resembling the god that one worships, toward whom incense rises. We only know images, and the immortals only appear to us in mortal veils. In order that the messenger from afar should be worthy of evoking future forms, Empedocles set out to make him a soul equal in beauty to his body. And, as the skillful potter always has his eyes fixed on a model with light handles made of the supple bodies of two bacchantes, the man who desires to imitate him with respect to souls also keeps his interior eyes on a model. He contemplates the divine forms that are elsewhere, of which humans are merely the shadow.

  One encountered them on the road, at the hour when the other shepherd, nightfall, brings the white flock of the clouds toward the fold of the horizon. Empedocles spoke of triple Hecate, and the mystery of sanctuaries hidden in the depths of silent forests. By night, they slept in the shade of squat oak trees with twisted branches. But dawn, especially, caused them to marvel. Dawn is the image of life. The child knew the beautiful legends that hide the truth like a cloak embroidered with gems. Their stroll was through the sacred wood of symbols. Empedocles was clad in a red robe and wore a red headband over his forehead. On his feet were brazen sandals. Over the bronze, the work of an unknown artist, ran carvings depicting the glorious stories of the heroes. The Trojan War could be seen there, a wine-growers’ dance, and the labors of Heracles. All around, in waves simulated by metal studs, rolled the ocean. They trampled the grey dust of all the roads. They rested on the sea shore, and the sea breeze was a caress. The entire Sicilian landscape comprises a shelter on the rocks in the shadow of dark green pines, in front of the disconcerting blue of the limitless sea. An odorous bed of twigs has fallen on the ground from the treetops. In the melancholy of the evening, by virtue of translucency, the foliage of the pines becomes violet. It is the hour when words rise like prayers toward the nocturnal vault.

  In the beginning was the uniform world, the spheros, the circular god. Everything was at the center of things and the center as everywhere. The demon with the curved wings, Anteros, dispersed everything.38 Stars and hearts, weaving crowns, attempt in vain to renew the ancient and perfect form. The eternal serpent bites its tail. The world of appearances and the world of love are submissive to the same laws of attraction. When time is complete, Anteros will be defeated in his conflict with white-winged Eros—and, in truth, the choir sings the strophe and then the antistrophe around the altar, as a symbol of universal desire.

  It is necessary to love. That is the great secret. The heart swells toward the horizon—and our lives march to the rhythm of the heart, as a child clad in a red robe dances along. The sole verity is that of working to construct the temple of the future Unity. Let the poet, for his praise, write a poem, and let others offer to all the beggars wandering along the road the royal gift of a kiss. Every poem that one realizes by means of the pen, marble or the lips—and the last-named are the most beautiful—steals something permanently from the grim grip of nothingness, and unveils a few features of the visage of the Unknown.

  Fortunate is the man who, when he dies, leaves after him in his wake a beautiful form that did not exist before him. We are like the virtuous bee who collects her honey untiringly for a tomorrow she will not know but that she knows will come. For all humans weave their shrouds of dreams and weave down here their immortal crowns, and the future heaven will be for each of us absolutely what we would have wanted it to be.

  As if to play on the lightest of flutes, at other times, he said, softly:

  “Some want an empire and triumphal chariots. Their faces joyfully reflect a crowd with a thousand faces. Cries and gestures come toward them.

  “Others imprison gold and jewels in rare caskets.

  “Some are able to pass their entire lives without suspecting any other intoxication than that of tables laden with wine.

  “For myself, let no one salute me as the servant of mystery; I would like, when my funeral comes, to have been, of all men, the one who knew most of love. My ashes, if all falls to ashes, would be the most perfumed.”

  Meanwhile, the child listened, and his face became pale, and his eyes more beautiful. But with the passing days, it was soon no longer the mystery of narrated mysteries that was the strangest, but that of his own life. It seemed that the breath of his young heart became as profound as a sigh. Like adolescents who run, in their supple ardor, toward the Temple, he overtook the hierophant at some cypress-bordered crossroads. And thus, as the words took on the solemnity of holy things, the roses of Paestum mutated into black roses and the wheat-fields of Henna beneath the warm Sun became the nocturnal wheat-fields to which the goddess sends down young people matured too soon. One sees Hermes, the guide of the dead, bearing a fearful little soul in his arms, caressing it in order to console it. Is not the sadness of dead youth the only image that poets never wear out, that is always new? Momentarily, he lay down on the moss of dreams, and died.

  “You will no longer run along the edges of springs, your light feet colliding rhythmically with the soil.

  “You will no longer go into the divine sea, where your naked body shivered with joy.

  “Gone, you will take account of the message that has been confided to you. Can you say to the one who is all beauty and all mystery that our inn was the most regal and our gestures the most supplicant?

  “Child of legends, every evening, demand hospitality.

  “My pride is crowned with asphodels; your hair is now like the foliage of the willow, the sound of your heart like the murmur of a spring descending into the depths.

  “But we shall find one another again on the threshold of magical cities.

  “Farewell, messenger!”

  With the flute-players, the divine night commenced. The Sun had fallen into the sea, after a heavy gaze of glory. Gloom is favorable to mysteries. There are words to be heard to the sound of funereal instruments, and loving faces that only acquire all their reflections of profound beauty beneath veils of mourning. Thus the child, like a basket full of violet petals, had sown immortal regret along his route.

  What a regal pyre on the shore of the sea! The cedar wood sends up its perfumed pride toward the clouds, and bowed forms shed tears over the eyes forever closed. It was in the cool evening, with the gestures with which one places an infant in its cradle, when one crosses his arms over his heart to ensure a beautiful sleep. For hours, the sea sobbed, with stifled waves, in an incessant silken undulation toward the shore. A shroud enveloped the limbs, henceforth of marble and later of dreams. The adolescent departed for the eternal game upon the deceptive search for his body, scattered in smoke.

  O messenger!

  The chimera that hides in the depths of our souls is awake. We shall depart, since we have wished it. We shall march without fatigue, devoured by the fire than burns within us, as the terrestrial fire caresses your flesh, and makes no more ash of it than a bouquet of burned roses. Having wished to know the folly of living, instead of being seated at the foot of the Temple, it is better to have knocked at the door and that no one has answered. Does eternal life desire anything but to be tempted by all roads? The disciple who rests with the serving-women by the winter hearth until cockcrow is less pure than he who tempts the Master in the depths of nocturnal gardens, and whispers in his ear, for the sake of folly, love or treason—it hardly matters which. Whatever the incense of the Temple may be, the flame is always pure. The worship of images glorifies the one whom all symbols reveal. And we can bring to you in votive urns, O Master, on the thresholds of future houses, all poems, bouquets and kisses. You will recognize the kisses, and you will count the bouquets. We shall return to the natal hearth, like prodigal children, but exiled by your will.

  We have known that love which alone gives life to the phantoms of our unreal life, by putting into their faces one of your reflections of beauty. Without seeking the phantoms’ names, you will be able to smile and forgive us, knowing what we have wanted, and that even if we erred, it was perhaps for love of you.

  In vain, the slaves ere
cted a sanctuary consecrated to Empedocles, and young women came, with crowns, to forbid him to die. He gathered his friends together for an evening banquet. When the ritual wine had been poured on the table for the gods, someone pronounced a eulogy to love, which enders humans similar to gods—and immediately, it was perceived that Empedocles had disappeared. They searched for a long time in the city, in the forests and on the sea shore. Had he gone to travel the roads of Sicily, bearing a heavy burden in his heart? Some said that he had gone to pay a visit, in an inspired fury, to the god of flame in the depths of Etna. Thrown on the lava, on the summit of the mountain, a brazen sandal was found, as at the door of sanctuaries that one enters barefoot. But of the ashes and the urn beloved by the hierophant, nothing remained on the edge of the gulf. He had taken his dream with him.

  Latin Symbolism

  For Edgar Poe

  It is not necessary to have read many occult books to know that mystery is purely nominal. The same tenebrous meaning is hidden beneath various forms, and in all the temples, from Egypt the mother of shadows to the sects of present-day initiates, the same luminous triangles are inscribed on the ceilings. The language of books and that of lips are merely a procession of worn-out images. All forms are symbols and symbols of other symbols. We only live by virtue of metaphors, our eyes fixed on the cavern wall where the shadows of realities passing outside are gesticulating. One can only obtain one formula clearer than an unknown forever unknown. What gives value to signs is their variable simplicity. The simplest are, in language as in magic, the most redoubtable, being closer to unity. And in the nobility of thought, as in that of the Middle Ages, the most illustrious blazons are those with the most sober designs. For everything that draws away from its origin becomes complicated—and depraved, being less pure.