“Have you gone mad, my darling? Why, I can hardly stand, let alone make such a dreadful leap –”
“On more than one occasion you’ve said that you would follow me wherever I go, wherever! So, now keep your promise!”
“Do you wish my death, dearest?”
“Many times you assured me that you would even go to your death on my command! Well then, here is the place where you can prove with action that you’re not just all talk and a liar. Well – hop! If you jump, I will love you twice as much! If you do not, it will be the last time I speak to such a craven creature as you!”
She let out a horrid yelp – Oh, how she shuddered! She would not have been able to surmount even a half-metre ditch ... How afraid she was of death, but only because it would separate her from her beloved! ... And yet, all of a sudden – she leapt. “Orea, don’t jump!” Errata screamed at that moment and tried to grab her by the knees as she was falling, and just narrowly avoided getting pulled down into the chasm ... Then came the appalling sound of Orea’s body, once so sweet, crashing below. “I love her as much as at the beginning,” Sider felt at that moment, “in fact, even more! ... It is I who have fallen into the abyss, into bottomless suffering, here and in eternity, I, the most wretched of wretches! Orea, surely you’re not dead, are you?” Silence, broken only by the awful, quiet weeping of Errata. “Orea – take me with you – I so want to wash away my guilt! ...” Silence – suddenly interrupted by a maddening roar – and at the same time Sider felt a sharp blow to his back. “You despicable scum,” he heard Errata’s words as he was falling into the chasm ... and the last thing he was aware of was that he had fallen into a crevice in the rock directly on top of Orea’s lifeless body. Then everything was enveloped in throbbing, rumbling dreams that seemed to engulf infinity – – –
Yet there is no tale, either written or lived, that does not require continuation. – Continuation without end. – –
He knew all that now, the other dying Sider, in the same way that humans know what they were doing yesterday. But he was beginning to see much more: all previous lives, his own and those of others, and that all the lives of others are ever only His lives, His sole life, His – All; – he saw that having “killed” Orea, he had killed himself, not – his Self. And he saw Eternity, transformed – infinitely high above all human concepts – into His own Divine Self, His own Everlasting Aureole ... And the narrow grotto, his coffin of rocks, began to burn with a flame that grew more intense and more terrible. It engulfed the pallid blue spot above him; the rotted bones flickered into flame, and the golden locket flashed up into the New Firmament, sparkling like a new fixed star – –. Between waves of multicoloured fires, as yet clouded, a flame whiter than the sun appeared, delicately, gently – the figure of a Woman! Orea Herself in celestial glory! And in the hurricane of Eternal Light he felt that his love for Her was so infinite because she was responsible for his horrific and beautiful fate, that his love for Her was so great because he caused Her to experience the same fate, that She loves him so because he brought about for both – Divine Fate ... that the greatest Happiness was to lie here with broken bones next to the Most Beloved, whose bones he had broken ...
He stood up – upwards he flared, transformed into Eternal Flame. And His flame and Her flame merged into a single blaze brighter than all the suns of this sickly universe. –
Another powerful, luminous wind enveloped their Uniduality – and the countenance of amorous Errata, redeemed, shimmered blissfully within it, crowned with a diadem of tears, with the aura of the Smile of Eternity, and they became a Trinity, and all the infinite lights all around streamed into It. Earthliness dissolved and vanished into Radiance, pallid Suffering melted into Delight, and everything was reborn in a superluminous, supertonal March of Eternal Victory. –
About the Author
Ladislav Klíma was born on August 22, 1878, in the western Bohemian town of Domažlice. His father was a fairly well-off lawyer. At first a top student, he became steadily more rambunctious (he lost two brothers, both sisters, his mother and a grandmother during his youth), and in 1895 he was expelled from gymnasium, and all the schools in the Austrian monarchy, for insulting the ruling Habsburg dynasty. He attended school in Zagreb at his father’s behest, but came home after only half a year resolved never to subject himself to formal education again. Adamantly refusing to engage in any sort of “normal” life as well, he lived alternately in the Tyrol, Železná Ruda in the Šumava Mountains, Zurich, and Prague, never seeking permanent employment, burning through any money he had inherited, and living off the occasional royalty or the sporadic largesse of his friends. He settled in Prague’s Smíchov district where he wrote his first work in 1904, The World as Consciousness and Nothing (published anonymously and at his own expense), in which he makes the case that “the world” is just a fiction. His major inspirations were Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Czech symbolist poet Otokar Březina. Klíma’s philosophy has been called radical subjective idealism, in that all reality culminates in an absolute subject, and he developed this into the metaphysical systems of egosolism and deoessence (the subject fully understanding his substance and becoming the creator of his own divinity). These themes are also explored in his fictions, chief among which are The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch and Glorious Nemesis. His other major philosophical works are compilations of shorter texts: Tractates and Dictations (1922) and A Second and Eternity (1927). While only part of Klíma’s oeuvre was published before his death, numerous manuscripts were edited posthumously – stories, novels, plays, and a copious correspondence (it is estimated that Klíma, in a fit of disgust, destroyed some 90% of his writings himself). And though his work was marginalised and suppressed by the Communist regime for many decades, it still managed to inspire a generation of underground artists and dissident intellectuals with its vision of one’s innate ability to achieve inner freedom, to pursue spiritual sovereignty through deoessence. As the great Czech philosopher Jan Patočka aptly put it: “He was our first, untimely absurdist thinker.” Klíma died of tuberculosis on April 19, 1928, and is buried in Prague.
About the Translator
Marek Tomin was born in Prague and grew up in England, where his family found refuge after being exiled in 1980 by the Communist regime. A graduate of Oxford University, he lives in Prague where he works as a freelance translator, journalist, documentary producer, and art curator. His translations include Pavel Z.’s Time Is a Mid-Night Scream and two novels by Emil Hakl: Of Kids & Parents (shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize) and The Witch’s Flight.
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