This phoenix set on fire by the bright sun,
Which slowly, slowly to extinction goes,
The while she, girt with splendour burning lies;
Yields to her star antagonistic fief
Through that which towards the sky to Heaven ascends.
Black smoke, and sombre fog of murky hue
Concealing thus his radiance from our eyes,
And veiling that which makes her burn and shine.
And so my soul, illumined and inflamed
By radiance divine, would fain display
The brightness of her own effulgent thought;
The lofty concept of her song sends forth.
In words which do but hide the glorious light,
[C]While I dissolve and melt and am destroyed.
Ah me! this lowering cloud, this smoky fire of words
Abases that which it would elevate.
[C] But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and
melted--not until it is held by the divine fragment which has
created it, as a mere subject for the grave experiment and
experience--not until the whole nature has yielded and become
subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open.--("Light on the
Path.")
CES. This fellow then says that as this phoenix set on fire by the sun
and accustomed to light and flame comes to send upwards that smoke which
obscures him who has rendered her so luminous, so he, the inflamed and
illuminated enthusiast, through that which he does in praise of such an
illustrious subject which has warmed his heart and which shines in his
thought, comes rather to conceal it than to render it light for light,
sending forth that smoke the effect of the flame, in which the
substance of himself is resolved.
MAR. I, without weighing and comparing the studies of that fellow,
repeat what I said to you the other day, that praise is one of the
greatest oblations that human affection can offer to an object. And
leaving on one side the proposition of the Divine, tell me, who would
have known of Achilles, Ulysses, and all the other Greek and Trojan
chiefs? Who would have heard of all those great soldiers, the wise and
the heroes of the earth, if they had not been placed amongst the stars
and deified by the oblation of praise which has lighted the fire on the
altar of the heart of illustrious poets and other singers, so that
usually, the sacrificant, the victim and the sanctified deity, all
mounted to the skies, through the hand and the vow of a worthy and
lawful priest?
CES. Well sayest thou "of a worthy and lawful priest," for the world is
at present full of apostate ones, the which, as they are for the most
part unworthy themselves, sing the praises of other unworthy ones, so
that, asini asinos fricant. But Providence wills that these, instead of
rising to the sky, should go together to the shades of Orcus, so that
naught is the glory of him who extols and of him who is extolled; for
the one has woven a statue of straw, or carved the trunk of a tree, or
cast a piece of chalk, and the other, the idol of shame and infamy,
knows not that there is no need to wait for the keen tooth of the age
and the scythe of Saturn in order to be put down, for through those
self-same praises he gets buried alive then and there, while he is being
praised, saluted, hailed, and presented. Just as it happened in a
contrary way, so that much-praised Moecenatus, who, if he had had no
other glory than a soul inclined to protect and favour the Muses, for
this alone merited, that the genius of so many illustrious poets should
do him homage, and place him in the number of the most famous heroes who
have trod this earth. His own studies and his own brightness made him
prominent and grand, and not the being born of a royal race, and not the
being grand secretary and councillor of Augustus. That, I say, which
made him illustrious was the having made himself worthy to fulfil the
promise of that poet who says:--
Fortunati ambo, si quid mea carmina possunt,
Nulla dies nunquam memori vos eximet aevo,
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque pater romanus habebit.
MAR. I remember what Seneca says in certain letters where he refers to
the words of Epicurus to a friend, which are these: "If the love of
glory is dear to thy breast, these letters of mine will make thee more
famous and known than all those other things which thou honourest, by
which thou art honoured, and of which thou mayest boast. The same might
Homer have said if Achilles or Ulysses had presented themselves before
him, or Eneas and his offspring before Virgil; as that moral philosopher
well said; Domenea is more known through the letters of Epicurus, than
all the magicians, satraps and royalties upon whom depended his title of
Domenea and the memory of whom was lost in the depths of oblivion.
Atticus does not survive because he was the son-in-law of Agrippa and
ancestor of Tiberius, but through the epistles of Tully; Drusus, the
ancestor of Cæsar, would not be found amongst the number of great names
if Cicero had not inserted it. Many, many years may pass over our heads,
and in all that time not many geniuses will keep their heads raised.
Now to return to the question of this enthusiast, who, seeing a phoenix
set on fire by the sun, calls to mind his own cares, and laments that
like the phoenix he sends, in exchange for the light and heat received,
a sluggish smoke from the holocaust of his melted substance. Wherefore
not only can we never discourse about things divine, but we cannot even
think of them without detracting from, rather than adding to the glory
of them; so that the best thing to be done with regard to them is, that
man, in the presence of other men, should rather praise himself for his
earnestness and courage, than give praise to anything, as complete and
perfected action; seeing that no such thing can be expected where there
is progress towards the infinite, where unity and infinity are the same
thing and cannot be followed by the other number, because there is no
unity from another unity, nor is there number from another number and
unity, because they are not the same absolute and infinite. Therefore
was it well said by a theologian that as the fountain of light far
exceeds not only our intellects, but also the divine, it is decorous
that one should not discourse with words, but that with silence alone it
should be magnified.[D]
[D] Now, it may be asked, what is the state of a man who followeth
the true Light to the utmost of his power? I answer truly, it will
never be declared aright, for he who is not such a man, can neither
understand nor know it, and he who is, knoweth it indeed; but he
cannot utter it, for it is unspeakable.--("Theologia Germanica.")
CES. Not, verily, with such silence as that of the brutes who are in the
likeness and image of men, but of those whose silence is more exalted
than all the cries and noise and screams of those who may be heard.[E]
[E] "Speech is of time, silence is of eternity."--("Sartor
Resartus.")