And I led them among the flowers.
They listened with visible emotion to the infinite melodies of
springtime, bending or turning sometimes towards their own shadows,
which preceded or followed them like blue figures prostrated to kiss
the earth. A confused feeling of the joy of liberty and hope shone at
times in their dazzled eyes; a voiceless word at times unclosed their
lips, and likened them to the brims of overflowing goblets. And when
they paused, I thought with inward intoxication of the fulness of life
which was suffocating them.
The things that we said to each other from time to time must have
seemed futile to them also; but they were enough to make us feel the
depth of our true life. A passing glance, a bend of the head, a short
pause, sufficed to stir to their depths those abysses which the faint
light of ordinary consciousness rarely penetrates, while that which we
were saying seemed as far away to us as the deepest roots of trees are
far from the murmur of the uppermost branches.
Nothing could have equalled the strange beauty of that stern country
in full blossom. On the tawny ground, shaggy as a lion’s mane, the
pink-and-white flowers suggested pictures of maidens lying trembling on
the vast hairy bosoms of legendary giants. The rays of the sun played
round the transparent petals and gave them the dancing splendour of
precious stones. Here and there the polished ploughshares with which
the land had been turned up glittered in dual radiance.
We realised the depth of our real life. And little by little, by common
consent, we forbore to utter those empty words which had only served
to break the solemnity of the silence, and to disperse the heavy cloud
of dreams and thoughts which hung over us. We were united by a clearer
and more intimate communion; an atmosphere of divination such as the
mystics breathe sprang up around us, and without speaking we exchanged
the profoundest secrets. Sometimes we were so steeped in delight
that it surged from our eyes in a glance, and our slightest gestures
expressed, without actual contact, all that is conveyed by the most
lingering caress. The petals which fell at our feet from the almost
motionless boughs, moved us strangely, like a confession of languor
on the part of the trees, and of a delight in relieving themselves.
The vines, all ready to bud, bending over the earth in contorted,
struggling shapes, stimulated us with the example of a painful effort
about to be changed into an intoxicating gift. And in the frail petal
and slight tendril we felt the ideal virtue of the fragrant almond-oil
and the flame of oblivion given by the grape.
A sudden agitation seized me one day when I saw a drop of blood on
Violante’s hand, which had been pricked by a thorn among the flowers
of a snowy hedge. Smiling, she withdrew the beautiful hand on which
the drop was rising; and as we chanced to be at some distance from
her sisters, and perhaps unobserved, I felt a wild desire to press my
lips upon the blood and taste its sweetness. And the effort I made to
restrain myself was so great that I trembled.
“Do you dislike the sight of blood?” she asked me in a voice which
dissimulation was not able to steady or to make playful.
And as her eyes looked into mine I felt myself turning pale, for I had
an indefinable feeling within me which can only be vaguely compared
to an immense wheel revolving with lightning-like speed and suddenly
brought to a standstill. Something great was being resolved upon
in that moment by each of us; and although we preserved a composed
attitude with regard to each other, our inward attitude was one of
extreme tension preceding an irrepressible outburst. Our two lives
yearned towards each other with their whole force.
Ah, shall I ever forget that burning silence trembling with the
invisible flight of a messenger bearing the unspoken word? What power
of oblivion will ever be able to efface from my memory that hand
beaded with blood, and that hill slope covered with blossom?
Anatolia’s voice called to us in the distance, and we moved on side by
side. A sudden bodily weariness and sadness had fallen upon us, as if
we had just passed from a long night of pleasure.
But there were moments also when my soul inclined rather towards her
who had called us, and towards her who was about to depart. I rejoiced
in these changes of love, which did not dissipate my energies, but
stimulated them as wind fans the flame. I seemed to have discovered
a new set of perceptions; the strangest and most diverse ones seemed
to combine spontaneously within me. Sometimes they gave birth to
such novel and beautiful music that I felt on the point of being
transfigured, and I thought that my desire to become like unto the gods
was about to be realised.
I thought: “If ever there was a god who loved to sit in the springtime
beneath the flowering trees and entice the hamadryads from their
hiding-places to caress them in his arms, he certainly never
experienced greater enjoyment than I feel in gathering up the essential
beauty of these delicious beings, and mingling it together with the
same ease with which he might weave the diverse obedient locks of his
tree nymphs into a golden harmony.”
Thus at times I felt as though I were living in a myth which the youth
of the human soul created under the skies of Hellas. The ancient spirit
of deity was abroad upon the earth, as it was when the daughter of
Rhea gave to Triptolemus the gift of ears of corn that he might sow
them in the furrows, and that all men by him might enjoy the divine
benefit. The immortal energies which flowed through visible things
seemed always conscious of the old transfiguring spirit that used to
convert them into great symbols of beauty for the enjoyment of men.
Three in number, like the Graces, the Gorgons, and the Fates, were the
maidens who moved with me through this mysterious springtime. And I
loved to compare myself to the youth pictured on the vase of Ruvo, who
is enticing a winged genius across the threshold of a myrtle grove.
Over his head is written the name Happiness, and three maidens surround
him; one bears in her hands a dish heaped up with fruit, another is
wrapped in a starry mantle, and the third has the thread of Lachesis in
her nimble fingers.
One day we came by chance on a piece of enclosed ground, which the
peasant cultivators had, according to the old heathen custom, dedicated
to an oak-tree struck by lightning.
“What a beautiful death!” exclaimed Violante, as she leant over the
oblong wooden fence which protected it.
The lonely place was full of almost terrible solemnity. The aspect of
the altar which the Latin priests consecrated with the sacrifice of a
white lamb must have been something like this.
“You are committing sacrilege,” I said to Violante. “This sacred
enclosure cannot be touched without profanation. Heaven punishes the
transgressor with madness....”
“With madness?...” she said, and drew away with a kind of instinctive
superstition; her action gave an unexpected seriousness to my allusion
to the pagan belief.
In one flash I saw the pale, swollen face of her mad mother, and
Antonello’s wandering eyes, and I heard again the tragic cry: “We are
breathing her madness”; and an icy sensation of fatality ran through me.
“No, no, don’t be afraid!” I said involuntarily, only deepening the
shadow, perhaps, by thus clearly expressing my regret for the remark
which must have seemed like a gloomy omen or a cruel presentiment.
“I am not afraid,” she replied, without smiling, as she leant over the
fence again.
Thus from an idle word was born a great shadow.
The stricken tree rose before us, hard and black as basalt, its stony
trunk torn open to the roots by a rent which testified to the awfulness
of vindictive force. Its torn side was bare of branches, but there
were a few left at the top of the other side, flinging the implacable
despair of their gestures up to the sun. At each corner of the
enclosure was fixed a ram’s skull with curved horns, bleached by the
sun and rain of numberless seasons. Everything was motionless, dead,
and sacred, and primeval in appearance.
From time to time the cries of the hawks pierced the blue sky.
* * * * *
The days passed by rapidly; they were days of farewell to her who was
about to depart.
“Gaze at the springtime with the whole strength of your eyes,” I used
to say to her, “for you will never see it again, never again!”