Ascend with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the Brocken of North Germany.
The dawn opened in cloudless beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but,
as the hours advance, her youngest sister April, that sometimes cares
little for racing across both frontiers of May, frets the bridal lady's
sunny temper with sallies of wheeling and careering showers--flying and
pursuing, opening, and closing, hiding and restoring. On such a morning,
and reaching the summits of the forest-mountain about sunrise, we shall
have one chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the
Brocken.[16] Who and what is he? He is a solitary apparition, in the
sense of loving solitude; else he is not always solitary in his personal
manifestations, but on proper occasions has been known to unmask a
strength quite sufficient to alarm those who had been insulting him.
Now, in order to test the nature of this mysterious apparition, we will
try two or three experiments upon him. What we fear, and with some
reason, is, that as he lived so many ages with foul Pagan sorcerers, and
witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries, his heart may have been
corrupted; and that even now his faith may be wavering or impure. We
will try.
Make the sign of the cross, and observe whether he repeats it, (as, on
Whitsunday,[17] he surely ought to do.) Look! he _does_ repeat it; but
the driving showers perplex the images, and _that_, perhaps, it is which
gives him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively. Now, again,
the sun shines more brightly, and the showers have swept off like
squadrons of cavalry to the rear. We will try him again.
Pluck an anemone, one of these many anemones which once was called the
sorcerer's flower,[18] and bore a part perhaps in his horrid ritual of
fear; carry it to that stone which mimics the outline of a heathen
altar, and once was called the sorcerer's altar[18]; then, bending your
knee, and raising your right hand to God, say,--"Father, which art in
heaven--this lovely anemone, that once glorified the worship of fear,
has travelled back into thy fold; this altar, which once reeked with
bloody rites to Cortho, has long been rebaptized into thy holy service.
The darkness is gone--the cruelty is gone which the darkness bred; the
moans have passed away which the victims uttered; the cloud has vanished
which once sate continually upon their graves--cloud of protestation
that ascended for ever to thy throne from the tears of the defenceless,
and the anger of the just. And lo! I thy servant, with this dark
phantom, whom, for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost, I make
_my_ servant, render thee united worship in this thy recovered temple."
Look, now! the apparition plucks an anemone, and places it on an altar;
he also bends his knee, he also raises his right hand to God. Dumb he
is; but sometimes the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it occurs to
you, that perhaps on this high festival of the Christian Church, he may
be overruled by supernatural influence into confession of his homage,
having so often been made to bow and bend his knee at murderous rites.
In a service of religion he may be timid. Let us try him, therefore,
with an earthly passion, where he will have no bias either from favour
or from fear.
If, then, once in childhood you suffered an affliction that was
ineffable; If once, when powerless to face such an enemy, you were
summoned to fight with the tiger that couches within the separations of
the grave; in that case, after the example of Judaea (on the Roman
coins)--sitting under her palm-tree to weep, but sitting with her head
veiled--do you also veil your head. Many years are passed away since
then; and you were a little ignorant thing at that time, hardly above
six years old; or perhaps (if you durst tell all the truth) not quite so
much. But your heart was deeper than the Danube; and, as was your love,
so was your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness settled on
your head; many summers, many winters; yet still its shadows wheel round
upon you at intervals, like these April showers upon this glory of
bridal June. Therefore now, on this dovelike morning of Pentecost, do
you veil your head like Judaea in memory of that transcendant woe, and in
testimony that, indeed, it surpassed all utterance of words. Immediately
you see that the apparition of the Brocken veils _his_ head, after the
model of Judaea weeping under her palm-tree, as if he also had a human
heart, and that _he_ also, in childhood, having suffered an affliction
which was ineffable, wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sigh
towards heaven in memory of that affliction, and by way of record,
though many a year after, that it was indeed unutterable by words.
This trial is decisive. You are now satisfied that the apparition is but
a reflex of yourself; and, in uttering your secret feelings to _him_,
you make this phantom the dark symbolic mirror for reflecting to the
daylight what else must be hidden for ever.
Such a relation does the Dark Interpreter, whom immediately the reader
will learn to know as an intruder into my dreams, bear to my own mind.
He is originally a mere reflex of my inner nature. But as the apparition
of the Brocken sometimes is disturbed by storms or by driving showers,
so as to dissemble his real origin, in like manner the Interpreter
sometimes swerves out of my orbit, and mixes a little with alien
natures. I do not always know him in these cases as my own parhelion.
What he says, generally is but that which _I_ have said in daylight, and
in meditation deep enough to sculpture itself on my heart. But
sometimes, as his face alters, his words alter; and they do not always
seem such as I have used, or _could_ use. No man can account for all
things that occur in dreams. Generally I believe this--that he is a
faithful representative of myself; but he also is at times subject to
the action of the god _Phantasus_, who rules in dreams.
Hailstone choruses[19] besides, and storms, enter my dreams. Hailstones
and fire that run along the ground, sleet and blinding hurricanes,
revelations of glory insufferable pursued by volleying darkness--these
are powers able to disturb any features that originally were but shadow,
and to send drifting the anchors of any vessel that rides upon deeps so
treacherous as those of dreams. Understand, however, the Interpreter to
bear generally the office of a tragic chorus at Athens. The Greek chorus
is perhaps not quite understood by critics, any more than the Dark
Interpreter by myself. But the leading function of both must be supposed
this--not to tell you any thing absolutely new, _that_ was done by the
actors in the drama; but to recall you to your own lurking
thoughts--hidden for the moment or imperfectly developed, and to place
before you, in immediate connexion with groups vanishing too quickly for
any effort of meditation on your own part, such commentaries, prophetic
or looking back, pointing the moral or deciphering the mystery,
justifying Providence, or mitigating the fierceness of anguish, as would
or might have occurred to your own meditative heart--had only time been
allowed for its motions.
The Interpreter is anchored and stationary in my dreams; but great
storms and driving mists cause him to fluctuate uncertainly, or even to
retire altogether, like his gloomy counterpart the shy Phantom of the
Brocken--and to assume new features or strange features, as in dreams
always there is a power not contented with reproduction, but which
absolutely creates or transforms. This dark being the reader will see
again in a further stage of my opium experience; and I warn him that he
will not always be found sitting inside my dreams, but at tines outside,
and in open daylight.