What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a
sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating
the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But
physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a
vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious
meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and
fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing
complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant
lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the
spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a
mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all
these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical
dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to
decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the
baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty
of the vine branches and the flowers?
The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and
venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty.
Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over
the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles
in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm,
unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the
feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance.
Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of
the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a
single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is
genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to
separate you?
Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the
pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your
wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City
or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles;
improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper
your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain,
philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of
immortality!