Produced by Dave Ceponis, Sue Asscher and David Widger
ZANONI
BY
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(PLATE: “Thou art good and fair,” said Viola. Drawn by P. Kauffmann,
etched by Deblois.)
DEDICATORY EPISTLE First prefixed to the Edition of 1845
TO
JOHN GIBSON, R.A., SCULPTOR.
In looking round the wide and luminous circle of our great living
Englishmen, to select one to whom I might fitly dedicate this work,--one
who, in his life as in his genius, might illustrate the principle I have
sought to convey; elevated by the ideal which he exalts, and
serenely dwelling in a glorious existence with the images born of his
imagination,--in looking round for some such man, my thoughts rested
upon you. Afar from our turbulent cabals; from the ignoble jealousy and
the sordid strife which degrade and acerbate the ambition of Genius,--in
your Roman Home, you have lived amidst all that is loveliest and least
perishable in the past, and contributed with the noblest aims, and in
the purest spirit, to the mighty heirlooms of the future. Your youth has
been devoted to toil, that your manhood may be consecrated to fame: a
fame unsullied by one desire of gold. You have escaped the two worst
perils that beset the artist in our time and land,--the debasing
tendencies of commerce, and the angry rivalries of competition. You have
not wrought your marble for the market,--you have not been tempted, by
the praises which our vicious criticism has showered upon exaggeration
and distortion, to lower your taste to the level of the hour; you
have lived, and you have laboured, as if you had no rivals but in the
dead,--no purchasers, save in judges of what is best. In the divine
priesthood of the beautiful, you have sought only to increase her
worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you have
inherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors,--yours his
delicacy, not his affectation. Your heart resembles him even more
than your genius: you have the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime
profession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that
depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serve
artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the
timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By
the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning
of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate
comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, is in
itself a CRITICISM, illustrating the sublime secrets of the Grecian
Art, which, without the servility of plagiarism, you have contributed to
revive amongst us; in you we behold its three great and long-undetected
principles,--simplicity, calm, and concentration.
But your admiration of the Greeks has not led you to the bigotry of
the mere antiquarian, nor made you less sensible of the unappreciated
excellence of the mighty modern, worthy to be your countryman,--though
till his statue is in the streets of our capital, we show ourselves not
worthy of the glory he has shed upon our land. You have not suffered
even your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority of
Flaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that
single name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronage
to English Art,--and not till then.
I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak in
marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the
less because it has been little understood and superficially judged
by the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more
because it has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affection
for my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me
to conceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert,
this apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments,
would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I believe, to be the
sentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth and
beauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work.
Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart
covets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and
therefore, in books--which ARE his thoughts--the author’s character lies
bare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities,--in the
turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred
life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives (his
stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is between
us the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites
the everlasting brotherhood of whose being Zanoni is the type.
E.B.L. London, May, 1845.
INTRODUCTION.
One of the peculiarities of Bulwer was his passion for occult studies.
They had a charm for him early in life, and he pursued them with the
earnestness which characterised his pursuit of other studies. He
became absorbed in wizard lore; he equipped himself with magical
implements,--with rods for transmitting influence, and crystal balls
in which to discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with
spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in
“Zanoni” and “A strange Story,” romances which were a labour of love to
the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,--power
re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation
of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has
formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his
previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of every
day life, we have beings that belong in part to another sphere, and that
deal with mysterious and occult agencies. Once more the old forgotten
lore of the Cabala is unfolded; the furnace of the alchemist, whose
fires have been extinct for centuries, is lighted anew, and the lamp
of the Rosicrucian re-illumined. No other works of the author,
contradictory as have been the opinions of them, have provoked such
a diversity of criticism as these. To some persons they represent
a temporary aberration of genius rather than any serious thought or
definite purpose; while others regard them as surpassing in bold and
original speculation, profound analysis of character, and thrilling
interest, all of the author’s other works. The truth, we believe,
lies midway between these extremes. It is questionable whether the
introduction into a novel of such subjects as are discussed in these
romances be not an offence against good sense and good taste; but it
is as unreasonable to deny the vigour and originality of their author’s
conceptions, as to deny that the execution is imperfect, and, at times,
bungling and absurd.
It has been justly said that the present half century has witnessed
the rise and triumphs of science, the extent and marvels of which even
Bacon’s fancy never conceived, simultaneously with superstitions grosser
than any which Bacon’s age believed. “The one is, in fact, the
natural reaction from the other. The more science seeks to exclude
the miraculous, and reduce all nature, animate and inanimate, to an
invariable law of sequences, the more does the natural instinct of man
rebel, and seek an outlet for those obstinate questionings, those ‘blank
misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realised,’ taking
refuge in delusions as degrading as any of the so-called Dark Ages.” It
was the revolt from the chilling materialism of the age which inspired
the mystic creations of “Zanoni” and “A Strange Story.” Of these works,
which support and supplement each other, one is the contemplation of our
actual life through a spiritual medium, the other is designed to show
that, without some gleams of the supernatural, man is not man, nor
nature nature.
In “Zanoni” the author introduces us to two human beings who have
achieved immortality: one, Mejnour, void of all passion or feeling,
calm, benignant, bloodless, an intellect rather than a man; the other,
Zanoni, the pupil of Mejnour, the representative of an ideal life in
its utmost perfection, possessing eternal youth, absolute power, and
absolute knowledge, and withal the fullest capacity to enjoy and to
love, and, as a necessity of that love, to sorrow and despair. By his
love for Viola Zanoni is compelled to descend from his exalted state,
to lose his eternal calm, and to share in the cares and anxieties of
humanity; and this degradation is completed by the birth of a child.
Finally, he gives up the life which hangs on that of another, in order
to save that other, the loving and beloved wife, who has delivered
him from his solitude and isolation. Wife and child are mortal, and to
outlive them and his love for them is impossible. But Mejnour, who is
the impersonation of thought,--pure intellect without affection,--lives
on.
Bulwer has himself justly characterised this work, in the Introduction,
as a romance and not a romance, as a truth for those who can comprehend
it, and an extravagance for those who cannot. The most careless or
matter-of-fact reader must see that the work, like the enigmatical
“Faust,” deals in types and symbols; that the writer intends to suggest
to the mind something more subtle and impalpable than that which is
embodied to the senses. What that something is, hardly two persons will
agree. The most obvious interpretation of the types is, that in Zanoni
the author depicts to us humanity, perfected, sublimed, which lives
not for self, but for others; in Mejnour, as we have before said, cold,
passionless, self-sufficing intellect; in Glyndon, the young Englishman,
the mingled strength and weakness of human nature; in the heartless,
selfish artist, Nicot, icy, soulless atheism, believing nothing, hoping
nothing, trusting and loving nothing; and in the beautiful, artless
Viola, an exquisite creation, pure womanhood, loving, trusting and
truthful. As a work of art the romance is one of great power. It is
original in its conception, and pervaded by one central idea; but
it would have been improved, we think, by a more sparing use of the
supernatural. The inevitable effect of so much hackneyed diablerie--of
such an accumulation of wonder upon wonder--is to deaden the impression
they would naturally make upon us. In Hawthorne’s tales we see with what
ease a great imaginative artist can produce a deeper thrill by a far
slighter use of the weird and the mysterious.
The chief interest of the story for the ordinary reader centres, not in
its ghostly characters and improbable machinery, the scenes in Mejnour’s
chamber in the ruined castle among the Apennines, the colossal and
appalling apparitions on Vesuvius, the hideous phantom with its burning
eye that haunted Glyndon, but in the loves of Viola and the mysterious
Zanoni, the blissful and the fearful scenes through which they pass,
and their final destiny, when the hero of the story sacrifices his
own “charmed life” to save hers, and the Immortal finds the only true
immortality in death. Among the striking passages in the work are the
pathetic sketch of the old violinist and composer, Pisani, with his
sympathetic “barbiton” which moaned, groaned, growled, and laughed
responsive to the feelings of its master; the description of Viola’s and
her father’s triumph, when “The Siren,” his masterpiece, is performed at
the San Carlo in Naples; Glyndon’s adventure at the Carnival in Naples;
the death of his sister; the vivid pictures of the Reign of Terror in
Paris, closing with the downfall of Robespierre and his satellites; and
perhaps, above all, the thrilling scene where Zanoni leaves Viola asleep
in prison when his guards call him to execution, and she, unconscious of
the terrible sacrifice, but awaking and missing him, has a vision of the
procession to the guillotine, with Zanoni there, radiant in youth
and beauty, followed by the sudden vanishing of the headsman,--the
horror,--and the “Welcome” of her loved one to Heaven in a myriad of
melodies from the choral hosts above.
“Zanoni” was originally published by Saunders and Otley, London, in
three volumes 12mo., in 1842. A translation into French, made by M.
Sheldon under the direction of P. Lorain, was published in Paris in the
“Bibliotheque des Meilleurs Romans Etrangers.”
W.M.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.
As a work of imagination, “Zanoni” ranks, perhaps, amongst the highest
of my prose fictions. In the Poem of “King Arthur,” published many years
afterwards, I have taken up an analogous design, in the contemplation
of our positive life through a spiritual medium; and I have enforced,
through a far wider development, and, I believe, with more complete and
enduring success, that harmony between the external events which are
all that the superficial behold on the surface of human affairs, and the
subtle and intellectual agencies which in reality influence the conduct
of individuals, and shape out the destinies of the world. As man has two
lives,--that of action and that of thought,--so I conceive that work
to be the truest representation of humanity which faithfully delineates
both, and opens some elevating glimpse into the sublimest mysteries of
our being, by establishing the inevitable union that exists between
the plain things of the day, in which our earthly bodies perform their
allotted part, and the latent, often uncultivated, often invisible,
affinities of the soul with all the powers that eternally breathe and
move throughout the Universe of Spirit.
I refer those who do me the honour to read “Zanoni” with more attention
than is given to ordinary romance, to the Poem of “King Arthur,” for
suggestive conjecture into most of the regions of speculative research,
affecting the higher and more important condition of our ultimate being,
which have engaged the students of immaterial philosophy in my own age.
Affixed to the “Note” with which this work concludes, and which treats
of the distinctions between type and allegory, the reader will find,
from the pen of one of our most eminent living writers, an ingenious
attempt to explain the interior or typical meanings of the work now
before him.
INTRODUCTION.
It is possible that among my readers there may be a few not unacquainted
with an old-book shop, existing some years since in the neighbourhood
of Covent Garden; I say a few, for certainly there was little enough to
attract the many in those precious volumes which the labour of a life
had accumulated on the dusty shelves of my old friend D--. There were to
be found no popular treatises, no entertaining romances, no histories,
no travels, no “Library for the People,” no “Amusement for the Million.”
But there, perhaps, throughout all Europe, the curious might discover
the most notable collection, ever amassed by an enthusiast, of the works
of alchemist, cabalist, and astrologer. The owner had lavished a fortune
in the purchase of unsalable treasures. But old D-- did not desire to
sell. It absolutely went to his heart when a customer entered his shop:
he watched the movements of the presumptuous intruder with a vindictive
glare; he fluttered around him with uneasy vigilance,--he frowned, he
groaned, when profane hands dislodged his idols from their niches. If
it were one of the favourite sultanas of his wizard harem that attracted
you, and the price named were not sufficiently enormous, he would not
unfrequently double the sum. Demur, and in brisk delight he snatched the
venerable charmer from your hands; accede, and he became the picture of
despair,--nor unfrequently, at the dead of night, would he knock at your
door, and entreat you to sell him back, at your own terms, what you had
so egregiously bought at his. A believer himself in his Averroes and
Paracelsus, he was as loth as the philosophers he studied to communicate
to the profane the learning he had collected.
It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of
authorship or life, I felt a desire to make myself acquainted with
the true origin and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of
Rosicrucians. Dissatisfied with the scanty and superficial accounts to
be found in the works usually referred to on the subject, it struck
me as possible that Mr. D--‘s collection, which was rich, not only in
black-letter, but in manuscripts, might contain some more accurate and
authentic records of that famous brotherhood,--written, who knows?
by one of their own order, and confirming by authority and detail the
pretensions to wisdom and to virtue which Bringaret had arrogated to the
successors of the Chaldean and Gymnosophist. Accordingly I repaired to
what, doubtless, I ought to be ashamed to confess, was once one of
my favourite haunts. But are there no errors and no fallacies, in the
chronicles of our own day, as absurd as those of the alchemists of old?
Our very newspapers may seem to our posterity as full of delusions as
the books of the alchemists do to us; not but what the press is the air
we breathe,--and uncommonly foggy the air is too!
On entering the shop, I was struck by the venerable appearance of a
customer whom I had never seen there before. I was struck yet more
by the respect with which he was treated by the disdainful collector.
“Sir,” cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of
the catalogue,--“sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty
years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my
customer. How--where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired
a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines,
hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the
latest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any book,
any manuscript, in which their discoveries, their tenets, are to be
learned?”
At the words, “august fraternity,” I need scarcely say that my attention
had been at once aroused, and I listened eagerly for the stranger’s
reply.
“I do not think,” said the old gentleman, “that the masters of the
school have ever consigned, except by obscure hint and mystical parable,
their real doctrines to the world. And I do not blame them for their
discretion.”
Here he paused, and seemed about to retire, when I said, somewhat
abruptly, to the collector, “I see nothing, Mr. D--, in this catalogue
which relates to the Rosicrucians!”
“The Rosicrucians!” repeated the old gentleman, and in his turn he
surveyed me with deliberate surprise. “Who but a Rosicrucian could
explain the Rosicrucian mysteries! And can you imagine that any members
of that sect, the most jealous of all secret societies, would themselves
lift the veil that hides the Isis of their wisdom from the world?”
“Aha!” thought I, “this, then, is ‘the august fraternity’ of which
you spoke. Heaven be praised! I certainly have stumbled on one of the
brotherhood.”
“But,” I said aloud, “if not in books, sir, where else am I to obtain
information? Nowadays one can hazard nothing in print without authority,
and one may scarcely quote Shakespeare without citing chapter and verse.
This is the age of facts,--the age of facts, sir.”
“Well,” said the old gentleman, with a pleasant smile, “if we meet
again, perhaps, at least, I may direct your researches to the proper
source of intelligence.” And with that he buttoned his greatcoat,
whistled to his dog, and departed.
It so happened that I did meet again with the old gentleman, exactly
four days after our brief conversation in Mr. D--‘s bookshop. I was
riding leisurely towards Highgate, when, at the foot of its classic
hill, I recognised the stranger; he was mounted on a black pony, and
before him trotted his dog, which was black also.
If you meet the man whom you wish to know, on horseback, at the
commencement of a long hill, where, unless he has borrowed a friend’s
favourite hack, he cannot, in decent humanity to the brute creation,
ride away from you, I apprehend that it is your own fault if you have
not gone far in your object before you have gained the top. In short, so
well did I succeed, that on reaching Highgate the old gentleman invited
me to rest at his house, which was a little apart from the village; and
an excellent house it was,--small, but commodious, with a large garden,
and commanding from the windows such a prospect as Lucretius would
recommend to philosophers: the spires and domes of London, on a clear
day, distinctly visible; here the Retreat of the Hermit, and there the
Mare Magnum of the world.
The walls of the principal rooms were embellished with pictures of
extraordinary merit, and in that high school of art which is so little
understood out of Italy. I was surprised to learn that they were all
from the hand of the owner. My evident admiration pleased my new friend,
and led to talk upon his part, which showed him no less elevated in his
theories of art than an adept in the practice. Without fatiguing
the reader with irrelevant criticism, it is necessary, perhaps, as
elucidating much of the design and character of the work which these
prefatory pages introduce, that I should briefly observe, that he
insisted as much upon the connection of the arts, as a distinguished
author has upon that of the sciences; that he held that in all works of
imagination, whether expressed by words or by colours, the artist of the
higher schools must make the broadest distinction between the real and
the true,--in other words, between the imitation of actual life, and the
exaltation of Nature into the Ideal.
“The one,” said he, “is the Dutch School, the other is the Greek.”
“Sir,” said I, “the Dutch is the most in fashion.”
“Yes, in painting, perhaps,” answered my host, “but in literature--”
“It was of literature I spoke. Our growing poets are all for simplicity
and Betty Foy; and our critics hold it the highest praise of a work of
imagination, to say that its characters are exact to common life, even
in sculpture--”
“In sculpture! No, no! THERE the high ideal must at least be essential!”
“Pardon me; I fear you have not seen Souter Johnny and Tam O’Shanter.”
“Ah!” said the old gentleman, shaking his head, “I live very much out of
the world, I see. I suppose Shakespeare has ceased to be admired?”
“On the contrary; people make the adoration of Shakespeare the excuse
for attacking everybody else. But then our critics have discovered that
Shakespeare is so REAL!”
“Real! The poet who has never once drawn a character to be met with in
actual life,--who has never once descended to a passion that is false,
or a personage who is real!”
I was about to reply very severely to this paradox, when I perceived
that my companion was growing a little out of temper. And he who wishes
to catch a Rosicrucian, must take care not to disturb the waters. I
thought it better, therefore, to turn the conversation.
“Revenons a nos moutons,” said I; “you promised to enlighten my
ignorance as to the Rosicrucians.”
“Well!” quoth he, rather sternly; “but for what purpose? Perhaps you
desire only to enter the temple in order to ridicule the rites?”
“What do you take me for! Surely, were I so inclined, the fate of the
Abbe de Villars is a sufficient warning to all men not to treat idly
of the realms of the Salamander and the Sylph. Everybody knows how
mysteriously that ingenious personage was deprived of his life, in
revenge for the witty mockeries of his ‘Comte de Gabalis.’”
“Salamander and Sylph! I see that you fall into the vulgar error, and
translate literally the allegorical language of the mystics.”
With that the old gentleman condescended to enter into a very
interesting, and, as it seemed to me, a very erudite relation, of the
tenets of the Rosicrucians, some of whom, he asserted, still existed,
and still prosecuted, in august secrecy, their profound researches into
natural science and occult philosophy.
“But this fraternity,” said he, “however respectable and
virtuous,--virtuous I say, for no monastic order is more severe in the
practice of moral precepts, or more ardent in Christian faith,--this
fraternity is but a branch of others yet more transcendent in the powers
they have obtained, and yet more illustrious in their origin. Are you
acquainted with the Platonists?”
“I have occasionally lost my way in their labyrinth,” said I. “Faith,
they are rather difficult gentlemen to understand.”
“Yet their knottiest problems have never yet been published. Their
sublimest works are in manuscript, and constitute the initiatory
learning, not only of the Rosicrucians, but of the nobler brotherhoods
I have referred to. More solemn and sublime still is the knowledge to
be gleaned from the elder Pythagoreans, and the immortal masterpieces of
Apollonius.”
“Apollonius, the imposter of Tyanea! are his writings extant?”
“Imposter!” cried my host; “Apollonius an imposter!”
“I beg your pardon; I did not know he was a friend of yours; and if
you vouch for his character, I will believe him to have been a very
respectable man, who only spoke the truth when he boasted of his power
to be in two places at the same time.”
“Is that so difficult?” said the old gentleman; “if so, you have never
dreamed!”
Here ended our conversation; but from that time an acquaintance was
formed between us which lasted till my venerable friend departed
this life. Peace to his ashes! He was a person of singular habits and
eccentric opinions; but the chief part of his time was occupied in acts
of quiet and unostentatious goodness. He was an enthusiast in the duties
of the Samaritan; and as his virtues were softened by the gentlest
charity, so his hopes were based upon the devoutest belief. He never
conversed upon his own origin and history, nor have I ever been able to
penetrate the darkness in which they were concealed. He seemed to have
seen much of the world, and to have been an eye-witness of the first
French Revolution, a subject upon which he was equally eloquent and
instructive. At the same time he did not regard the crimes of that
stormy period with the philosophical leniency with which enlightened
writers (their heads safe upon their shoulders) are, in the present day,
inclined to treat the massacres of the past: he spoke not as a student
who had read and reasoned, but as a man who had seen and suffered. The
old gentleman seemed alone in the world; nor did I know that he had one
relation, till his executor, a distant cousin, residing abroad, informed
me of the very handsome legacy which my poor friend had bequeathed
me. This consisted, first, of a sum about which I think it best to be
guarded, foreseeing the possibility of a new tax upon real and funded
property; and, secondly, of certain precious manuscripts, to which the
following volumes owe their existence.
I imagine I trace this latter bequest to a visit I paid the Sage, if so
I may be permitted to call him, a few weeks before his death.
Although he read little of our modern literature, my friend, with the
affable good-nature which belonged to him, graciously permitted me
to consult him upon various literary undertakings meditated by the
desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that
time I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict
the effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character.
He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite and
prosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his
bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in Greek,
and secondly, in English, some extracts to the following effect:--
“Plato here expresses four kinds of mania, by which I desire to
understand enthusiasm and the inspiration of the gods: Firstly, the
musical; secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
fourthly, that which belongs to love.”
The author he quoted, after contending that there is something in the
soul above intellect, and stating that there are in our nature distinct
energies,--by the one of which we discover and seize, as it were,
on sciences and theorems with almost intuitive rapidity, by
another, through which high art is accomplished, like the statues of
Phidias,--proceeded to state that “enthusiasm, in the true acceptation
of the word, is, when that part of the soul which is above intellect is
excited to the gods, and thence derives its inspiration.”
The author, then pursuing his comment upon Plato, observes, that “one of
these manias may suffice (especially that which belongs to love) to lead
back the soul to its first divinity and happiness; but that there is
an intimate union with them all; and that the ordinary progress through
which the soul ascends is, primarily, through the musical; next, through
the telestic or mystic; thirdly, through the prophetic; and lastly,
through the enthusiasm of love.”
While with a bewildered understanding and a reluctant attention I
listened to these intricate sublimities, my adviser closed the volume,
and said with complacency, “There is the motto for your book,--the
thesis for your theme.”
“Davus sum, non Oedipus,” said I, shaking my head, discontentedly.
“All this may be exceedingly fine, but, Heaven forgive me,--I don’t
understand a word of it. The mysteries of your Rosicrucians, and your
fraternities, are mere child’s play to the jargon of the Platonists.”
“Yet, not till you rightly understand this passage, can you understand
the higher theories of the Rosicrucians, or of the still nobler
fraternities you speak of with so much levity.”
“Oh, if that be the case, I give up in despair. Why not, since you are
so well versed in the matter, take the motto for a book of your own?”
“But if I have already composed a book with that thesis for its theme,
will you prepare it for the public?”
“With the greatest pleasure,” said I,--alas, too rashly!
“I shall hold you to your promise,” returned the old gentleman, “and
when I am no more, you will receive the manuscripts. From what you say
of the prevailing taste in literature, I cannot flatter you with
the hope that you will gain much by the undertaking. And I tell you
beforehand that you will find it not a little laborious.”
“Is your work a romance?”
“It is a romance, and it is not a romance. It is a truth for those who
can comprehend it, and an extravagance for those who cannot.”
At last there arrived the manuscripts, with a brief note from my
deceased friend, reminding me of my imprudent promise.
With mournful interest, and yet with eager impatience, I opened the
packet and trimmed my lamp. Conceive my dismay when I found the whole
written in an unintelligible cipher. I present the reader with a
specimen:
(Several strange characters.)
and so on for nine hundred and forty mortal pages in foolscap. I could
scarcely believe my eyes: in fact, I began to think the lamp burned
singularly blue; and sundry misgivings as to the unhallowed nature
of the characters I had so unwittingly opened upon, coupled with the
strange hints and mystical language of the old gentleman, crept through
my disordered imagination. Certainly, to say no worse of it, the whole
thing looked UNCANNY! I was about, precipitately, to hurry the papers
into my desk, with a pious determination to have nothing more to do with
them, when my eye fell upon a book, neatly bound in blue morocco, and
which, in my eagerness, I had hitherto overlooked. I opened this volume
with great precaution, not knowing what might jump out, and--guess
my delight--found that it contained a key or dictionary to the
hieroglyphics. Not to weary the reader with an account of my labours,
I am contented with saying that at last I imagined myself capable of
construing the characters, and set to work in good earnest. Still it was
no easy task, and two years elapsed before I had made much progress. I
then, by way of experiment on the public, obtained the insertion of a
few desultory chapters, in a periodical with which, for a few months, I
had the honour to be connected. They appeared to excite more curiosity
than I had presumed to anticipate; and I renewed, with better heart, my
laborious undertaking. But now a new misfortune befell me: I found, as
I proceeded, that the author had made two copies of his work, one much
more elaborate and detailed than the other; I had stumbled upon the
earlier copy, and had my whole task to remodel, and the chapters I had
written to retranslate. I may say then, that, exclusive of intervals
devoted to more pressing occupations, my unlucky promise cost me the
toil of several years before I could bring it to adequate fulfilment.
The task was the more difficult, since the style in the original is
written in a kind of rhythmical prose, as if the author desired that in
some degree his work should be regarded as one of poetical conception
and design. To this it was not possible to do justice, and in the
attempt I have doubtless very often need of the reader’s indulgent
consideration. My natural respect for the old gentleman’s vagaries,
with a muse of equivocal character, must be my only excuse whenever
the language, without luxuriating into verse, borrows flowers scarcely
natural to prose. Truth compels me also to confess, that, with all
my pains, I am by no means sure that I have invariably given the true
meaning of the cipher; nay, that here and there either a gap in the
narrative, or the sudden assumption of a new cipher, to which no key was
afforded, has obliged me to resort to interpolations of my own, no doubt
easily discernible, but which, I flatter myself, are not inharmonious to
the general design. This confession leads me to the sentence with
which I shall conclude: If, reader, in this book there be anything that
pleases you, it is certainly mine; but whenever you come to something
you dislike,--lay the blame upon the old gentleman!
London, January, 1842.
N.B.--The notes appended to the text are sometimes by the author,
sometimes by the editor. I have occasionally (but not always) marked
the distinction; where, however, this is omitted, the ingenuity of the
reader will be rarely at fault.
ZANONI.
BOOK I. -- THE MUSICIAN.
Due Fontane
Chi di diverso effeto hanno liquore!
“Ariosto, Orland. Fur.” Canto 1.7.
(Two Founts
That hold a draught of different effects.)