Il ne faut appeler aucun ordre si ce n’est en tems clair et
serein.
“Les Clavicules du Rabbi Salomon.”
(No order of spirits must be invoked unless the weather be clear
and serene.)
Letter from Zanoni to Mejnour.
My art is already dim and troubled. I have lost the tranquillity which
is power. I cannot influence the decisions of those whom I would most
guide to the shore; I see them wander farther and deeper into the
infinite ocean where our barks sail evermore to the horizon that flies
before us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I would
control, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires of
earth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which
Intellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine
and survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner
gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we know
the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around
me is mist and haze; I have gone back in our sublime existence; and
from the bosom of the imperishable youth that blooms only in the spirit,
springs up the dark poison-flower of human love.
This man is not worthy of her,--I know that truth; yet in his nature
are the seeds of good and greatness, if the tares and weeds of worldly
vanities and fears would suffer them to grow. If she were his, and I had
thus transplanted to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and
disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his
fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through
his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I
see, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,--no
escape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous thought,--the
terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would
save her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,--a bubble on the
shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite
nature of hers,--more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections
than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after
race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling
that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless
Hierophant,--thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every
spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of
woman.
My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought
to guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think of
the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard!
I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman’s ambition with the true
glory of his art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems to
whisper in him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its own
wandering way. There is a mystery in man’s inheritance from his fathers.
Peculiarities of the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for
generations, to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment
and elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks of
Rome! I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old time has
himself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; but
his presence, that once inspired such heavenly content with knowledge,
and so serene a confidence in destiny, now only troubles and perplexes
me. From the height from which I strive to search into the shadows of
things to come, I see confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I
behold a ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the most
stormy whirlpool of the Real. Where the stars opened to me their gates,
there looms a scaffold,--thick steams of blood rise as from a shambles.
What is more strange to me, a creature here, a very type of the false
ideal of common men,--body and mind, a hideous mockery of the art that
shapes the Beautiful, and the desires that seek the Perfect, ever haunts
my vision amidst these perturbed and broken clouds of the fate to be.
By that shadowy scaffold it stands and gibbers at me, with lips dropping
slime and gore. Come, O friend of the far-time; for me, at least, thy
wisdom has not purged away thy human affections. According to the bonds
of our solemn order, reduced now to thee and myself, lone survivors of
so many haughty and glorious aspirants, thou art pledged, too, to warn
the descendant of those whom thy counsels sought to initiate into the
great secret in a former age. The last of that bold Visconti who was
once thy pupil is the relentless persecutor of this fair child. With
thoughts of lust and murder, he is digging his own grave; thou mayest
yet daunt him from his doom. And I also mysteriously, by the same bond,
am pledged to obey, if he so command, a less guilty descendant of a
baffled but nobler student. If he reject my counsel, and insist upon
the pledge, Mejnour, thou wilt have another neophyte. Beware of another
victim! Come to me! This will reach thee with all speed. Answer it by
the pressure of one hand that I can dare to clasp!