Aeterna aeternus tribuit, mortalia confert
Mortalis; divina Deus, peritura caducus.
“Aurel. Prud. contra Symmachum,” lib. ii.
(The Eternal gives eternal things, the Mortal gathers mortal
things: God, that which is divine, and the perishable that which
is perishable.)
EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTERS OF ZANONI TO MEJNOUR.
Letter 1.
Thou hast not informed me of the progress of thy pupil; and I fear that
so differently does circumstance shape the minds of the generations to
which we are descended, from the intense and earnest children of the
earlier world, that even thy most careful and elaborate guidance would
fail, with loftier and purer natures than that of the neophyte thou hast
admitted within thy gates. Even that third state of being, which the
Indian sage (The Brahmins, speaking of Brahm, say, “To the Omniscient
the three modes of being--sleep, waking, and trance--are not;”
distinctly recognising trance as a third and coequal condition of
being.) rightly recognises as being between the sleep and the waking,
and describes imperfectly by the name of TRANCE, is unknown to the
children of the Northern world; and few but would recoil to indulge it,
regarding its peopled calm as maya and delusion of the mind. Instead of
ripening and culturing that airy soil, from which Nature, duly known,
can evoke fruits so rich and flowers so fair, they strive but to exclude
it from their gaze; they esteem that struggle of the intellect from
men’s narrow world to the spirit’s infinite home, as a disease which the
leech must extirpate with pharmacy and drugs, and know not even that it
is from this condition of their being, in its most imperfect and infant
form, that poetry, music, art--all that belong to an Idea of Beauty
to which neither SLEEPING nor WAKING can furnish archetype and actual
semblance--take their immortal birth. When we, O Mejnour in the far
time, were ourselves the neophytes and aspirants, we were of a class
to which the actual world was shut and barred. Our forefathers had no
object in life but knowledge. From the cradle we were predestined and
reared to wisdom as to a priesthood. We commenced research where modern
Conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were common
elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild
chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries. Even the fundamental
principles, the large yet simple theories of electricity and magnetism,
rest obscure and dim in the disputes of their blinded schools; yet,
even in our youth, how few ever attained to the first circle of the
brotherhood, and, after wearily enjoying the sublime privileges they
sought, they voluntarily abandoned the light of the sun, and sunk,
without effort, to the grave, like pilgrims in a trackless desert,
overawed by the stillness of their solitude, and appalled by the absence
of a goal. Thou, in whom nothing seems to live BUT THE DESIRE TO KNOW;
thou, who, indifferent whether it leads to weal or to woe, lendest
thyself to all who would tread the path of mysterious science, a human
book, insensate to the precepts it enounces,--thou hast ever sought,
and often made additions to our number. But to these have only been
vouchsafed partial secrets; vanity and passion unfitted them for the
rest; and now, without other interest than that of an experiment in
science, without love, and without pity, thou exposest this new soul
to the hazards of the tremendous ordeal! Thou thinkest that a zeal
so inquisitive, a courage so absolute and dauntless, may suffice to
conquer, where austerer intellect and purer virtue have so often failed.
Thou thinkest, too, that the germ of art that lies in the painter’s
mind, as it comprehends in itself the entire embryo of power and beauty,
may be expanded into the stately flower of the Golden Science. It is a
new experiment to thee. Be gentle with thy neophyte, and if his nature
disappoint thee in the first stages of the process, dismiss him back to
the Real while it is yet time to enjoy the brief and outward life which
dwells in the senses, and closes with the tomb. And as I thus admonish
thee, O Mejnour, wilt thou smile at my inconsistent hopes? I, who have
so invariably refused to initiate others into our mysteries,--I begin at
last to comprehend why the great law, which binds man to his kind, even
when seeking most to set himself aloof from their condition, has made
thy cold and bloodless science the link between thyself and thy race;
why, THOU has sought converts and pupils; why, in seeing life after life
voluntarily dropping from our starry order, thou still aspirest to
renew the vanished, and repair the lost; why, amidst thy calculations,
restless and unceasing as the wheels of Nature herself, thou recoilest
from the THOUGHT TO BE ALONE! So with myself; at last I, too, seek a
convert, an equal,--I, too, shudder to be alone! What thou hast warned
me of has come to pass. Love reduces all things to itself. Either must I
be drawn down to the nature of the beloved, or hers must be lifted to
my own. As whatever belongs to true Art has always necessarily had
attraction for US, whose very being is in the ideal whence Art descends,
so in this fair creature I have learned, at last, the secret that bound
me to her at the first glance. The daughter of music,--music, passing
into her being, became poetry. It was not the stage that attracted her,
with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which
the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a
voice,--there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land
insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts,
it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave
birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love;
and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its restless waves, to
become mute and deep and still,--the everlasting mirror of the heavens.
And is it not through this poetry which lies within her that she may
be led into the large poetry of the universe! Often I listen to her
careless talk, and find oracles in its unconscious beauty, as we find
strange virtues in some lonely flower. I see her mind ripening under my
eyes; and in its fair fertility what ever-teeming novelties of thought!
O Mejnour! how many of our tribe have unravelled the laws of the
universe,--have solved the riddles of the exterior nature, and deduced
the light from darkness! And is not the POET, who studies nothing but
the human heart, a greater philosopher than all? Knowledge and atheism
are incompatible. To know Nature is to know that there must be a God.
But does it require this to examine the method and architecture of
creation? Methinks, when I look upon a pure mind, however ignorant and
childlike, that I see the August and Immaterial One more clearly than in
all the orbs of matter which career at His bidding through space.
Rightly is it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart
our secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is
in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were
possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what
disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOT
possible; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of
Viola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the courage or the
genius of thy pupils. Bear me witness, Mejnour! Never since the distant
day in which I pierced the Arcana of our knowledge, have I ever sought
to make its mysteries subservient to unworthy objects; though, alas! the
extension of our existence robs us of a country and a home; though the
law that places all science, as all art, in the abstraction from the
noisy passions and turbulent ambition of actual life, forbids us to
influence the destinies of nations, for which Heaven selects ruder and
blinder agencies; yet, wherever have been my wanderings, I have sought
to soften distress, and to convert from sin. My power has been hostile
only to the guilty; and yet with all our lore, how in each step we are
reduced to be but the permitted instruments of the Power that vouchsafes
our own, but only to direct it. How all our wisdom shrinks into nought,
compared with that which gives the meanest herb its virtues, and peoples
the smallest globule with its appropriate world. And while we are
allowed at times to influence the happiness of others, how mysteriously
the shadows thicken round our own future doom! We cannot be prophets
to ourselves! With what trembling hope I nurse the thought that I may
preserve to my solitude the light of a living smile!
....
Extracts from Letter II.
Deeming myself not pure enough to initiate so pure a heart, I invoke to
her trance those fairest and most tender inhabitants of space that have
furnished to poetry, which is the instinctive guess into creation, the
ideas of the Glendoveer and Sylph. And these were less pure than her own
thoughts, and less tender than her own love! They could not raise her
above her human heart, for THAT has a heaven of its own.
....
I have just looked on her in sleep,--I have heard her breathe my name.
Alas! that which is so sweet to others has its bitterness to me; for
I think how soon the time may come when that sleep will be without a
dream,--when the heart that dictates the name will be cold, and the
lips that utter it be dumb. What a twofold shape there is in love! If we
examine it coarsely,--if we look but on its fleshy ties, its enjoyments
of a moment, its turbulent fever and its dull reaction,--how strange it
seems that this passion should be the supreme mover of the world; that
it is this which has dictated the greatest sacrifices, and influenced
all societies and all times; that to this the loftiest and loveliest
genius has ever consecrated its devotion; that, but for love, there
were no civilisation, no music, no poetry, no beauty, no life beyond the
brute’s.
But examine it in its heavenlier shape,--in its utter abnegation of
self; in its intimate connection with all that is most delicate and
subtle in the spirit,--its power above all that is sordid in existence;
its mastery over the idols of the baser worship; its ability to create
a palace of the cottage, an oasis in the desert, a summer in the
Iceland,--where it breathes, and fertilises, and glows; and the wonder
rather becomes how so few regard it in its holiest nature. What the
sensual call its enjoyments, are the least of its joys. True love is
less a passion than a symbol. Mejnour, shall the time come when I can
speak to thee of Viola as a thing that was?
....
Extract from Letter III.
Knowest thou that of late I have sometimes asked myself, “Is there no
guilt in the knowledge that has so divided us from our race?” It is true
that the higher we ascend the more hateful seem to us the vices of the
short-lived creepers of the earth,--the more the sense of the goodness
of the All-good penetrates and suffuses us, and the more immediately
does our happiness seem to emanate from him. But, on the other hand, how
many virtues must lie dead in those who live in the world of death, and
refuse to die! Is not this sublime egotism, this state of abstraction
and reverie,--this self-wrapped and self-dependent majesty of existence,
a resignation of that nobility which incorporates our own welfare, our
joys, our hopes, our fears with others? To live on in no dread of foes,
undegraded by infirmity, secure through the cares, and free from the
disease of flesh, is a spectacle that captivates our pride. And yet dost
thou not more admire him who dies for another? Since I have loved her,
Mejnour, it seems almost cowardice to elude the grave which devours the
hearts that wrap us in their folds. I feel it,--the earth grows upon
my spirit. Thou wert right; eternal age, serene and passionless, is a
happier boon than eternal youth, with its yearnings and desires. Until
we can be all spirit, the tranquillity of solitude must be indifference.
....
Extracts from Letter IV.
I have received thy communication. What! is it so? Has thy pupil
disappointed thee? Alas, poor pupil! But--
....
(Here follow comments on those passages in Glyndon’s life already known
to the reader, or about to be made so, with earnest adjurations to
Mejnour to watch yet over the fate of his scholar.)
....
But I cherish the same desire, with a warmer heart. My pupil! how the
terrors that shall encompass thine ordeal warn me from the task! Once
more I will seek the Son of Light.
....
Yes; Adon-Ai, long deaf to my call, at last has descended to my vision,
and left behind him the glory of his presence in the shape of Hope. Oh,
not impossible, Viola,--not impossible, that we yet may be united, soul
with soul!
Extract from Letter V.--(Many months after the last.)
Mejnour, awake from thine apathy,--rejoice! A new soul will be born to
the world,--a new soul that shall call me father. Ah, if they for whom
exist all the occupations and resources of human life,--if they can
thrill with exquisite emotion at the thought of hailing again their own
childhood in the faces of their children; if in that birth they are born
once more into the holy Innocence which is the first state of existence;
if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel’s duty, when
he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the
heaven,--what to me must be the rapture to welcome an inheritor of all
the gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the power
to watch, and to guard,--to instil the knowledge, to avert the evil,
and to guide back the river of life in a richer and broader and deeper
stream to the paradise from which it flows! And beside that river our
souls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy that
fails as yet; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay,
when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child!