"When the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answered owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,
Shall my soul be upon thine
With a power and with a sign.
"Though thy slumber may be deep,
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep;
There are shades which shall not vanish,
There are thoughts thou canst not banish;
By a power to thee unknown
Thou canst never be alone;
Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
Thou art gathered in a cloud,
And for ever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.
"Though thou see'st me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,
As a thing that, though unseen,
Must be near thee, and hath been;
And when in that secret dread
Thou hast turned around thy head,
Thou shalt marvel I am not
As thy shadow on the spot,
And the power which thou dost feel
Shall be what thou must conceal.
"And a magic voice and verse
Hath baptized thee with a curse,
And a spirit of the air
Hath begirt thee with a snare;
In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun
Which shall make thee wish it done.
"From thy false tears I did distil
An essence which hath strength to kill;
From thy own heart I then did wring
The black blood in its blackest spring;
From thy own smile I snatched the snake,
For there it coiled as in a brake;
From thy own lip I drew the charm
Which gave all these their chiefest harm;
In proving every poison known,
I found the strongest was thine own.
"By thy cold breast and serpent smile,
By thy unfathomed depths of guile,
By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy,
By the perfection of thine art,
Which passed for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee, and compel
Thyself to be thy proper hell!
"And on thy head I pour the vial
Which doth devote thee to this trial;
Not to slumber, nor to die,
Shall be in thy destiny,
Though thy death shall still seem near
To thy wish, but as a fear;
Lo! the spell now works around thee,
And the clankless chain hath bound thee:
O'er thy heart and brain together
Hath the word been passed--now wither!"
The Italian poem forms, in its first and second parts, a drama as
complete as that of "Manfred," and, as I hope to render clear, one more
consistent to the leading idea, or, as critics were wont to say, "more
coherent in the unities." This idea in the one, as in the other, is that
of a powerful _sorcerer_ assailed by a fiend in the form of remorse, and
that with the most aggravating and insulting terms of contempt. In
"Manfred" the persecutor tells his victim that he shall be his own hell,
for that of all poisons his own evil heart is the worst. The Italian,
more direct and less metaphysical still, alludes, in the accusation by
the spirit, to no other punishment save that of conscience, and declares
the magician to be poisoned through and through in himself:
"Tu sei cattivo e scelerato,
Tu sei avvelenato
Nel cuore e nell anima,"
and bids him go forth to be for ever pursued by the avenger.
Byron's poem is entirely based on sorcery, and is intended to set forth
the tremendous mental struggles of a mind which has risen above mankind
with supernatural power, which assails him with remorse. In the first
place he simply goes to sleep; in the grand finale he resists, like Don
Juan, or, as the saying is, "dies game"--"only this, and nothing
more"--leaving all idea of an end, object, moral, or system, entirely in
the dark. "Manfred" is merely dramatic for the sake of _stage effect_,
and only excellent in impressing us with the artistic skill of the
author. Its key is art for the sake of art, and effect on anybody, no
matter who. Within this limit it is most admirable.
In both the Italian and English poems the one persecuted makes his strong
point of departure from the discovery or knowledge that the persecuted is
not one whom he has injured, but simply a mocking and tormenting sprite.
Thus the former text declares that when he finds he is pursued simply by
Intialo, the shadow, which we may here translate "his own imagination,"
he rallies with a tremendous counter-curse in which far more is meant
than meets the eye. The grand mission of the _magus_ or sorcerer in all
the occult lore of all antiquity, whether he appear as Buddha or any
other man of men, is to conquer all enemies by tremendous power won by
penance or by iron _will_. A favourite means of tormenting the enemy or
fiend is to awaken the conscience of the magician, or, what is the same
thing, to tempt him to sin, as Satan did Christ. But even conscience
loses its power when we feel that the foe is exaggerating our sins, and
only urging them for torment's sake, and especially when these sins are
of a kind which from a _certain_ standpoint or code, are not sins at all.
And here we are brought to a subject so strange and witch-like that it is
difficult to discuss or make clear. It is evident enough in "Manfred"
that the great crime was the hero's forbidden love for his sister
Astarte. This it is which crushes him. But it does not appear from the
Italian (save to those deeply learned in the darker secrets of sorcery)
why or how it is that the one persecuted so suddenly revives and defies
the spirit, turning, as it were, his own power against him. In
explaining this, I do not in the least conjecture, guess, or infer
anything; I give the explanation as it was understood by the narrator,
and as confirmed by other legends and traditions. It is this:
Michelet, in _La Sorciere_, which amid much lunacy or folly contains many
truths and ingenious perceptions, has explained that the witchcraft of
the Middle Ages was a kind of mad despairing revolt against the wrongs of
society, of feudalism, and the Church. It was in very truth the
precursor of Protestantism. Under the name of religion conscience had
been abused, and artificial sins, dooming to hell, been created out of
every trifle, and out of almost every form of natural instincts. The
reaction from this (which was a kind of nihilism or anarchy), was to
declare the antithetic _excess_ of free will. One of the forms of this
revolt was the belief that the greatest sorcerers were born (_ex filio et
matre_) from the nearest relations, and that to dare and violate all such
ties was to conquer by daring will the greatest power. It was the
strongest defiance of the morality taught by the Church, therefore one of
the highest qualifications for an iron-willed magician. It is specially
pointed out in the legend of Diana that she began by such a sin, and so
came to be queen of the witches; and the same idea of entire emancipation
or illumination, or freedom from all ties, is the first step to the
absolute free will which constitutes the very basis of all magic. This,
which is repugnant to humanity, was actually exalted by the Persian Magi
to a duty or religious principle, and it was the same in Egypt as
regarded "first families." The sorcerer pursued by Intialo bases all his
power to resist on the mere fact that he is beloved by a beautiful witch.
This is the Astarte of the Italian drama, or a sister--the terrible tie
which shows that a man is above conscience, and free from all fear of the
powers that be, whether of earth or air. By it his triumph is complete.
He surmounts the accusation of being without morals by utterly denying
their existence from a higher or illuminated point of view. The _magus_
claims to rank with the gods, and if a divinity _creates_ mankind as his
children, and then has a child by a woman, he is in the same state as the
sorcerer, according to wizards.
If any reproach attaches to the employment of such an element in poetry,
then Byron and Shelley are far more to blame than the Italian witch-poet,
who veiled his allusion with much greater care than they did, and who had
the vast excuse of _sincere belief_, while their highest aim was mere
art. The wizard-poet has his heart in this faith, as in a religion, and
he is one with his hero. Manfred is at best only a broken-down magician
who presents a few boldly dramatic daring traits--the Italian sorcerer,
who is far more defiant and fearless, conquers. "I am more malignant
than thou art," is a terrible utterance; so is the tone of affected pity
for the baffled tormentor, in which we detect a shade of sarcasm based on
overwhelming triumph. This feeling, be it observed, progresses,
_crescendo forte_, gradually and very artistically, from the first verse
to the last. Intialo has threatened to make the victim a sorry cur who
comes at a call; the sorcerer replies that he will make "a swine's snout"
of Intialo. Finally, he dares the fiend to meet him at midnight at the
great Witches' Sabbat, at the dread walnut-tree of Benevento. Here the
threats reach an ingenious and terrible climax, though the form in which
they are expressed is only quite clear to the initiated. The sorcerer
says, "When thou thinkest that thou see'st my shadow thou wilt behold
thine own," or in other words, "You who have sought to torment me by a
_shadow_ shall yourself be mocked by finding that you are only mine."
This climax of daring the fiend to meet him at Benevento, at the
tremendous and terrible rendezvous of all the devils, witches, and
sorcerers, and then and there trying conclusions with him in delusion and
magic, or a strife of shadows, while leaning against the awful tree
itself, which is the central point of the Italian Domdaniel, is
magnificently imagined.
In Goethe's "Faust," as in Byron's "Manfred," the hero is a magician, but
he is not in either true to the name or character. The great _magus_ of
early ages, even like the black Voodoo of America, had it clearly before
him all the time that his mission or business, above all things, was to
develop an indomitable _will_ superior to that of men or spirits. Every
point is gained by _force_, or by will and penance. In real sorcery
there is no such thing as a pact with a devil, and becoming his slave
after a time. This is a purely later-Roman invention, a result of the
adoption of the mixture of Jewish monotheism and Persian dualism, which
formed the Catholic Church. In Goethe's "Faust" we have the greatest
weakness, and an extreme confusion of character. The conclusion of the
tale is contradictory or absurd, and the difficulty is solved with the
aid of a _Deus ex machina_. The hero is a sorcerer, and _there is not a
trace of true sorcery or magianism or tremendous will and work in the
whole drama_. Beautiful things are said and done, but, take it for all
in all, it is a grand promenade which leads to nothing. {251}
In the Italian legend, brief and rude as it is, there appears a
tremendous power worked out with great consistency. The demon or spirit,
intent on causing remorse or despair (_ad affretare il rimorso_),
threatens the sorcerer with terrible maledictions. And these words, if
we regard their real meaning and spirit, have never been surpassed in any
poem.
And we should note here that the Italian sorcerer who subdues the devil
by simple will and pluck is no Manfred or Faust drawn from the religious
spirit of the Middle Ages. He belongs to the Etruscan age, or to that of
the ancient Magi; he meets malediction with malediction, spell with
spell, curse with curse, injury with injury, sarcasm and jeer with the
same; he insults the devil, calling him his slave:
"Perche io sono di te--molto piu maligno."
Until in the end they change parts, and the demon becomes the one
tormented. Therefore there is in this legend, with all its rudeness, a
conception which is so grand, as regards setting forth the possible power
of man, and the _eritis sicut deus_ of modern science, that it is in
unity and fulness far beyond any variant of the same subject.
That this is of great antiquity is clear, for out of this enchanted
forest of Italian witchcraft and mystical sorcery there never yet came
anything, great or small, which was not at least of the bronze, if not of
the neolithic age.
Truly, when the chief character in a tradition of the old Etruscan land
bears an Etruscan name, or that of a shadow called a shadow, we may well
conclude that it is not of yesterday. So all things rise and bloom and
pass away here on this earth to winter and decay, and are as phantoms
which
"Come like shadows, so depart."
For a last word, "Manfred" and "Faust" are only works of art, intended to
"interest" or amuse or charm the reader, and as such they are great.
They are simply dramas or show-pieces, which also give a high idea of the
artistic skill of their writers. "Intialo" sets forth the great idea of
the true sorcerer, in which they both _fail_, and carries it out
logically to a tremendous triumph. It is the very quintessence of all
heresies, and of the first great heresy, _eritis sicut deus_.
There will not be wanting one or two critics of the low kind who take
their hints from the disavowals of the author to declare that his book is
just what it is not, who will write that I think I have discovered a
better poet than Keats in Marietta Pery, and a far greater than Goethe or
Byron in the unknown author of the invocation to "Intialo." But all that
I _truly mean_ is that the former is nearer to old tradition, and more
succinct than the English bard--"only this and nothing more"--while in
"Intialo" we have given, as no one ever expressed it, the true ideal of
the magician who, overcoming all qualms of conscience, whether innate or
suggested, and trampling under foot all moral human conventions, rises to
_will_, and victory over all enemies, especially the demons of the
threshold. As a poem, I no more claim special merit for it than I would
for Marietta's; {253} indeed, to the very considerable number of "highly
cultivated" people who only perceive poetry in form and style, and cannot
find it in the grandest conceptions unless they are elegantly expressed,
what I have given in this connection will not appear as poetry at all.
CAIN AND HIS WORSHIPPERS
THE SPELL OF THE MIRROR--THE INVOCATION TO CAIN--THE WITCH-HISTORY OF
CAIN AND ABEL
"Rusticus in Luna
Quem sarcina deprimit una,
Monstrat per spinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas."
--ALEXANDER NECKHAM, A.D. 1157.
This is, for reasons which I will explain anon, one of the most curious
traditions which have been preserved by the Tuscan peasantry. I had made
inquiry whether any conjuring by the aid of a mirror existed--"only this
and nothing more"--when, some time after, I received the following:
LA SCONGIURAZIONE DELLO SPECCHIO.
_When one wishes to enchant a lover_.
"Go at midnight when there is a fine full moon, and take a small mirror,
which must be kept in a box of a fine red colour, and at each of the four
corners of the box put a candle with a pin, or with a pin in its point,
and observe that two of the pins must have red heads, and two black, and
form a cross, and note that every candle must have two tassels hanging
from it, one red and one black.
"And within the box first of all put a good layer of coarse salt, and
form on the salt a ring or wreath of incense, and in the middle of this a
cross of cummin, and above all put the small mirror. Then take the
photograph of your lover, but not the real photograph but the negative,
because it must be on a plate of glass (_lastra di vetro_). Then take
some hairs of the lover and join them to the photograph (_sono uniti
dalla parte del quore_), and then take a fine sprig of rue.
"And with all this nicely arranged in the box, take a boat and sail out
to sea; and if a woman works the spell she must take three men with her
only, and if a man three women and no other person. And they must go
forth at an instant when the moon shines brightly (_risplende bene_) on
the mirror. Then hold the left hand over the mirror, and hold up the rue
with the right. Then repeat the following: {255}