A PHANTASMAGORIA OF LIGHT AND COLOUR.
If the insect does not and will not speak to us, are we to suppose that
it does not express the burning intensity of the life within it?
No living creature reveals itself more clearly; though only from itself
to its kind, from insect to insect. They are bound up in themselves;
are a sealed world, which has no outward expression, and no language
except for its own members.
For all ordinary purposes, an electric telegraph exists in their
antennæ. But the great, the eloquent language is manifested among
them towards the close of their existence,--for one brief moment, it
is true,--a moment announcing the approach of death, yet the grand
festival of love.
They speak through the rare attractions with which they are
invested,--through the wing, the flight, the airy existence,--through
the fancy which possesses them (says good Du Tertre) of becoming
birds. They speak through their brilliant hieroglyphics of colours and
fantastic designs, their strange coquetry of extraordinary toilets.
They speak in their very lustre, and some species reveal their inner
flame by a visible torch.
[Illustration]
They lavish with royal magnificence their last days. And wherefore
should they economize, when to-morrow they die? Break forth then, O
life of splendour! Sparkle, ye gold and emeralds, and sapphires and
rubies! And let that incandescent ardour, that torrent of existence,
that cataract of profuse radiance, be poured out in one common, rapid
flood!
There is not space in our museums for the proper display of the
prodigious, the unbounded variety of decoration with which Nature
has, mother-like, sought to glorify the hymeneal of the insect and
to emparadise its nuptials. A distinguished amateur having had the
patience to show me in due succession genus after genus, species after
species, the whole of his immense collection, I was astounded--in
truth, I was stupefied--almost terrified by the inexhaustible energy--I
was going to say fury--of invention which Nature displayed. I was
overcome--I closed my eyes, and begged for a truce; my brain was
dizzied and blinded, and became confused. But she, she would not
let me go; she inundated and overwhelmed me with beautiful beings,
with fantastic beings, with admirable monsters, with wings of fire,
and cuirasses of emerald, clad in a hundred kinds of enamel, armed
with singular apparatus--no less brilliant than formidable; some in
embrowned steel, shot with yellow--others in silken hoods, embroidered
with black velvet; these with fine dashes of tawny silk on a rich
mahogany ground; those in pomegranate-coloured velvet lit up with gold;
others in luminous, indescribable azures, relieved by jet-black beads;
and others, again, bright in metallic streaks alternating with heavy
velvet.
It was as if they wished to say:--
"We in ourselves are the whole of Nature. If she perishes, we shall
enact a drama, and personate all her creations. For if you look for
rich furry garb, behold us here in mantles such as a Russian czarina
never wore. Do you wish for feathers? behold us radiant in plumage
which the humming-bird cannot equal; or if you prefer leaves, we can
imitate them so as to deceive your eye. Even wood--in fact, all kinds
of substances--there is nothing which we cannot imitate. Take, I pray
you, this little twig, and hold it in your hand,--it is an insect!"
Then I was fairly conquered. I made a humble reverence to a people so
redoubtable; with a burning brain I issued from the magic cave; and
for a long time afterwards the sparkling scintillating masks danced
and whirled around me, pursuing me, and maintaining on my retina their
wild, strange revel.
And yet I had seen them only in cases and in boxes, as dead as
in nature they were ardent and restless. What would have been my
impression if I had seen them alive, and in motion,--especially in the
burning climes where they abound and superabound,--where everything is
in harmony with them,--where the air, the water, the flora, impregnated
with prolific flames, rival the keen ardour of the animal hosts in the
madness of love, of production precipitated and incessantly renewed by
impatient death?
The American forests of Brazil and Guiana are the formidable furnaces
in which the great exchange of life is uninterruptedly carried on. The
fantastic faëry of the vegetable kingdom is in accord with that of the
animated forces. Savage, harsh, and plaintive cries--not songs--form
the woodland concert. Strange voices of birds, in the woods and the
savannahs, relieve each other,--hoarse and vibrating, but regular,
as if to mark the hours. They are the clock of the desert. Some by
day, others by night; and perfectly distinct also at each of the three
periods of the day,--morn, and noon, and evening. They disquiet the
traveller, inasmuch as they reproduce our human voices or sounds, and
seem ironical or mocking. One cries, another whistles, another sighs.
This strikes like an alarm, that like a hammer, while a third imitates
the tones of a bagpipe. The vast plains re-echo the mighty voice of the
cariama. And that of the serpent-conqueror, the courageous kamichi,
harsh and strong, echoing over the marshes, makes the savage tremble,
for he thinks he hears the spirits passing.
At evening, with the song of the grasshoppers, the croaking of the
frogs, the shriek of the owls, and the lamentations of the vampires,
mingles the howl of the apes; until a hiss, which seems drawn from a
wounded bosom, silences all, and spreads a universal terror, because it
indicates the presence of the sharp-clawed prowler, the swift jaguar.
In these forests there is nothing to reassure you. Yonder green and
peaceful waters, whence ever and anon proceeds the sound of half-choked
sighs,--you place your foot upon them, and with terror discover that
they are solid! that the surface is composed of great alligators, with
their greenish backs resembling breadths of moss or aquatic herbs! Let
a living creature appear, and immediately they raise their heads and
put themselves in motion; you behold the strange assemblage rise from
the slime in all their horror! But is this all?--Even these monsters
which reign on the surface have their tyrants over them. The piranha,
or razor-fish, as swift as the cayman is unwieldy, severs with its
saw-like teeth the latter's tail, and carries it off before it can
wheel round. The cayman, nearly always, mutilated in this manner, would
perish, if its cuirass did not prevent its enemy from dissecting it.
The same terrible anatomist, with a flash of its scalpel, cuts down as
it passes the bird which skims the waves. Aquatic birds which have been
wounded by it are frequently caught. And what, then, of the quadrupeds?
The most powerful are devoured. A horrible combat is waged without
pause in the deep waters,--in the waters living and overflowing with
life, but with death also,--where is realized to the letter a rapid
and furious suicide of Nature,--Nature devouring in order to re-create
itself!
[Illustration]
The insects in fury and beauty are worthy of this scene. The exalted
vitality, revealed among the gadflies and the mosquitoes, by their
thirst of blood, is shown in other species by their enchanting colours,
their caprices of design, their singularities of form, which either
astonish us or terrify. The _Buprestis imperialis_, proud of its green
cuirass powdered all over with dust of gold, seems to have passed
through the bowels of the metalliferous earth, and enriched itself on
the way. The _Buprestis chrysochlorus_, of a yellower green, flutters
to and fro like a mounted gem. The _Arlequin_ of Guiana,--a gigantic
mower, armed with tremendous antennæ and prodigious legs to traverse
the innumerable obstacles offered by the tall herbage,--is marked with
black commas on a yellow ground, with inexplicable hieroglyphs,--a
being doubly strange and doubly enigmatic. It singularly reminds us
of the texture of Indian stuffs, where, for the sake of harmonizing
colours not usually brought side by side, the artist traces a number of
wavy and broken lines, which soften and blend them into complete accord.
Those gentle and social insects, the butterflies, covering the
banks with their winged tribes, transform the whole prairie into an
enchanting flowery carpet. The butterfly of butterflies, the glorious
butterfly of Brazil, of a rich azure lit up by shifting gleams, softly
hovers, in the warm hours, above the waters crowned by the imperial
dome of the blossomy forests. A pacific and splendid creature, it seems
the innocent king of all the puissant nature. Others, scarcely less
beautiful, follow in its train; and ever and ever more the glorious
host, in floating azure, follows the current of the stream.
Such, then, are the tongues of Love; for the boundless rainbow of all
these colours is simply its varied expression. And for what purpose, if
love itself ought to appear without an intermediary?
Already, in our colder lands, the timid glow-worm, motionless under the
hedgerow, suffers its little lamp to shine and guide through the night
the lover to his love.
In Italy it moves to and fro, and its flame has acquired wings. I was
much struck by it, at the hot springs of Acqui, in Piedmont, where
sulphur everywhere prevails; the wild dance of the tiny lights seemed
stimulated by the fires lurking in the entrails of the earth. In Brazil
the very leaves overflow with phosphorus. How should aught be wanting
for the illumination of the bridal-joy of the insect? That marvel,
under the tropics, glitters everywhere and enchants everything. Two
hundred species are known, which Nature has gifted with the poetic
faculty of breathing forth flame, and charming their great festival
with the poesy of light.
A graceful German lady, Mademoiselle Mérian, having been transplanted
to these zones of fire, has related in naïve language the alarm which
she experienced on seeing their insect wonders. The daughter and
grand-daughter of excellent and laborious engravers, herself an artist
and of well-informed mind, she has produced, in Latin, Dutch, and
French, an admirable and picturesque work on the Insects of Surinam.
The learned lady, in an exemplary life of misfortunes and virtues, had
but one weakness (who has not one?)--the love of Nature. She quitted
Germany for Holland, attracted by its unique and brilliant collections
of the treasures of the two worlds. Then, as these did not suffice her,
she visited Guiana, where she painted for several years. She combined
in the same picture,--an excellent method,--the insect, the plant on
which it lives, and the reptile which lives on the insect. Thoroughly
conscientious, she sought out and posed her formidable models, of
which, nevertheless, she was much afraid. Once, when the Indian savages
had brought her a basket of insects, she was sleeping after her work.
But in her chaste slumber she was disturbed by a strange dream. She
thought she heard a harp, a melody of love. The melody grew inflamed;
it was no longer a song, but an intoxication. All the room seemed
filled with fire. She woke, and found her dream was true. The basket
was the lyre, the basket was the volcano. She quickly saw that the
volcano did not burn. The captives were fire-flies (_fulgores_); their
song was an epithalamium, and their flame the flame of love.
* * * * *
In the tropical countries the stranger generally travels by night to
avoid the heat. But he would not dare to enter the populous shadows of
the forest-depths, were he not reassured by the luminous insects which
he sees dancing and fluttering in the distance, and anon planted on
the neighbouring bushes. He takes them for his companions, and fixes
them in his shoes, partly to show him the path, and partly to keep off
serpents. And when the morning breaks, he gratefully and carefully
replaces them among the thickets, and restores them to their amorous
work. There is a pretty Indian proverb: "Carry away the fire-fly, but
return it to the place from which thou carriedst it."
Who can fail to be affected by their flame? It follows the movement
of life, it flares and wanes in cadence with the ebb and flow of our
respiration; it beats in exact accord with the rhythm of our heart. It
expands or contracts in harmony with it, and the trouble of its emotion
agitates also that tremendous torch.
What lies at the bottom? the visible desire, the effort to please and
to be loved, translated in a hundred different manners by the eloquence
of light. One, of an unrivalled blue, with a head of rubies, outvies
with its scintillation the red-hot coal. Another, of a more melancholy
cast, plunges into a sombre red. A third, of flame-coloured yellow,
fading and passing into green, seems to express the languors, swoons,
and storms of the violent loves of the South.
The ardent daughter of Spain, rendered more impassioned by the American
sky, puts her hand on the creature of the flame, and seizes upon it as
her own. She makes it a talisman, a jewel, and a victim. Burning, she
places it on her burning bosom, where it must soon perish.
There is no purpose to which she does not turn it. By a triumph of
audacious coquetry, linking the insects with silk, or imprisoning them
in gauze, she wreathes the animated flames in glowing necklaces, and
rolls them around her waist in girdles of fire. The queens of the ball
are crowned with an infernal diadem of living topazes, of throbbing
emeralds, which flicker or gleam (through suffering or love?). A
brilliant but funereal decoration, of sinister magnetism, whose charm
is enhanced by a sentiment of death. They dance; the waning flame
associates its tender gleams with the languishing glances of a deep
black eye. They dance; without end and without reason, without pity or
remembrance of the amorous light dying and fading on their bosom, and
having no power to say: "Replace me where you captured me!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: VI.--THE SILKWORM.]
[Illustration]