THE POWER OF THE FLAME
"Do you think often of Donatella, Stelio?" La Foscarina inquired
suddenly, after a long silence, during which neither had heard anything
but the sound of their own footsteps along the canal path of the
Vetrai, illumined by the multi-colored lights from the fragile objects
that filled the windows of the neighboring shops.
Her voice sounded harsh and strained. Stelio stopped suddenly, as one
who finds himself confronted by an unexpected difficulty. His spirit
had been roaming over the red and green isle of Murano, begemmed
with flowers in her present desolate poverty, which seemed to blot
out the memory of the joyous time when poets had sung her praises
as "a sojourn for nymphs and demigods." He had been thinking of the
famous gardens where Andrea Navagero, Cardinal Bembo, Aretino, Aldo,
and their learned followers, rivaled one another in the elegance of
their Platonic dialogues, _lauri sub umbra_. He had been thinking of
convents, luxurious as boudoirs, inhabited by little nuns dressed
in white camelot and laces, with curls on their temples, and necks
uncovered, after the fashion of the ancient honored courtesans, given
to secret loves, much sought after by wealthy patricians, with such
euphonious names as Ancilla Soranzo, Cipriana Morosini, Zanetta Balbi,
Beatrice Falier, Eugenia Muschiera, pious instructors in the ways of
love. His changeful dreams were accompanied by a plaintive little air,
a forgotten dance measure, in which the faint soul of Murano tinkled
and whispered.
At this abrupt question, the air fled from his memory, all imaginings
were dispersed, the enchantment of the old life vanished. His wandering
mind was called back, and came with reluctance. He felt beside him the
throbbing of a living heart, which he must inevitably wound. He looked
at his friend.
She was walking beside the canal, calm, with no sign of agitation,
between the green water and the iridescence of the rows of delicate
vases. Only her slender chin trembled slightly, between her short veil
and fur collar.
"Yes, sometimes," he replied, after an instant of hesitation, recoiling
from falsehood, and feeling the necessity to elevate their love above
ordinary deceptions and pretensions, so that it should remain for him a
cause of strength, not of weakness, a free agreement, not a heavy chain.
She pursued her way without wavering, but she had lost all
consciousness of movement in the terrible throbbing of her heart, which
shook her from head to foot. She saw nothing more: all she was aware of
was the nearness of the fascinating water.
"Her voice is unforgettable," Stelio went on, after a pause, having
found his courage. "Its power is amazing. From that first evening,
I have thought that that singer might be the marvelous instrument
for my great work. I wish she would consent to sing the lyric parts
of my tragedy, the odes that arise from the symphonies and resolve
themselves into figures of the dance at the end, between episodes. La
Tanagra has consented to dance. I have confidence in your good offices,
dear friend, to obtain also the consent of Donatella Arvale. Thus the
Dionysiac trinity would be reëstablished in a perfect manner on the new
stage, for the joy of mankind."
Even while he spoke he realized that his words had a false ring, that
his unconscious air contrasted too crudely with the dark shadow on
the woman's face. In spite of himself, he had exaggerated his frank
tone in speaking of Donatella merely as an instrument of art, a purely
ideal force to be drawn into the circle of his magnificent enterprise.
In spite of himself, disturbed by the anxiety in that soul so near
his own, he had leaned slightly toward deception. Certainly what he
had said was the exact truth, but his friend had demanded from him
another truth. He broke off suddenly, unable to endure the sound of
his own words. He felt that at that hour, between the actress and
himself, art had no meaning, no vital value. Another force dominated
them, more imperious, more disquieting. The world created by intellect
seemed inert as the ancient stones on which they trod. The only real
and formidable power was the poison running in their human blood. The
will of the one said: "It is my will that you shall love and serve me,
wholly, mine alone, body and soul." The will of the other said: "It is
my will that you shall love and serve me, but while I live I shall
renounce nothing that may appeal to my wish and fancy." The struggle
was bitter and unequal.
As she remained silent, unconsciously hastening her steps, he prepared
himself to face the other truth.
"I understand, of course, that that was not what you wished to know."
"You are right: it was not that. Well?"
She turned to him with a sort of convulsive violence that reminded him
of her fury one far-off evening, when she had cried madly: "Go! Run!
She awaits you!"
At this moment a workman met them, and offered to show them over the
neighboring glass factory.
"Yes, let us go in there," said La Foscarina, hurriedly following the
workman. Presently they reached the furnace room, and were enveloped in
its fiery breath, as they gazed at an incandescent altar, the glow from
which dazzled their eyes with a painful glare.
--To disappear, to be swallowed up, to leave no sign!--cried the
woman's heart, intoxicated with the thought of destruction.--In
one second that fire could devour me like a dry stick, a bundle of
straw.--And she went nearer to the open mouths in which she could see
the molten flame, more resplendent than a midsummer sun, rolling around
the earthen pots in which the shapeless mass was melting; the workmen,
standing around, awaited the right moment to approach with iron tubes
to shape that mass with the breath from their lips and the instruments
of their art.
--O virtue of Fire!--thought the Inspirer, turned from his anxiety
by the miraculous beauty of the element that had become to him as
familiar as a brother, since the day he had found the revealing
melody.--Ah, that I might give to the life of the creatures that love
me the perfection of the forms to which I aspire! That I might fuse
all their weaknesses in some white heat, and make of the product
obedient matter in which to impress the commandments of my heroic will
and the images of my pure poetry! Why, my friend, why will you not be
the divine living statue molded by my spirit, the work of faith and
sorrow whereby our lives might surpass even our art? Why are we so near
resembling ordinary lovers, who lament and curse? When I heard from
your lips those admirable words: 'I can do one thing that love alone
cannot do,' I believed indeed that you could give me more than love.
You must be able always to do those things that love can do, besides
those it cannot do, in order to meet my insatiable nature.--
Meanwhile, work was going on about the furnace. At the end of the
blow pipes the molten glass swelled, twisted, became silvery as a
little cloud, shone like the moon, cracked, divided into a thousand
infinitesimal fragments, glittering and thin as the threads we see at
daybreak stretching from tree to tree. The glass-blowers were making
harmonious vases. The apprentices placed a small, pear-shaped mass
of burning paste on the spot chosen by the master-workmen; and the
pear lengthened, twisted, transformed itself into a handle, a rim, a
spout, a foot, or a stem. The glowing heat slowly died out under the
instruments, and the half-formed cup was again exposed to the heat,
then drawn from it docile, ductile, sensitive to the lightest touches
that ornamented and refined it, conforming it to the model handed down
by their ancestors, or to the free invention of a new creator.
Extraordinarily light and agile were the human gestures that produced
these elegant creatures of the fire, of breath and iron; they were like
the movements of a silent dance. The figure of La Tanagra appeared
to the Inspirer among the perpetual undulations of the flame, like a
salamander. Donatella's voice seemed to sing to him the powerful melody.
--To-day, again, I myself have given you the thought of her for a
companion--thought La Foscarina--I myself have called her up between
us, and evoked her shadow when perhaps your thoughts were elsewhere; I
have suddenly led her to you, as on that night of delirium.--
It was true, it was true! From the instant when the singer's name had
been spoken on the water by Foscarina, she herself had unconsciously
exalted the new image in the poet's mind, had nourished it with her
jealousy and fear, had strengthened and increased it day by day,
and had at last illumined it with certainty. More than once she had
said to the young man, who perhaps had forgotten: "She awaits you!"
More than once she had presented to his imagination that distant,
mysterious figure of expectancy. As on that Dionysian night, when the
conflagration of Venice had lighted up the two youthful faces with the
same reflection, it was now her own passion that illumined them, and
they glowed only because she herself had made them.--Certainly, he now
possesses that image, and it possesses him. My anguish only augments
his ardor. It is a joy to him to love her before my despairing eyes!--
"As soon as the vase is shaped, we put it in the furnace room to be
tempered," replied one of the men to a query from Stelio. "If it were
exposed to the air immediately it would crack in a thousand pieces."
They could see the radiant vases, still slaves of the fire, still under
its empire, gathered in a receptacle joined to the furnace in which
they had been fused.
"They have been there ten hours," said the workman, pointing to
his graceful family. "Is this our great Foscarina?" he added in an
undertone to Stelio. He had recognized her when she had lifted her
veil, suffocating with the heat.
Revealing ingenuous emotion, the master workman took a step toward her
and bowed respectfully.
"One evening, my lady, you made me tremble and weep like a child. Will
you allow me, in memory of that evening, which I never shall forget, to
offer you a little work from the hands of the poor Seguso?"
"A Seguso, are you?" said the poet, leaning toward the little man, to
look at him closer; "are you of the great family of glass-blowers, one
of the genuine race?"
"At your service, master."
"A prince, then."
"Yes, a harlequin playing the prince."
"You know all the secrets of the art, eh?"
The Muranese made a mysterious gesture which seemed to call up all the
deep ancestral knowledge of which he affirmed himself the last heir.
"Then, mistress, will you deign to accept it?"
La Foscarina had not spoken, fearing to trust her voice, but now all
her affable grace rose above her sadness and accepted the gift while
compensating the giver.
The vase held by the little bent man that had created it was like
a miraculous flower blooming on a twisted shrub. It was a thing of
beauty, mysterious as natural things are mysterious; it held the life
of a human breath in its hollow; its transparence equaled that of sky
and water; its purple rim was like a floating seaweed; no one could
have told the reason why it was so beautiful; and its value was either
slight or beyond price, according to the eyes that looked at it.
La Foscarina chose to take it with her, without having it packed, as
one carries a flower.