hands outstretched. “Dearest, it is madness. See, it is late; you will
be missed, and the night bodes a storm. Play! I would play for you if
Paradise threatened and hell yawned rather than refuse you.” “Play!”
she cried. “Play for me Chopin, but do not come near me.” He shivered,
and their eyes kissed, hers burning like misty-green signals of love
and sorrow; then he faced the night for a moment, and turning to the
piano began without preluding.
It was the Second Impromptu of Chopin, the rarely heard one in the
key of F sharp, major mode. As he struck the octave in the bass the
approaching storm muttered in the west, the wind soughed into the
room, and the flame of the wax tapers flickered faint messages to
the tuberoses. She on the couch sighed softly. The magic of Chopin
enveloped them as the plaintive theme broke the air into melodic
ripples. It sang her into depths of dreams, anterior to which lurked
other dreams--dreams with soft-sounding syllables, dreams that lapped
her consciousness into the golden gloom of drugged slumber, dreams
opal-tinted and music-melancholy beyond compare. She swooned and then
swam out to the infinite with bold, blissful strokes, for he was
playing with rare cunning the closing choral-like measures of the first
part of the Impromptu.
The moan without deepened into a roar, then came a vermilion flash
followed by a crash of thunder. The lights were extinguished, all but
one, swayed feebly in the rush of the wind, and the tuberoses listened
thirstily to the plash of the new-born rain.
He had begun the D major section of the Impromptu; the rhythmical
swing of the bass seemed a proud spirit defying destiny, and the
massive chords, with virile assertive tones, blended with the night and
roared answer to the thunder’s bellow. They rose to a crescendo, they
dominated all, for the man within was storming out his resolves and
passions on the keyboard. The fury increased to a sheer height of tone;
then, melting away into a mere echo, it almost fainted. His soul chased
hers and together they followed the enigmatic tones of that modulation
which is an abysm betwixt fragrant meads, and warns them that seek its
depths. The lovely F major part glimmered in the air.
“Come back to me, to the first of all;
Let us learn and love it over again.
Let us now forget and now recall,
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall.”
“Browning,” she softly mused, “and life.” The plot thickened, the
harmony grew denser--a musical palimpsest lay before them, and as
they strove to unweave its meaning they shuddered at the gulf. Weary
and panting in spirit they stared askance and questioned the future.
“Not that,” the music implored. Then burst that delicious cascade of
silvery scales. They coruscated, they foamed, they boiled with melodic
laughter. It seemed as if God was with the world and he and she heard
the lark trilling to the dawn as hand in hand they mounted in their
dizzy flight. Their naked, unabashed souls groped in the azure and they
carolled that song which is as old as eternity. They fell through space
into fathomless twilight, and the piano sang the echo-like refrain of
the first motif. It was the swan-song of their hopes. The heavy-scented
night spoke softly to their hearts; a nightingale dimly piped in the
distance, and with velvety clangor the music ceased.
He remained at the piano. She rose. Without were odors and starlight.
The two drank each other’s gaze with the thirst of lost souls. Then she
went into the night, and the other one, staring at the tuberoses, heard
their perfumed murmur: “Renounce thou shalt; thou shalt renounce.”
VII
THE VISION MALEFIC
“To be in Heaven the second, he disdains:
So now the first in Hell and flames he reigns,
Crown’d once with joy and light: crown’d now with fire and pains.”
--_Phineas Fletcher_ (1582).
I am not a diabolist. I was an agnostic until ... I have read Huysmans
and I do not believe he ever saw half he describes. Yet I, and in
commonplace America, have seen things, have heard things, that would
make mad the group of Parisian occultists. I dislike publicity, but
Vance Thompson has asked me to relate the story, and so I mean to give
it, names and all, with the faint hope that it may serve as a warning
to callow astrologists, and all the younger generation affected by the
writings of impious men who deny the existence of the devil.
More than twenty years ago I was the organist of a Roman Catholic
church in the lower part of my city. I had studied the instrument in
Germany and believed in Johann Sebastian Bach. I played and pedalled
fugues on week-days for my own pleasure, and on Sundays executed with
unction easy masses by Bordoni, Mercadante, and Haydn; my choir was not
an ambitious one. The stipendium was small, the work light, and the
two priests amiable enough. One, a German, Father Oelschlager, was the
rector. His assistant was an Irishman with French blood in his veins.
His name--shall I ever forget his name and face?--was Father Michael
Moreau. He was crazy about music and occultism. The former he made no
secret of; the latter I discovered only after a long acquaintance.
Moreau came to the organ-loft when I practised on week-days, sang a
little, and feasted much on Bach chorales. Urged often to visit his
room, I did so, and he showed me rare black-letter missals, and later
the backs of a number of old books whose titles I could not decipher. I
am no Latinist, yet I knew these volumes were written neither in Latin
nor Greek. The characters I had never seen before, and when I remarked
their strangeness, Father Moreau smiled and even laughed as I quoted
Poe: “the volumes of the Magi--in the iron-bound melancholy volumes of
the Magi.”
Music led us to discuss religion, and my friend astonished me by
his erudition. His sensitive features would become illuminated when
he spoke of the strange tales of the Talmud. “Oh, my God!” he would
cry with a patibulary gesture. “Why hast Thou not vouchsafed us more
light?” And then would beg for Bach, and on the mighty stream of the
D minor fugue his harassed mind seemed to float and find comfort. As
time wore on he grew morbid, morose, reticent, and devoted himself
to his dull duties with a fanaticism that was almost harsh. The
parishioners noticed it, and his reputation for saintliness increased.
His confessional was always crowded and his sermons remarkable for the
acerbity, the awful pictures he made of the sufferings of the damned
and of the relentlessness of God’s wrath. His superior, good-natured
Father Oelschlager, bade the other look at the cheerful side of the
question, to believe more in God’s mellowness and sweetness, and would
quote Cardinal Newman’s Lead Kindly Light, and certain comforting
texts from the Scriptures, and then smoke his pipe. But the ascetic
temperament of Moreau barred all attempts at palliation or attenuation
of the God of Hosts, of the God who laid low the pride of Greece and
Rome. Life to him was a cancer to be extirpated, and he confessed to me
one night after rehearsal that he had almost doubted God’s existence
and courted suicide after reading Renan’s Vie de Jésus. I suggested
change of scene, less strenuous labors, above all, the world, music,
and athletics. My advice availed not, and I saw that Father Moreau was
fast becoming a monomaniac. His sermons during the hot summer were
devoted to the personality of the devil, to his corporeal existence,
to his daily presence in the marts of mankind; and so constant was his
harping on this theme that Father Oelschlager had to forbid him the
subject. “It is so warm, my son! Why, then, do you hold forth on hell?
Let the poor people hear more of the crystal rivers, the green meads
of the New Jerusalem. It would be more seasonable.” Moreau frowned, but
obeyed his superior.
With the autumn and winter his habits became more secretive, his visits
to me less frequent, and his air of detachment most melancholy. Advent
saw him a mere wraith of a man, worn by speculation, devoured by an
interior flame, a flame that was wasting his very soul to despair.
He seldom conversed with me, although I watched him anxiously and
occasionally interrogated him regarding his health. At last I spoke to
his associate, but encountered an easy-going philosophic spirit, which
assured me Father Moreau was going through what most young priests
should. He was at the period of unfaith, was nettled by doubt, and
after he had wrestled with Satan, and won the good fight, he would
again become normal. This seemed consoling though vague.
The day before Christmas I promised that I would not send a substitute
to play the midnight mass at the church. Our church was the only one in
the city where the old-fashioned mass at twelve o’clock on Christmas
Eve was celebrated. It is located near the river, and my journey was
a long one, for I lived up-town. I ate a six o’clock supper and went
to bed, telling them to arouse me at a quarter before eleven. I wished
to be fresh for the early service. By eleven I was out on the street,
and took a car bound south. I reached the church in time, and soon
the solemn high mass began. My choir had with elaborate care prepared
Cherubini’s mass, and despite the poor organ, the extra chorus and
much enthusiasm made some effect. The congregation was attentive, and
Father Oelschlager delivered a short, happy sermon, urging his flock to
rejoice at the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem, Jesus the Infant Christ,
uncrucified, but newly born into a world of toil and sin for our
redemption. At the consecration of the host the good rector’s beaming
faith was most edifying. He was served by Father Moreau, a melancholy
deacon, indeed. “Ite Missa Est” pronounced, the faithful dismissed,
I was overjoyed at the release, for I was tired. The choir chatted
about the service, the singing, and at last I was alone. I placed the
music-books back in the tall Gothic cupboard, closed the manuals of my
instrument, and put on my overcoat. It must have been half past one,
perhaps quarter of two, and I relished the prospect of my arrival home,
where a warm breakfast would be awaiting me, and then once more to bed,
for I had to play the regular half past ten o’clock Christmas mass for
the benefit of the sleepy ones, who loved their couch better than their
Christ.
Father Moreau met me at the bottom of the choir-loft steps. He was
dressed for the street, his eyes were blazing, and as he took my arm
his fingers were vise-like. “Will you come with me?” he asked. I was
startled. I explained that I would not have much rest, nor should
he waste his sleeping time on the dismal, cold streets; besides, I
was hungry. I feared that he was about to deluge me with more of his
studies in the customs of the early Gnostics, and, to be quite frank,
I was worn out and not in a receptive humor for such untoward cryptic
wisdom. Any other time--“Will you come with me?” he reiterated, and the
clutch on my arm became oppressive. “Where?” I asked, for I hated to
affront a friend. “Will you come with me?”
By this time the church was quite empty, and I pushed out into the
street. It was dark and snowing hard. We walked toward the street, and
as we neared the corner I heard the lucky sound of a horse-car--there
were no trolleys then. I excused myself, ran and caught the car; the
priest, following, sat down beside me. I paid both fares, and as I had
nothing to say we preserved a sad silence. The mean light, the deserted
streets, the lonely car, and the muffled strokes of the horses’ hoofs
on the snow chilled my soul. I looked sideways at Father Moreau. He was
reading a big parchment-covered book, which I saw by the dim lamplight
was entitled Le Satanisme, by Jules Bois. I was shocked. A priest fresh
from the holy sacrifice of the mass devouring the blasphemies that
I was sure were in the gruesome volume, alarmed my piety. Presently
he saw me and shut its leaves. “There are curious things in it, my
dear friend,” he muttered, and his voice came from across a waste
of sorrow. “Curious things; but you are a believer, are you not?” he
eagerly repeated. “I am,” I replied devoutly, and I crossed myself.
He fairly jumped at me, his eyes wide open and full of devouring
flames. “Will you come with me?” he almost screamed, and for the fourth
time. “East Street,” called out the conductor, and rather than let my
half-mad companion alone--he surely must have been mad--I left the car
with him, the conductor gazing after us with cynical eyes. He evidently
took us for belated revellers.
We walked slowly for ten minutes until we arrived in front of a
sad-looking church, and then I stopped: “The place is not open yet;
they do not have Christmas service until five o’clock.” For the last
time my companion whispered, “Will you come with me?” and, pushing
past me, struck three times on the big doors. A small postern gate
opened at once and we entered the vaulted passageway. I trembled at
the strangeness of the adventure, and held fast to Moreau, for it was
pitch black, and while I heard soft footfalls beside me--the footfalls
of an unknown man--I could not see my hand before my face. We must have
traversed a long yard, for the wind blew freely about me; I heard it
playing on the housetops like a balloon in distress. Yet it felt as
if issuing from a sepulchre, and my heart went to my empty stomach.
Even in my growing terror I craved for coffee; its aroma would have
made me stronger for this inhuman cruise. We went down eleven steps--I
counted them--my conductors on either side of me. Dampness and malodors
warned me of our proximity to some ancient cellarage, some forgotten
catacombs, wherein Father Moreau expected to give me a sacerdotal
surprise, a revival perhaps of an antique and early Christian ritual.
I feebly applauded his intentions, but wished he had chosen some other
time and that the surroundings had been less sinister.
At last we paused and descended another flight of steps--this time I
didn’t number them, for the cold was intense, and it was with relief
that we suddenly arrived in a dimly lighted and warm chapel. It was
empty, devoid of pews, of chairs, of furnishings of any sort, except,
at the upper end, a small votive altar. Before it swung a lamp of
Byzantine workmanship, in which burned a solitary tongue of yellow
flame. The lamp swayed rhythmically, and on the altar were two tall
tapers, lighted and perfumed. And then my eyes rested on the spot where
should have been the tabernacle, surmounted by the gold cross. Judge
of my consternation when I saw, saw as distinctly as I see the pen
which traces these letters, a huge bronze serpent, with overlapping,
glistening, metallic scales. The eyes of this python were almost
feminine, and their regard gentle, reproachful, and voluptuous. My
knees bent beneath me and my face was wet with fright.
“You are a believer, then?” crooned a dull voice in my ear. It was
Moreau. He had thrown off his outer wrap and stood in a black soutane.
He was white with emotion and said in tenderest accents: “Listen; be
my friend. Do not desert me at the crisis of my life. It is to be my
first mass, my first three o’clock mass. My deacon is already at the
altar. Be the solitary worshipper. It will be a low mass--remember, a
low mass!” He spoke clearly, rapidly, sanely, and seeing that I had
something more than a lunatic to deal with, I removed my overcoat and
knelt down near the altar just as Father Moreau ascended its steps,
his assistant holding the end of his _black_ canonicals. If it had
not been for the apparition of the serpent, I might have fancied that
I was assisting at the lonely, pious vigil of a parochial curate.
But the eyes of the serpent devoured mine, and I had none for the
two silhouetted figures that went through with febrile velocity the
familiar motions of the mass. It was low mass, and from the introit to
the preface the space was scarcely appreciable. I heard mumblings, and
the air became chillier as the celebrants moved and bowed or extended
arms; the air grew colder, denser, and tenser. It vibrated like the
wires of a monstrous zither, and my temples throbbed as if in the midst
of a magnetic storm. I felt that I was nearing a great catastrophe,
that God had abandoned His universe to its wicked will, and that I
must sob, or scream, or pray, or die, or be damned forever, or--the
tap of the silvery little bell was as if a sweet summer air had swum
over my agitated soul. It was the bell that announced the solemn
moment when God became man, when the divine spirit, by the miracle of
transubstantiation, became flesh and blood.
In an ecstasy of faith, of awe, I plunged on my face and adored and
wept, and a mighty wind swept from the altar with strange moanings and
lamentings, and the lights were extinguished; yet there was a luminous
fog, that enfolded us, and in it I saw the great serpent, symbol of
wisdom, symbol of eternity, rear spirally aloft, and beneath it--oh,
beneath it!--was the Beatific Vision. In swelling nimbus of flame
was a counterfeit Mother of God, and holding the hand of Him, of the
Infant, Jesus, born but three hours, and--oh, the horror of it!--not
_my_ Christ, not _our_ Christ, not the Christ of the Christians, but an
Antichrist from some fetid hell, sent to seduce us, curse us, destroy
us! My eyes almost burst from their sockets, and the humming of hell’s
loom roared about me as I met the gaze--of the Woman. And now her eyes
were the serpent’s eyes, and on her head was the crown of hell and its
multiple kingdoms. She was naked, and set against her breasts were
sharp swords. She was Mater Malorum, and her breath sowed discord,
lust, and cruel murder. I yearned to pronounce the name of the true
Mother of God, to bid this blinding vision, this damnable vision,
vanish, but my tongue was like wet twine and my sight blistered by
the pageantry of Satan, of Satan and his Dam. And as I struggled the
silvery little bell tapped once more, and in a fading perspective I saw
the Madonna and the Child give me such a sweet, beseeching glance that
my heart dissolved within me, and I cried aloud, my tongue snapping in
the roof of my mouth:
“Mary, Mother of God, preserve us from the Devil and all his works!”
A withering streak of light struck my eyeballs, and I glimpsed the
serpent falling to earth with distended jaws, as two priestly figures
reeled off the altar-steps, and in the brassy clangor of despair
we fell, all three, and swooning blackness shut down upon us like
smothering velvet.
It was still dark when solicitous hands lifted me to my feet: my coat
was thrown about my shoulders, and I was hurried in shivering gloom to
the street. The other one disappeared at the little postern gate, and,
parting outside, with damp, hot hands, and face plastered with hideous
passion, the mad priest said to me, in a cracked voice:
“You have seen _my_ God, the only true God of hell--heaven and earth.”
BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER
_What some distinguished writers have said of them_:
Maurice Maeterlinck wrote, May 15, 1905: “Do you know that
‘Iconoclasts’ is the only book of high and universal critical worth
that we have had for years--to be precise, since Georg Brandes. It is
at once strong and fine, supple and firm, indulgent and sure.”
And of “Ivory Apes and Peacocks” he said, among other things: “I have
marvelled at the vigilance and clarity with which you follow and judge
the new literary and artistic movements in all countries. I do not know
of criticism more pure and sure than yours.” (October, 1915.)
* * * * *
“The Mercure de France translated the other day from Scribner’s one
of the best studies which have been written on Stendhal for a long
time, in which there was no evasion of the question of Stendhal’s
immorality. The author of that article, James Huneker, is, among
foreign critics, the one best acquainted with French literature and the
one who judges us with the greatest sympathy and with the most freedom.
He has protested with force in numerous American journals against the
campaign of defamation against France and he has easily proved that
those who participate in it are ignorant and fanatical.”--“_Promenades
Littéraires_” (_Troisième Série_), _Remy de Gourmont._ (Translated by
Burton Rascoe for the Chicago _Tribune_.)
* * * * *
Paul Bourget wrote, Lundi de Paques, 1909, of “Egoists”: “I have
browsed through the pages of your book and found that you touch in a
sympathetic style on diverse problems, artistic and literary. In the
case of Stendhal your catholicity of treatment is extremely rare and
courageous.”
* * * * *
Dr. Georg Brandes, the versatile and profound Danish critic, wrote:
“I find your breadth of view and its expression more European than
American; but the essential thing is that you are an artist to your
very marrow.”
UNICORNS
“The essays are short, full of a satisfying--and fascinating--crispness,
both memorable and delightful. And they are full of fancy, too, of the
gayest humor, the quickest appreciation, the gentlest sympathy,
sometimes of an enchanting extravagance.”
--_New York Times._
MELOMANIACS
“It would be difficult to sum up ‘Melomaniacs’ in a phrase. Never did
a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater contrasts, not,
perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and obscurity.”
--HAROLD E. GORST, in _London Saturday Review_ (Dec. 8, 1906).
VISIONARIES
“In ‘The Spiral Road’ and in some of the other stories both fantasy and
narrative may be compared with Hawthorne in his most unearthly moods.
The younger man has read his Nietzsche and has cast off his heritage
of simple morals. Hawthorne’s Puritanism finds no echo in these modern
souls, all sceptical, wavering, and unblessed. But Hawthorne’s splendor
of vision and his power of sympathy with a tormented mind do live again
in the best of Mr. Huneker’s stories.”
--_London Academy_ (Feb. 3, 1906).
ICONOCLASTS:
A Book of Dramatists
“His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in
which we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every
sentence.”
--G. K. CHESTERTON, in _London Daily News_.
MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC
“Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the
music and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words
as possible; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping
strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And as
Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of quick
brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and temperament--a
string that vibrates and sings in response to music--we get in these
essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable contribution to
the world’s tiny musical literature.”
--J. F. RUNCIMAN, in _London Saturday Review_.
IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS
“Out of the depressing welter of our American writing upon æsthetics,
with its incredible thinness and triteness and paltriness, its
intellectual sterility, its miraculous dulness, its limitless and
appalling vapidity, Mr. James Huneker, and the small and honorable
minority of his peers, emerge with a conspicuousness that is both
comforting and disgraceful.... Susceptibility, clairvoyance, immediacy
of response, are his; he is the friend of any talent that is fine and
strange and frank enough to incur the dislike of the mighty army of
Bourbons, Puritans, and Bœotians. He is innocent of prepossessions.
He is infinitely flexible and generous. Yet if, in the twenty years
that we have been reading him, he has ever praised a commonplace
talent, we have no recollection of it. His critical tact is well-nigh
infallible.... His position among writers on æsthetics is anomalous and
incredible: no merchant traffics in his heart, yet he commands a large,
an eager, an affectionate public. Is it because he is both vivid and
acute, robust yet fine-fingered, tolerant yet unyielding, astringent
yet tender--a mellow pessimist, a kindly cynic? Or is it rather
because he is, primarily, a temperament--dynamic, contagious, lovable,
inveterately alive--expressing itself through the most transparent of
the arts?”
--LAWRENCE GILMAN, in _North American Review_ (October, 1915).
NEW COSMOPOLIS