BY
FREDERIK VAN EEDEN
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY
MELLIE VON AUW
THE-PLIMPTON-PRESS
NORWOOD-MASS-U-S-A
I
As one approaches my little city from the sea on a summer's day, one
sees only the tall, round clump of trees on the ramparts and,
overtopping it, the old bell-tower with its fantastically shaped and
ornamented stories and dome-top of deep cobalt blue. The land to either
side is barely visible, and the green foliage flooded with pale
sunshine seems to drift in the sun-mist on the grayish yellow waters.
It is a dreamy little town, that once in Holland's prime had a
short-lived illusion of worldly grandeur. Then gaily-rigged vessels
embellished with gilded carvings and flaunting flags entered the little
harbor, fishing boats, merchant vessels and battleships. The
inhabitants built fine houses with crow-stepped gables and sculptured
façades and collected in them exotic treasures, furniture, plate and
china. Cannon stood on the ramparts and the citizens were filled with a
sense of their importance and power as people of some authority in the
world. They bore an escutcheon and were proud of it, they had their
portraits painted in gorgeous attire, they gave the things their terse
and pretty names, and they spoke picturesquely and gallantly as befits
people leading a flourishing elemental life.
Now all this is long past. The little city no longer lives a life of
its own, but quietly follows in the wake of the great world-ship. In
the harbor a few fishing smacks, a market ship, a couple of sailing
yachts and the steamboat are still anchored. The fine houses are
curiosities for the strangers, and the china, the furniture and
paintings may be viewed in the museum for a fee.
There is order, and peace, and prosperity too; the streets and houses
look clean and well kept. But it is no longer a vigorous personal life;
the color and the bloom have faded, the splendor and pageant are gone.
It still lives, but as an unimportant part of a greater life. Its charm
lies only in the memory of former days. It is lovely through its dream
life, through the unreal phantasy of its past. All that constitutes its
charm - the dark shadowy canals reflecting the light drawbridges, the
pretty quaintly-lighted streets with the red brick gables, bluish gray
stoops, chains and palings, the harbor with the little old tar and rope
shops, the tall sombre elm trees on the ramparts - it all possesses
only the accidental beauty of the faded. It can no longer, like a young
and blooming creature, will to be beautiful. It is beautiful
involuntarily, no longer as a piece of human life, but as a piece of
nature. And its loveliness is pathetic through the afterglow of a brief
blazing up of individual vivid splendor of life.
In this quiet sphere, where life now flows on but lazily and
reflectively as in a small tributary stream of, the great river, - I
live, an old man, for the accomplishment of my last task.
I live obscurely amid the obscure. I do my best to escape notice, and
have no notoriety whatsoever, not even as an eccentric.
I associate with the doctor and the notary is expected of me, and I
also go to the club. It is known that I have an income and, besides,
earn some money from a small nursery on the outskirts of the town, and
by giving Italian lessons.
The rumors regarding my past have all quieted down, and people have
grown accustomed to my foreign name - Muralto. They see me regularly
taking the same walk along the sea dike to my nursery, and my gray felt
hat and my white coat in summery weather are known as peculiarities of
the town. When you read this, reader, I shall be buried, respectably
and simply, with twelve hired mourners and the coach with black plumes
of the second class, and a wreath from the burgomaster's wife, to whom
I gave lessons; from the notary, who occasionally earned something
through me; and from the orphanage because, as treasurer, I always kept
the accounts in order.
This is as I wish it to be. When you read this my living personality
may no longer stand in your way. My individual being may no longer
engage your attention. I know how this would veil the truth for you.
Never has man accepted new and lucid ideas from a contemporary unless
he were an avowed and venerated prophet, that is to say, a man
corrupted and lost. I will not let myself be corrupted and give myself
up as lost, and yet I know that my thoughts are too great to be
accepted from free conviction without slavishness by my living
fellow-men. Therefore have I peace in this petty world under the heavy
burden of my tremendous life. I did not confer it on myself and I have
no choice. Were I to speak my mind freely and honestly, I should be
either locked up or worshipped. I deserve neither one nor the other;
but such is the nature of the people of this age - they cannot reject
without hatred nor accept without slavishness. Thus I live in
self-restraint and peace among the lowly.
But these pages are the doors of the cap of my suppressed life. Only by
these writings do I keep the peace within and master the tumult.
It is a hard struggle; I am weary from it not from arousing, but from
restraining my thoughts. For what I write must be clear and orderly and
concise. Readers nowadays are impatient and easily bored, and crave
excitement. And they are dulled too, and no longer hear so clearly the
true ring of sincere conviction. Yet I have peace, for this will be
read. It will strike the summits, and the social system of today is
still built so that everything slowly spreads from the summits and
penetrates to the very lowest layers.
Do you disagree, reader? Do you accept nothing on higher authority, but
judge everything independently for yourself?
Then it is just you I need. Then you are on the summit and all the
rest of mankind in ranged about or beneath you. All the rest of mankind
accepts and believes on authority - but you do not. Then have I also
written this expressly and solely for you. How lucky that at last it
has fallen into your hands. Allow me to embrace you in thought, dear,
precious, freely-judging and independently-thinking reader. You are
such a treasure to me, such a find, that for the world I would not let
you go or lose you.
Listen then, dear reader, with a little patience and some painstaking
on your part. Sweet spoils are not won without exertion! You are
sensible enough not to want to judge without having given faithful
attention.
I write this for you because you do not want to act without
understanding; because you are restless and dissatisfied, a seeker and
lover of the unknown; because at last you have turned on your way to
look for what so long has gently pushed and driven you; because your
eyes are opened wider and are more intent on the prospect toward which
everything seems to lead.
I write this for you, the refractory and rebellious who are tired of
all slavery.
I write this for you, who feel that you have reached maturity and no
longer want to be treated as a child, not even by fate.
I write this for you, the proud and the evil; yes, for the wantonly
wicked who despises the meek and the just. I write this also for you,
the earnestly good who wants to love his enemy, but cannot.
The complaisant and contented, the adjusters and compromisers, the
advocates and flatters of God, those who shun anxiety and stop their
ears against too blatant a truth - they had better read something else;
there are plenty of pleasant and entertaining books for amusement.
And the slaves of reason, who tread in a circle around their stake as
far as the cord of their logic reaches, they too cannot be my readers.
Only he who has overcome the word, who has forsaken the idolatry of the
"true word" - he can read me with profit and understanding.
Listen, then: I am an old man proclaiming the glory of a new era. I am
lonely and forsaken, but nevertheless I have a share in the great human
world and the life of the gods.
I sit here serenely in my sombre, cool, old house, with its musty odor
of old wood and memories of past generations. I look out upon the
harbor and I hear the continuous murmur of the sea-breeze in the tall
elms on the dike, and the screams of the gulls speaking of the vast and
briny life of the sea. And yet, in the solitude of this quiet,
forgotten life, I feel that I am mightier than the mightiest, a match
for fate. I rule life; it shall bow to my wishes. I wrestle with the
gods, even to the Most High. Sometimes I tremble, when a careless
glance, with some semblance of deeper import, from one of the persons
about me makes me think that a spark of this seething life within me
has been discovered. But no one sees it, happily, nor knows me!
Had I told you this, (is it not so, dear reader, though you be ever so
wise?), and I came not in a fiery chariot with a halo of glory and in
dazzling raiment, but in my citizen's clothes, then after all you would
undoubtedly have shrugged your shoulders and taken me for a poor fool.
But now I am a rich sage, because I write and hold my peace.
You are still a person, dear reader, but I have gone a step beyond - I
am dead and no longer a person. Now, now while you are reading this. In
this now, that is also now for me. I am no person, but more than that,
and therefore can say to you what, from any person, would annoy you.
For you there is left only a still, small book, that meekly submits to
being closed up and laid aside - and then again, as patiently as ever,
resumes its tranquil message, when opened.