communicating, except through suffering; they had no work, and they had
no art, and they had no religion. To Thyrsis it seemed that this last
was the supreme need of their lives; but it was quite in vain that he
tried to supply it. He had no theologies to offer, but he had a rough
working faith that served his needs. He had a way of prayer--informal
prayers, to the undiscovered gods--“Oh infinite Holiness of life, I seek
to be reminded of Thee!” He would contemplate their failures and agonies
and despairs, and floods of pity would well up in him; and then he would
come back to Corydon, seeking to make these things real to her. But this
he could never do--he could never carry her with him, he could never
find anything with her but failure and disappointment.
This was, in part, the outrage that the creed-mongers had done to her;
with their dead formulas and their grotesque legends and their stupid
bigotries they had sullied and defaced all the symbols of religion--they
had made a noble temple into a sepulchre of dead bones. They had taken
her by force, when she was a child, and dragged her into it, and filled
her with terror and loathing. To abandon the language of metaphor, they
had sent her to a Protestant-Episcopal Sunday-school, where a vinegary
spinster had taught her the catechism and the ten commandments. And so
forever after the whole content of Christianity was a thing alien and
hateful to her.
But also, in their disharmony was something even more fundamental.
Corydon’s emotions did not come in the same way as her husband’s. With
her a joy had to be a spontaneous thing; there could be no reasoning
about it, and it was not the product nor the occasion of any act
of will. In fact, if anyone were to say to Corydon, “Come, let us
experience a certain emotion”--then straightway it would become certain
that she might experience any emotion in the world, save only that one.
Thyrsis told himself that he was to blame for this having destroyed her
spontaneity in the very beginning But how was he to have known that,
understanding as he did no temperament but his own, being powerless to
handle any tools but his own? The process of his soul’s life was to tell
himself all his vices over; and so he would become filled with hatred of
himself, and would forthwith evolve into something different. But with
Corydon, this method produced, not rage and resolution, but only black
despair. The process of Corydon’s soul-life was that some one else
should come to her, and tell her that she was radiant and exquisite;
and straightway she would become these things, and yet more of them; and
until such a person came to her, all her soul’s life stood still.
This was illustrated whenever there was any misunderstanding between
them, any crisis of unhappiness or fit of melancholia. It was quite
in vain at such times that Thyrsis would ask her to sweep these things
aside and forget them; it was disastrous to suggest that she put any
blame upon herself, or scold herself into a different attitude. He might
take days to make up his mind to do what he had to do--yet that fit of
misery would last until he had come and done it. He had to put his arms
about her, and make her realize that she was precious to him, that she
was necessary to him, that he loved her and appreciated her and believed
in her; so, and so only, would the current of her life begin once more
to flow.
And why could he not do this more quickly? Why did he have to wait until
she had suffered agonies? Why did he have to be dragged to it by the
hair of his head, as it were--as a means of keeping her from going
insane from misery? Was it that he did not really love her? Mocking
voices in his soul told him that was it--but he knew it was not so. He
loved her; but he loved her in his way, and that was not her way. And
how shall one explain that strange impulse in the heart of man, that
makes it impossible for him to be content with anything that is upon the
earth--that makes him restless in the presence of beauty and love
and joy, and all those things with which he so obviously ought to be
content?
It is so clearly irrational and unjustifiable; and yet that impulse
continues to drive him forth, as it drove him to destroy the statues
in the Athenian temples, and to burn the silken robes and the jewelled
treasures in the public-squares of Venice. One contemplates the thing
in its most unlovely aspects--in the form of Simeon Stylites upon his
pillar, devoured by worms, or of Bernard Gui, with his racks and his
thumb-screws and his “secular arm”--and it seems the very culmination of
all human madness and horror. And yet, it does not cease to come; and
he upon whom it seizes may not free himself by any power of his will,
by any cunning of his wit; and no agony of yearning and grief may be
sufficient to enable him to love a woman as a woman desires to be loved.
Section 15. Thyrsis would work over the book until he was utterly
exhausted; and then, limp as a rag, he would come back to the world of
reality and face these complications. He needed to rest, he needed to
be soothed and comforted and sung to sleep; he needed to receive--and
instead he had to give. Sometimes he wondered vaguely if this might not
have been otherwise; he knew nothing about women--but surely there might
have been, somewhere in the world, some woman who would have understood,
and would have asked nothing from him. But he dwelt on that thought but
seldom, for it seemed a kind of treason; he was not married to any such
hypothetical woman--he was married to Corydon, and it was Corydon he had
to save from the wolves.
So, time after time, he would come back to her, and take the cup of her
pain in his trembling hands, and put it to his lips and drain it to the
dregs. He would sit with her, and hear the tale of her struggles, he
would fan the sparks of his exhausted emotions into flame, so that she
might warm herself by the glow. And when the burden became too great for
him, when the black floods of anguish and despair which she poured out
upon him threatened to engulf him altogether--then he would tramp away
into the forest, or out upon the snow-encrusted hills, and call up
the demons of his soul once more, and proclaim himself unconquered and
unconquerable. He would spread his wings to the glory of his vision; he
would feel again the surge and sweep of it, he would sing aloud with the
power of it, and pledge himself anew to live for it--if need be even to
die for it.
The world was trying to crush it in him; the world hated it and feared
it, and was bound that it should not live; and Thyrsis had sworn to
save it--and so the issue was joined. He would hearten himself for the
struggle--he would fling himself into the thick of it, again and again;
he would summon up that thing which he called his Genius, that fountain
of endless force that boiled up within him. Whatever strength they
brought against him, he could match it; he might be knocked down,
trampled upon, left for dead upon the field, but he could rise and renew
the conflict! He would talk to himself, he would call aloud to himself,
he would repeat to himself formulas of exhortation, cries of defiance,
proclamations of resolve. He would summon his enemies before him,
sometimes in hosts, sometimes as individuals--all those who ever in
his life had mocked and taunted him, scolded him and threatened him. He
would shake his clenched fists at them; they might as well understand
it--they could never conquer him, not all the power they could bring
would suffice! He would call upon posterity also; he would summon
his friends and lovers of the future, to give him comfort in his sore
distress. Was it not for them that he was laboring--that they might some
day feed their souls upon his faith?
Thyrsis would think of the “Song of Roland”, recalling that heroic
figure and his three days’ labor: when he had read that poem, his
heart had seemed to throb with pain every time that Roland lifted his
sword-arm. He would think of the old blind “Samson Agonistes”; he would
think of the Greeks at Thermopylae, of the siege of Haarlem. History was
full of such tales of the agonies that men had endured for the sake of
their faith; and why should he expect exemption, why should he shrink
from the fiery test?