II

Pavel Illowski was a man for whom the visible world had never existed.

Born a Malo-Russ, nursed on Little-Russian legends, a dreamer of soft

dreams until more than a lad, he was given a musical education in

Moscow, the White City--itself a dream of old Alexander Nevsky's days.

Within sight of the Kremlin the slim and delicate youth fed upon the

fatalistic writers of the nineteenth century. He knew Schopenhauer

before he learned to pronounce German correctly; and the works of

Bakounin, Herzen, Kropotkin became part of his cerebral tissue.

Proudhon, Marx, and Ferdinand Lassalle taught him to hate wealth,

property, power; and then he came across an old volume of Nietzsche in

his uncle's library. The bent of the boy's genius was settled. He would

be a composer--had he not, as a bare-headed child, run sobbing after

Tschaïkowsky's coffin almost to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in

1893--but a composer who would mould the destinies of his nation,

perhaps the destinies of all the world, a second Svarog. He early saw

the power--insidious, subtle, dangerous power--that lurked in great art,

saw that the art of the twentieth century, his century, was music. Only

thirteen when the greatest of all musical Russians died, he read

Nietzsche a year later; and these men were the two compelling forces of

his life until the destructive poetry of the mad, red-haired Australian

poet, Lingwood Evans, appeared. Illowski's philosophy of anarchy was now

complete, his belief in a social, æsthetic, ethical regeneration of the

world, fixed. Yet he was no militant reformer; he would bear no

polemical banners, wave no red flags. A composer of music, he endeavored

to impart to his work articulate, emotion-breeding and formidably

dangerous qualities.

Deserting the vague and fugitive experimentings of Berlioz, Wagner,

Liszt and Richard Strauss, Illowski modelled himself upon Tschaïkowsky.

He read everything musical and poetical in type, and his first attempt,

when nearly thirty, was a symphonic setting of a poem by a

half-forgotten English poet, Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark

Tower Came," and the music aroused hostile German criticism. Here is a

young Russian, declared the critics, who ventures beyond Tschaïkowsky

and Strauss in his attempts to make music say something. Was not the

classic Richard Wagner a warning to all who endeavored to wring from

music a message it possessed not? When Wagner saw that Beethoven--Ah,

the sublime Beethoven!--could not do without the aid of the human voice

in his Ninth Symphony, he fashioned his music drama accordingly. With

the co-operation of pantomime, costume, color, lights, scenery, he

invented a new art--patched and tinkered one, said his enemies, who

thought him old-fashioned--and so "Der Ring," "Tristan und Isolde," "Die

Meistersinger" and "Parsifal" were born. True classics in their devotion

to form and freedom from the feverishness of the later men headed by

Richard Strauss--why should any one seek to better them, to supplant

them? Wagner had been the Mozart of his century. Down with the musical

Tartars of the East who spiritually invaded Europe to rob her of peace,

religion, aye, and morals!

Much censure of this kind was aimed at Illowski, who continued calmly.

Admiring Richard Strauss, he saw that the man did not dare enough, that

his effort to paint in tone the poetic heroes of the past century,

himself included, was laudable; but Don Juan, Macbeth, quaint Till

Eulenspiegel, fantastic Don Quixote were, after all, chiefly concerned

with a moribund æstheticism. Illowski best liked the Strauss setting of

"Also Sprach Zarathustra" because it approached his own darling project,

though it neither touched the stars nor reached the earth. Besides, this

music was too complicated. A new art must be evolved, not a synthesis of

the old arts dreamed by Wagner, but an art consisting of music alone: an

art for the twentieth century, a democratic art in which poet and tramp

alike could revel. To the profoundest science must be united a clearness

of exposition that only Raphael has. Even a peasant enjoys Velasquez.

The Greeks fathomed this mystery: all Athens worshipped its marbles, and

Phidias was crowned King of Emotions. Music alone lagged in the race,

music, part speech, part painting, with a surging undertow of passion,

music had been too long in the laboratories of the wise men. To free it

from its Egyptian bondage, to make it the tongue of all life, the

interpreter of the world's desire--Illowski dreamed the dreams of

madmen.

Chopin, who divined this truth, went first to the people, later to

Paris, and thenceforward he became the victim of the artificial.

Beethoven was born too soon in a world grown gray under scholars'

shackles. The symphony, like the Old Man of the Sea, weighed upon his

mighty shoulders; music, he believed, must be formal to be understood.

Illowski, in his many wanderings, pondered these things: saw Berlioz on

the trail, in his efforts to formulate a science of instrumental

timbres; saw Wagner captivated by the glow of the footlights; saw Liszt,

audacious Liszt, led by Wagner, and tribute laid upon his genius by the

Bayreuth man; saw Tschaïkowsky struggling away from the temptations of

the music drama only to succumb to the symphonic poem--a new and vicious

version of that old pitfall, the symphony; saw César Franck, the

Belgian mystic, narrowly graze the truth in some of his chamber music,

and then fall victim to the fascinations of the word; as if the word,

spoken or sung, were other than a clog to the free wings of imaginative

music! Illowski noted the struggles of these dreamers, noted Verdi

swallowed by the maelstrom of the theatre; noted Richard Strauss and his

hesitation at the final leap.

To the few in whom he confided, he admitted that Strauss had been his

forerunner, having upset the notion that music must be beautiful to be

music and seeing the real significance of the characteristic, the ugly.

Had Strauss developed courage or gone to the far East when

young--Illowski would shrug his high shoulders, gnaw his cigarette and

exclaim, "Who knows?"

Tolstoy was right after all, this sage, who under cover of fiction

preached the deadliest doctrines; doctrines that aimed at nothing less

than the disequilibration of existing social conditions. Tolstoy had

inveighed bitterly against all forms of artificial art. If the Moujik

did not understand Beethoven, then all the worse for Beethoven; great

art should have in it Mozart's sunny simplicities, without Mozart's

elaborate technical methods. This Illowski believed. To unite the

intimate soul-searching qualities of Chopin and exclude his alembicated

art; to sweep with torrential puissance the feelings of the common

people, whether Chinese or German, Esquimaux or French; to tell them

things, things found neither in books nor in pictures nor in stone,

neither above the earth nor in the waters below; to liberate them from

the tyranny of laws and beliefs and commandments; to preach the new

dispensation of Lingwood Evans--magnificent, brutal, and

blood-loving--ah! if Illowski could but discover this hidden

philosophers stone, this true Arcana of all wisdom, this emotional lever

of Archimedes, why then the whole world would be his: his power would

depose Pope and Emperor. And again he dreamed the dreams of madmen--his

mother had been nearly related to Dostoïewsky....

Of what avail the seed-bearing Bach and his fugues--emotional

mathematics, all of them! Of what avail the decorative efforts of tonal

fresco painters, breeders of an hour's pleasure, soon forgotten in the

grave's muddy disdain! Had not the stage lowered music to the position

of a lascivious handmaiden? To the sound of cymbals, it postured for the

weary debauchee. No; music must go back to its origins. The church

fettered it in its service, knowing full well its good and evil. Before

Christianity was, it had been a power in hieratic hands. Ancient

Egyptian priests hypnotized the multitudes with a single silvery sound;

and in the deepest Indian jungles inspired fakirs induced visions by the

clapping of shells. Who knows how the Grand Llama of Thibet decrees the

destinies of millions! Music again, music in some other garb than we now

sense it. Illowski groaned as he attacked this hermetic mystery. He had

all the technique of contemporary art at his beck; but not that unique

tone, the unique form, by which he might become master of the universe

and gain spiritual dominion over mankind. Yet the secret, so fearfully

guarded, had been transmitted through the ages. Certain favored ones

must have known it, men who ruled the rulers of earth. Where could it be

found? "The jealous gods have buried somewhere proofs of the origins of

all things, but upon the shores of what ocean have they rolled the stone

that hides them, O Macareus?" Thus echoed he the fatidical query of the

French poet....

Illowski left Europe. Some said he had gone to Asia, the mother of all

religions, of all corruptions. He had been seen in China, and later

stories were related of his attempts to enter the sacred city, Lhasa. He

disappeared and many composers and critics were not sorry; his was a too

commanding personality: he menaced modern art. Thus far church and state

had not considered his individual existence; he was but one of the

submerged units of Rurik's vast Slavic Empire which now almost traversed

the Eastern hemisphere. So he was forgotten and a minor god arose in his

place--a man who wrote pretty ballets, who declared that the end of

music was to enthrall the senses; and his ballets were danced over

Europe, while Illowski's name faded away....

At the end of ten years he returned to St. Petersburg. Thinner, much

older, his long, spidery arms, almost colorless blond hair and eroded

features gave him the air of a cenobite who had escaped from some

Scandinavian wilderness into life. His Oriental reserve, and evident

dislike of all his former social habits, set the musical world wagging

its head, recalling the latter days of Dostoïewsky. But Illowski was not

mad: he simply awaited his opportunity. It came. The morning after his

first concert he was awakened by fame knocking at his gate, the most

horrible kind of fame. He was not called a madman by the critics, for

his music could never have been the product of a crazy brain--he was

pronounced an arch-enemy to mankind, because he told infamous secrets in

his music, secrets that had lain buried in the shale of a vanished

epoch. And, lest the world grow cold, he drove to its very soul the most

hideous truths. A hypnotist, he conducted his orchestra through

extraordinary and malevolent forests of tone. The audience went into the

night, some sobbing, some beating the air like possessed ones, others

frozen with terror. At the second concert the throngs were so dense that

the authorities interfered. What poison was being disseminated in the

air of a concert hall? What new device of the revolutionists? What

deadly secret did this meagre, dreamy, harmless-looking Russian possess?

The censors were alert. Critics were instructed by the heads of their

journals to drive forth this musical anarchist; but criticism availed

not. A week, and Illowski became the talk of Russia, a month, and Europe

filled with strange rumors about him. Here was a magician who made the

dead speak, the living dumb--what were the limits of his power? What his

ultimate intention? Such a man might be converted into a political force

would he but range himself on the right side of the throne. If not--why,

then there was still Siberia and its weary stretches of snow!

When he reached Moscow rioting began in the streets. Leaving, he went

with his dark-skinned Eastern musicians to the provinces. And the

government trembled. Peasants threw aside spade, forgot vodka and rushed

to his free concerts, given in canvas-covered booths; and the impetus

communicated to this huge, weltering mass of slaving humanity, broke

wave-like upon the remotest borders of the empire. The church became

alarmed. Anti-Christ had been predicted for centuries, and latterly by

the Second Adventists. Was Illowski the one at whose nod principalities

and powers of earth should tremble and fall? Was he the prince of

darkness himself? Was the liberation of the seven seals at hand--that

awful time foretold by the mystic of Patmos? The Metropolitan of the

Greek church did not long hesitate. A hierarchy that became endangered

because a fanatic wielded hypnotic powers, must exert its prerogative.

The aid of the secret police invoked, Illowski was hurried into Austria;

but with him were his men, and he grimly laughed as he sat in a Viennese

café and counted the victories of his first campaign.

"It has begun," he told his first violinist, a stolid fellow with black

blood in his veins.

It had begun. After a concert in Vienna, Illowski was politely bidden to

leave Austria. The unsettled political condition, the disaffection of

Czech and Hungarian, were a few of the reasons given for this summary

retirement. Yet Illowski's orchestra did not play the Rakoczy march! The

clergy heard of his impieties; a report obtained credence that the

Russian composer had written music for the black mass, most blasphemous

of missal travesties. When he was told of this he smiled, for he did not

aim at attacking mere sectarian beliefs; with Bakounin, he swore that

there must be total destruction of all existing institutions,

or--nothing!

He went to Germany believing the countrymen of Nietzsche would receive

with joy this Overman from the East. There was no longer any

Bayreuth--the first performance of "Parsifal" elsewhere had killed the

place and the work. In Munich, the authorities forewarned, Illowski was

arrested as a dangerous character and sent to Trieste. Thence he shipped

to Genoa; and once in Italy, free. On the peninsula his progress was

that of a trailing comet. The feminine madness first manifested itself

there and swept the countryside with epidemic fury. Wherever he played

the dancing mania set in, and the soldiery could not put it down by

force of arms. Nietzsche's dancing philosopher, Zarathustra, was

incarnated in Illowski's compositions. Like the nervous obsessions of

mediæval times, this music set howling, leaping and writhing volatile

Italians, until it began to assume the proportions of a new evangel, an

hysterical hallucination that bade defiance to law, doctors, even the

decencies of life. Terrible stories reached the Vatican, and when it was

related that one of his symphonic pieces delineated Zarathustra's Cave

with its sinister mockery of prelate and king, the hated Quirinal was

approached for assistance, and Illowski vanished from Italy.

In the British Isles, the same wicked tales were told of him. He was

denounced by priest and publican as a subverter of morals. No poet, no

demagogue, had ever so interested the masses. Musicians of academic

training held aloof. What had they in common with this charlatan who

treated the abominable teachings of Walt Whitman symphonically? He could

not be a respectable man, even if he were a sane. And then the

unlettered tiller of the soil, drunken mechanic and gutter drab all

loved his music. What kind of music was it thus to be understood by the

ignorant?

The police thought otherwise. Illowski gathered crowds--that was

sufficient to ban him, not as the church does, with bell, book and

candle, but with stout oaken clubs. Forth he fared, and things came to

such a pass that not a steamer dared convey him or his band to America.

By this time the scientific reviews had taken him up as a sort of public

Illusionist. Disciples of Charcot explained his scores--though not one

had been published--while the neo-moralists gladly denounced him as a

follower of the Master Immoralist, a sublimated emotional expression of

the ethical nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche. Others, more fanciful, saw

in his advent and in his art an attempt to overturn nations, life

itself, through the agency of corrupting beauty and by the arousing of

illimitable desires. Color and music, sweetness and soft luxuries,

declared these modern followers of Ambrose and Chrysostom, were the

agencies of Satan in the undermining of morals. Pulpits thundered. The

press sneered at the new Pied Piper of Hamelin, and poets sang of him.

One Celtic bard named him "Master of the Still Stars and of the Flaming

Door."

For women his music was as the moth's desire. Wherever he went were

women--women and children. Old legends were revived about the ancient

gods. The great Pan was said to be abroad; rustling in the night air set

young folk blushing. An emotional renascence swept like a torrid simoon

over Europe. Those who had not heard, had not seen him, felt,

nevertheless, Illowski's subtle influences in their bosoms. The

fountains of democracy's great deeps were breaking up. Too long had smug

comfort and utilitarianism ruled a world grown weary of debasing

commerce. All things must have an end, even wealth; and to the wretched,

to those in damp mines, to the downcast in exile and in prisons and to

the muck of humanity his name became a beautiful, illuminated symbol.

The charges of impiety were answered: "His music makes us dream." Music

now became ruler of the universe, and the earth hummed tunes; yet

Illowski's maddening music had been heard by few nations.

Humble, poor, asking nothing, always giving, he soon became a nightmare

to the orthodox. He preached no heresies, promised no future rewards,

nor warred he against church or kingdom. He only made music and things

were not as before; some strange angel had passed that way filling men's

souls with joy, beauty and bitterness. Duties, vows, beliefs fell away

like snow in the sun; families, tribes, states grew restless, troops

were called and churches never closed. A wave of belated paganism rolled

over the world; thinkers and steersmen of great political and religious

organizations became genuinely alarmed. So had come the downfall of the

classical world: a simple apparition in a far away Jewish province, and

the Cæsars fell supine--their empires cracked like mirrors! To imprison

Illowski meant danger; to kill him would deify him, for in the blood of

martyrs blossom the seeds of mighty religions. Far better if he go to

Paris--Paris, the cradle and the tomb of illusions. There this restless

demagogue might find his dreams stilled in the scarlet negations and

frivolous philosophies of the town; thus the germ-plasm of a new

religion, of a new race, perhaps of a new world, be drowned in the

drowsy green of a little glass.

Illowski, this Spirit that Denied, this new Mephisto of music, did not

balk his evil wishers.

"Paris, why not? She refused to understand Berlioz, flouted Wagner, and

mocked Rodin's marble egotisms, the ferocious, white stillness of his

Balzac! Perhaps Paris will give me, if not a welcome, at least repose. I

am tired."

To Paris he went and excepting a few cynical paragraphs received no

attention. The Conservatoire, the Académie de Musique did not welcome

officially this gifted son of the Neva; the authorities blandly ignored

him, though the police were instructed that if he attempted to play in

front of churches, address mobs or build barricades, he must be

confined. Paris had no idea of Illowski's real meaning; Paris, even in

the twentieth century, always hears the news of the world last;

besides, she conceives no other conquest save one that has for its

object the several decayed thrones within her gates. Illowski was not

molested and his men, despite their strange garb and complexion, went

about freely. The Russian composer of ballets was just then the mode.

Some clever caricatures appeared of Illowski representing him as a

musical Napoleon, cocked hat, sleek white horse and all. Another gave

him the goat's beard of Brother Jonathan, with the baton of a Yankee

band-master; and then it was assured that the much advertised composer

was a joking American masquerading as a Slav, possibly the vender of

some new religious cure born in the fanatical bake-ovens of Western

America. "Faust" alternated with "Les Huguenots" at the Opéra, Pilsner

beer was on tap at the Café Monferino--why worry over exotic stories

told of this visitor's abnormal musical powers? And little did anyone

surmise that he had just given a symphonic setting to Lingwood Evans's

insurrectionary poem with its ghastly refrain: "I hear the grinding of

the swords, and He shall come--" Thus did Paris unwittingly harbor the

poet, philosopher, composer and pontiff of the new dispensation--Pavel

Illowski. And Lenyard with Scheff was hastening to Auteuil to see

Neshevna, whose other name was never known.