It was long since Hermon had felt so free and light-hearted as during
this voyage.
He firmly believed in his recovery.
A few days before he had escaped death in the royal palace as if by a
miracle, and he owed his deliverance to the woman he loved.
In the Temple of Nemesis at Tennis the conviction that the goddess had
ceased to persecute him took possession of his mind.
True, his blind eyes had been unable to see her menacing statue, but not
even the slightest thrill of horror had seized him in its presence. In
Alexandria, after his departure from Proclus’s banquet, she had desisted
from pursuing him. Else how would she have permitted him to escape
uninjured when he was already standing upon the verge of an abyss, and a
wave of her hand would have sufficed to hurl him into the death-dealing
gulf?
But his swift confession, and the transformation which followed it, had
reconciled him not only with her, but also with the other gods; for they
appeared to him in forms as radiant and friendly as in the days of his
boyhood, when, while Bias took the helm on the long voyage through the
canal and the Bitter Lakes, he recalled the visible world to his memory
and, from the rising sun, Phoebus Apollo, the lord of light and
purity, gazed at him from his golden chariot, drawn by four horses, and
Aphrodite, the embodiment of all beauty, rose before him from the snowy
foam of the azure waves. Demeter, in the form of Daphne, appeared,
dispensing prosperity, above the swaying golden waves of the ripening
grain fields and bestowing peace beside the domestic hearth. The whole
world once more seemed peopled with deities, and he felt their rule in
his own breast.
The place of which Bias had told him was situated on a lofty portion of
the shore. Beside the springs which there gushed from the soil of the
desert grew green palm trees and thorny acacias. Farther on flourished
the fragrant betharan. About a thousand paces from this spot the
faithful freedman pitched the little tent obtained in Tennis under the
shade of several tall palm trees and a sejal acacia.
Not far from the springs lived the same family of Amalekites whom Bias
had known from boyhood. They raised a few vegetables in little beds, and
the men acted as guards to the caravans which came from Egypt through
the peninsula of Sinai to Petrea and Hebron. The daughter of the aged
sheik whose men accompanied the trains of goods, a pleasant, middle-aged
woman, recognised the Biamite, who when a boy had recovered under her
mother’s nursing, and promised Bias to honour his blind master as a
valued guest of the tribe.
Not until after he had done everything in his power to render life in
the wilderness endurable, and had placed a fresh bandage over his eyes,
would Bias leave his master.
The freedman entered the boat weeping, and Hermon, deeply agitated,
turned his face toward him.
When he was left alone with his Egyptian slave, with whom he rarely
exchanged a word, he fancied that, amid the murmur of the waves washing
the strand at his feet, blended the sounds of the street which led
past his house in Alexandria, and with them all sorts of disagreeable
memories crowded upon him; but soon he no longer heard them, and the
next night brought refreshing sleep.
Even on the second day he felt that the profound silence which
surrounded him was a benefit. The stillness affected him like something
physical.
The life was certainly monotonous, and at first there were hours when
the course of the new existence, so devoid of any change, op pressed
him, but he experienced no tedium. His mental life was too rich, and the
unburdening of his anxious soul too great a relief for that.
He had shunned serious thought since he left the philosopher’s school;
but here it soon afforded him the highest pleasure, for never had his
mind moved so freely, so undisturbed by any limit or obstacle.
He did not need to search for what he hoped to find in the wilderness.
His whole past life passed before him as if by its own volition. All
that he had ever experienced, learned, thought, felt, rose before his
mind with wonderful distinctness, and when he overlooked all his mental
possessions, as if from a high watch-tower in the bright sunshine, he
began to consider how he had used the details and how he could continue
to do so.
Whatever he had seen incorrectly forced itself resistlessly upon him,
yet here also the Greek nature, deeply implanted in his soul, guarded
him, and it was easy for him to avoid self-torturing remorse. He only
desired to utilize for improvement what he recognised as false.
When in this delicious silence he listened to the contradictory demands
of his intellect and his senses, it often seemed as though he was
present at a discussion between two guests who were exchanging their
opinions concerning the subject that occupied his mind.
Here he first learned to deepen sound intellectual power and listen to
the demands of the heart, or to repulse and condemn them.
Ah, yes, he was still blind; but never had he observed and recognised
human life and its stage, down to the minutest detail, which his eyes
refused to show him, so keenly as during these clays. The phenomena
which had attracted or repelled his vision here appeared nearer and more
distinctly.
What he called “reality” and believed he understood thoroughly and
estimated correctly, now disclosed many a secret which had previously
remained concealed.
How defective his visual perception had been! how necessary it now
seemed to subject his judgment to a new test! Doubtless a wealth of
artistic subjects had come to him from the world of reality which he had
placed far above everything else, but a greater and nobler one from the
sphere which he had shunned as unfruitful and corrupting.
As if by magic, the world of ideality opened before him in this
exquisite silence. He again found in his own soul the joyous creative
forces of Nature, and the surrounding stillness increased tenfold his
capacity of perceiving it; nay, he felt as if creative energy dwelt in
solitude itself.
His mind had always turned toward greatness. The desire to impress his
works with the stamp of his own overflowing power had carried him far
beyond moderation in modelling his struggling Maenads.
Now, when he sought for subjects, beside the smaller and more simple
ones appeared mighty and manifold ones, often of superhuman grandeur.
Oh, if a higher power would at some future day permit him to model
with his strong hands this battle of the Amazons, this Phoebus Apollo,
radiant in beauty and the glow of victory, conquering the dragons of
darkness!
Arachne, too, returned to his mind, and also Demeter. But she did not
hover before him as the peaceful dispenser of blessings, the preserver
of peace, but as the maternal earth goddess, robbed of her daughter
Proserpina. How varied in meaning was this myth!--and he strove to
follow it in every direction.
Nothing more could come to the blind artist from Nature by the aid of
his physical vision. The realm of reality was closed to him; but he had
found the key to that of the ideal, and what he found in it proved to be
no less true than the objects the other had offered.
How rich in forms was the new world which forced itself unbidden on his
imagination! He who, a short time before, had believed whatever could
not be touched by the hands was useless for his art, now had the choice
among a hundred subjects, full of glowing life, which were attainable by
no organ of the senses. He need fear to undertake none, if only it was
worthy of representation; for he was sure of his ability, and difficulty
did not alarm him, but promised to lend creating for the first time its
true charm.
And, besides, without the interest of animated conversation, without
festal scenes where, with garlanded head and intoxicating pleasure
soaring upward from the dust of earth, existence had seemed to him
shallow and not worth the trouble it imposed upon mortals, solitude now
offered him hours as happy as he had ever experienced while revelling
with gay companions.
At first many things had disturbed them, especially the dissatisfied,
almost gloomy disposition of his Egyptian slave, who, born in the city
and accustomed to its life, found it unbearable to stay in the desert
with the strange blind master, who lived like a porter, and ordered him
to prepare his wretched fare with the hands skilled in the use of the
pen.
But this living disturber of the peace was not to annoy the recluse
long. Scarcely a fortnight after Bias’s departure, the slave Patran, who
had cost so extravagant a sum, vanished one morning with the sculptor’s
money and silver cup.
This rascally trick of a servant whom he had treated with almost
brotherly kindness wounded Hermon, but he soon regarded the morose
fellow’s disappearance as a benefit.
When for the first time he drank water from an earthen jug, instead of
a silver goblet, he thought of Diogenes, who cast his cup aside when he
saw a boy raise water to his lips in his hand, yet with whom the great
Macedonian conqueror of the world would have changed places “if he had
not been Alexander.”
The active, merry son of Bias’s Amalekite friend gladly rendered him
the help and guidance for which he had been reluctant to ask his
ill-tempered slave, and he soon became accustomed to the simple fare of
the nomads. Bread and milk, fruits and vegetables from his neighbour’s
little garden, satisfied him, and when the wine he had drunk was used,
he contented himself, obedient to old Tabus’s advice, with pure water.
As he still had several gold coins on his person, and wore two costly
rings on his finger, he doubtless thought of sending to Clysma for meat,
poultry, and wine, but he had refrained from doing so through the advice
of the Amalekite woman, who anointed his eyes with Tabus’s salve and
protected them by a shade of fresh leaves from the dazzling rays of
the desert sun. She, like the sorceress on the Owl’s Nest, warned him
against all viands that inflamed the blood, and he willingly allowed her
to take away what she and her gray-haired father, the experienced head
of the tribe, pronounced detrimental to his recovery.
At first the “beggar’s fare” seemed repulsive, but he soon felt that it
was benefiting him after the riotous life of the last few months.
One day, when the Amalekite took off his bandage, he thought he saw
a faint glimmer of light, and how his heart exulted at this faint
foretaste of the pleasure of sight!
In an instant hope sprang up with fresh power in his excitable soul,
and his lost cheerfulness returned to him like a butterfly to the newly
opened flower. The image of his beloved Daphne rose before him in sunny
radiance, and he saw himself in his studio in the service of his art.
He had always been fond of children, and the little ones in the
Amalekite family quickly discovered this, and crowded around their blind
friend, who played all sorts of games with them, and in spite of the
bandaged eyes, over which spread a broad shade of green leaves, could
make whistles with his skilful artist hands from the reeds and willow
branches they brought.
He saw before him the object to which his heart still clung as
distinctly as if he need only stretch out his hand to draw it nearer,
and perhaps--surely and certainly, the Amalekite said--the time would
come when he would behold it also with his bodily eyes.
If the longing should be fulfilled! If his eyes were again permitted
to convey to him what formerly filled his soul with delight! Yes,
beauty--was entitled to a higher place than truth, and if it again
unfolded itself to his gaze, how gladly and gratefully he would pay
homage to it with his art!
The hope that he might enjoy it once more now grew stronger, for the
glimmer of light became brighter, and one day, when his skilful nurse
again took the bandage from his milk-white pupils, he saw something long
appear, as if through, a mist. It was only the thorny acacia tree at
his tent; but the sight of the most beautiful of beautiful things never
filled him with more joyful gratitude.
Then he ordered the less valuable of his two rings to be sold to offer a
sacrifice to health-bestowing Isis, who had a little temple in Clysma.
How fervently he now prayed also to the great Apollo, the foe of
darkness and the lord of everything light and pure! How yearningly he
besought Aphrodite to bless him again with the enjoyment of eternal
beauty, and Eros to heal the wound which his arrow had inflicted upon
his heart and Daphne’s, and bring them together after so much distress
and need!
When, after the lapse of another week, the bandage was again removed,
his inmost soul rejoiced, for his eyes showed him the rippling
emerald-green surface of the Red Sea, and the outlines of the palms, the
tents, the Amalekite woman, her boy, and her two long-eared goats.
How ardently he thanked the gracious deities who, in spite of Straton’s
precepts, were no mere figments of human imagination and, as if he
had become a child again, poured forth his overflowing heart with mute
gratitude to his mother’s soul!
The artist nature, yearning to create, began to stir within more
ceaselessly than ever before. Already he saw clay and wax assuming forms
beneath his skilful hands; already he imagined himself, with fresh power
and delight, cutting majestic figures from blocks of marble, or, by
hammering, carving, and filing, shaping them from gold and ivory.
And he would not take what he intended to create solely from the world
of reality perceptible to the senses. Oh, no! He desired to show through
his art the loftiest of ideals. How could he still shrink from using the
liberty which he had formerly rejected, the liberty of drawing from his
own inner consciousness what he needed in order to bestow upon the ideal
images he longed to create the grandeur, strength, and sublimity in
which he beheld them rise before his purified soul!
Yet, with all this, he must remain faithful to truth, copy from Nature
what he desired to represent. Every finger, every lock of hair, must
correspond with reality to the minutest detail, and yet the whole must
be pervaded and penetrated, as the blood flows through the body, by the
thought that filled his mind and soul.
A reflected image of the ideal and of his own mood, faithful to truth,
free, and yet obedient to the demands of moderation--in this sentence
Hermon summed up the result of his solitary meditations upon art and
works of art. Since he had found the gods again, he perceived that the
Muse had confided to him a sacerdotal office. He intended to perform its
duties, and not only attract and please the beholder’s eyes through his
works, but elevate his heart and mind, as beauty, truth, grandeur, and
eternity uplifted his own soul. He recognised in the tireless creative
power which keeps Nature ever new, fresh, and bewitching, the presence
of the same deity whose rule manifested itself in the life of his own
soul.
So long as he denied its existence, he had recognised no being more
powerful than himself; now that he again felt insignificant beside it,
he knew himself to be stronger than ever before, that the greatest
of all powers had become his ally. Now it was difficult for him to
understand how he could have turned away from the deity. As an artist
he, too, was a creator, and, while he believed those who considered
the universe had come into existence of itself, instead of having been
created, he had robbed himself of the most sublime model. Besides, the
greatest charm of his noble profession was lost to him. Now he knew it,
and was striving toward the goal attainable by the artist alone among
mortals--to hold intercourse with the deity, and by creations full of
its essence elevate the world to its grandeur and beauty.
One day, at the end of the second month of his stay in the desert,
when the Amalekite woman removed the bandage, her boy, whose form he
distinguished as if through a veil, suddenly exclaimed: “The white cover
on your eyes is melting! They are beginning to sparkle a little, and
soon they will be perfectly well, and you can carve the lion’s head on
my cane.”
Perhaps the artist might really have succeeded in doing so, but he
forbade himself the attempt.
He thought that the time for departure had now arrived, and an
irresistible longing urged him back to the world and Daphne.
But he could not resist the entreaties of the old sheik and his daughter
not to risk what he had gained, so he continued to use the shade of
leaves, and allowed himself to be persuaded to defer his departure until
the dimness which still prevented his seeing anything distinctly passed
away.
True, the beautiful peace which he had enjoyed of late was over and,
besides, anxiety for the dear ones in distant lands was constantly
increasing. He had had no news of them for a long time, and when he
imagined what fate might have overtaken Archias, and his daughter with
him, if he had been carried back to the enraged King in Alexandria, a
terrible dread took possession of him, which scattered even joy in
his wonderful recovery to the four winds, and finally led him to the
resolution to return to the world at any risk and devote himself to
those whose fate was nearer to his heart than his own weal and woe.