"you were strong, daniele—you who can hardly break a twig! and he was heavy, that old barbarian; his body seemed built over a framework of bronze: well constructed, firm, able to stand on a deck that might rise and fall—the body of a man that nature destined for the sea. whence came your strength, daniele? i almost feared for you, but you did not even stagger. do you realize that we have borne a hero in our arms? this is a day we ought to distinguish and celebrate in some way. his eyes opened again and looked into mine; his pulse revived under my hand. we were worthy to carry him, daniele, because of our fervor."
"you are worthy not only to carry him, but of gathering and preserving some of the most beautiful promises offered by his art to men who still have hope."
"ah, if only i am not overwhelmed by my own abundance, and if i can master the anxiety that suffocates me, daniele!"
the two friends walked on and on, side by side, in exalted and confident mood, as if their friendship had taken on an added nobility.
"it seems as if the adriatic had overthrown the murazzi, in this tempest," said daniele, pausing to look at the waves that had mounted even to the piazza. "we must return."
"no, let us cross the ferry. here is a boat. look at the reflection of san marco on the water!"
the boatman rowed them to the torre dell' orologio. the rising tide soon overflowed the piazza, looking like a lake surrounded by porticoes, reflecting the greenish-yellow twilight sky.
"en verus fortis qui fregit vincula mortis," read stelio on the curve of an arch, below a mosaic of the resurrection. "did you know that richard wagner held his first colloquy with death in venice, exactly twenty years ago, at the time he produced tristan? consumed by a hopeless passion, he came here to die in silence, and here he composed that wild second act, which is a hymn to eternal night. and now fate has led him back to the lagoons. fate, it seems, has decreed that here he shall breathe his last, like claudio monteverde. is not venice full of musical desire, immense and indefinable? every sound transforms itself into an expressive voice. listen!"
the city of stone and water seemed indeed to have become as sonorous as a great organ. the hissing and moaning had changed to a sort of choral supplication, rising and falling in regular rhythm.
"do you not hear the theme of a melody in that chorus of moans? listen!"
they had debarked from the little boat, and had resumed their walk through the narrow streets.
"listen!" stelio repeated. "i can detect a melodic theme, which swells and decreases without power to develop itself. do you hear it?"
"it is not given to me to hear what you hear," replied the sterile ascetic to the genius. "i will await the time when you can repeat to me the word that nature speaks to you."
"ah!" stelio resumed, "to be able to restore to melody its natural simplicity, its ingenuous perfection, its divine innocence; to draw it, living, from its eternal source, from the true mystery of nature, the inmost soul of the universe! have you ever reflected upon the myth connected with the infancy of cassandra? she had been left one night in the temple of apollo; and in the morning she was found lying on the marble floor, wrapped in the coils of a serpent that licked her ears. and from that day she understood all the voices of nature in the air, all the melodies of the world. the power of the great seeress was only a high musical power; and a part of that apollonian virtue entered the souls of the poets that co?perated in the creation of the tragic chorus. one of those poets boasted of understanding the voices of all birds; another was able to hold converse with the winds; another comprehended perfectly the language of the sea. more than once i have dreamed that i too was lying on the marble floor, folded in the coils of that serpent. the magic of that old myth must be renewed, daniele, in order that we may create the new art.
"have you ever thought what might be the music of that species of pastoral ode sung by the chorus in ?dipus tyrannus, ?when jocasta flees, horror-struck, and the son of la?us still cherishes the illusion of a last hope? do you recall it? try to imagine the strophes as if they were a frame, within which an expressive dance-figure is animated by the perfect life of melody. the spirit of earth would rise before you: the consoling apparition of the great common mother at the unhappiness of her stricken, trembling children—a celebration, as it were, of all that is divine and eternal above man, who is dragged to madness and death by blind and cruel destiny. try now to conceive how this song has helped me in the writing of my great tragedy to find the means of the highest and at the same time the simplest expression."
"do you purpose, then, to re?stablish the ancient chorus on the stage?"
"oh, no! i shall not revive any ancient form; i intend to create a new form, obeying only my instinct and the genius of my own race, as did the greeks when they created that marvelous structure of beauty, forever inimitable—the greek drama. for a very long time, the three practicable arts of music, poetry, and dancing have been separated; the first two have developed toward a superior form of expression, but the third is in its decadence, and i think that now it is impossible to combine them in a single rhythmical structure without taking from one or another its own dominant character, which has already been acquired. if they are to blend in one common effect, each must renounce its own particular effect—in other words, become diminished. among the things most susceptible of rhythm, language is the foundation of every art that aspires to perfection. do you think that language is given its full value in the wagnerian drama? do you not think that the musical conception itself often loses some of its primitive purity by being made to depend on matters outside the realm of music? wagner himself certainly realizes this weakness, and shows it when he approaches a friend in bayreuth, covering his eyes with his hand, that he may abandon his sense of hearing entirely to the virtue of the pure sound of the voice."
"this is all new to me," said glauro, "yet it rejoices and intoxicates me as we rejoice when we hear something that has been long foreseen and felt by presentiment. then, as i understand, you will not superpose the three rhythmic arts, but will present them each in its single manifestation, yet all linked by a sovereign idea, and raised to the supreme degree by their own significant energy?"
"ah, daniele! how can i give you any idea of the work that lives within me?" stelio exclaimed. "the words you use in trying to formulate my meaning are hard and mechanical."
they stood at the foot of the rialto steps. the gale swept over them; the grand canal, dark in the shadow of the palaces, seemed to bend like a river hastening to a cataract.
"we cannot remain here," said glauro, leaning against a door; "the wind will blow us down."
"go on; i will overtake you. only a moment," cried the master, covering his eyes with his hand, and concentrating his soul upon sound alone.
formidable was the voice of the tempest, in the midst of the immobility of centuries, turned to stone. its unaccompanied song, its hopeless, wailing lamentation, was raised in memory of the multitudes that had become ashes, the scattered pageants, the fallen grandeur, the innumerable days of birth and of death—things of an age without name or form. all the melancholy of the world rushed in the wind over that eager, listening soul.
"ah! i have seized you!" stelio cried suddenly, with triumphant joy.
the complete and perfect line of the melody had been revealed to him, now belonged to him, and would become immortal in his spirit and in the world.
"daniele! i have found it!"
he raised his eyes, and saw the first stars in the adamantine sky. he feared to lose the precious treasure he had found. near, a column he now saw a man with a flickering light at the end of a long pole, and heard the slight sound of the lighting of a lantern. swiftly and eagerly he jotted down in his notebook, under the lamplight, the notes of the melodic theme, compressing into five lines the message of the elements.
"o day of marvels!" said daniele glauro, on seeing stelio on the steps, as light and agile as if he had robbed the air of some of its elasticity. "may nature cherish you forever, my brother!"
"come, come!" said stelio, taking him by the arm and urging him on with boyish gayety. "i must run!"
he drew him through the narrow streets leading to san giovanni elemosinario.
"what you told me one day, daniele, is quite true. i mean that the voice of things is essentially different from their sound," said stelio. "the sound of the wind may represent the moans of a frightened throng, the howling of wild animals, the falling of cataracts, the rustle of waving banners, or mockery, threats, and despair. but the voice of the wind is the synthesis of all these sounds: that is the voice which sings and tells of the terrible travail of time, the cruelty of human destiny, the eternal warfare for an illusion eternally born anew."
"and have you never thought that the essence of music does not lie in the sounds alone?" asked the mystic doctor. "it often dwells in the silence that precedes and follows sound. rhythm makes itself felt in these intervals of silence. rhythm is the very heart of music, but its pulsation is inaudible except during the intervals between sounds."
this metaphysical law confirmed stelio in his belief of the justness of his own intuition.
"imagine," said he, "an interval between two scenic symphonies wherein all the motifs concur in expressing the inmost essence of the characters that are struggling in the drama as well as in revealing the inmost depths of the action, as, for instance, in beethoven's great prelude in leonora, or the prelude to coriolanus. that musical silence, pulsating with rhythm, is like the mysterious living atmosphere where alone can appear words of pure poetry. thus the personages seem to emerge from the symphonic sea as if from the hidden truth that works within them; their spoken words will possess an extraordinary resonance in that rhythmic silence, will reach the farthest limit of verbal power, because it will be animated by a continuous aspiration to song that cannot be appeased except by the melody which must rise again from the orchestra, at the close of the tragic episode. do you understand me?"
"then you place the episode between two symphonies, which prepare it and also terminate it, because music is the beginning and the end of human utterance."
"thus i bring nearer to the spectator the personages of the drama. do you recall the figure employed by schiller in the ode he wrote in honor of goethe's translation of mahomet, to signify that, on the stage, only the ideal world seems real. the chariot of thespis, like the barque of acheron, is so slight that it can carry only shadows or the images of human beings. on the stage commonly known, these images are so unreal that any contact with them seems as impossible as would be contact with mental forms. they are distant and strange, but in making them appear in the rhythmic silence, accompanied by music to the threshold of the visible world, i shall be able to bring them marvelously close, because i shall illumine the most secret depths of the will that produces them. i shall reveal, in short, the images painted on the veil and that which happens beyond the veil. do you understand?"
they were now entering the campo di san cassiano lonely and deserted on the banks of the gray stream; their voices and their footsteps echoed there as if in an amphitheater of stone, distinct above the sound of the grand canal, which made a rushing noise like that of a river. a purple mist rose from the fever-laden waters, spreading like a poisonous breath. death seemed to have reigned there a long time. the shutter of a high window beat in the wind against the wall, grinding on its hinges, a sign of abandonment and ruin. but, in the mind of the inspirer, all these appearances produced extraordinary transfigurations. he saw again the wild and solitary spot near the tomb of mycen?. myrtles flourished between the rugged rocks and the cyclopic ruins. beside a rock lay the rigid, pure body of the victim. in the death-like silence he could hear the murmuring water and the intermittent breath of the breeze among the myrtles.
"it was in an august place," said he, "that i had the first vision of my new work—at mycen?, under the gateway of the lions, while i was re-reading orestes. land of fire, country of thirst and delirium, birthplace of clytemnestra and of the hydra, earth forever sterile by the horror of the most tragic destiny that ever has overtaken a human race. have you ever thought about that barbarian explorer who, after passing the greater part of his existence among his drugs behind a counter, undertook to find the tombs of the atrid? among the ruins of mycen?, and who one day (the sixth anniversary of the event is of recent date) beheld the greatest and strangest vision ever offered to mortal eyes? have you ever pictured to yourself that fat schliemann at the moment when he discovered the most dazzling treasure ever held by death in the dark obscurity of the earth for centuries—for thousands of years? have you ever fancied that this superhuman and terrible spectacle might have been revealed to some one else—to a youthful and fervent spirit, to a poet, a life-giver, to you, to me, perhaps? then the fever, the frenzy, the madness—imagine!"
he was on fire and vibrating, suddenly swept away by his own fancy as by a whirlwind. his seer's eyes sparkled with the gleam of the buried treasure. creative force flowed to his brain as blood to his heart. he was an actor in his own drama, with accent and movement expressing transcendent beauty and passion, surpassing the power of the spoken word, the limit of the letter. and his brother spirit hung upon his speech, trembling before the sudden splendor that proved to him the truth of his own divinations.
"imagine! imagine that the earth in which you explore is baleful—it must still exhale the miasma of monstrous wickedness. the curse upon the atrid? was so terrific that some vestige of it must still have remained to be feared in the dust that they once trod upon. you are bewitched: the dead you seek and cannot find are reincarnated in you, and breathe in your body with the terrible breath with which ?schylus infused them, huge and sanguinary as they appear in the orestes, pierced perpetually with the darts and flames of their destiny. hereafter, all the ideal life with which you have nourished yourself must assume the form and impress of reality. and still you go on in this land of thirst, at the foot of the bare mountain, enclosed within the fascination of the dead city, always delving in the earth, with those terrifying phantoms ever before your eyes in the burning dust. at each thrust of the spade you tremble to the very marrow, eager to see the face of one of the atrid?, still perfect, but with the signs still visible of the violence he suffered, the inhuman carnage. and behold it! the gold, the gold, the bodies, piles of gold, bodies covered with gold"—
the atrid? princes seemed to be lying there on the stones, a miracle evoked in the obscurity of the pathway. and the one who had evoked these images, as well as his listener, shuddered at the same instant.
"a succession of tombs: fifteen bodies, intact, one lying beside another, on a golden bed, with masks of gold on their faces, their brows crowned with gold and breasts bound with gold; and covering them, on their forms, at their sides, at their feet, everywhere, a prodigality of golden things, countless as the leaves falling in a fairy forest. do you see? do you see?"
"yes, yes, i see! i see!"
"for a second, that man's soul has traversed hundreds and thousands of years, has breathed the terrible legend, has palpitated in the horror of the ancient carnage. for a second, his soul has lived that antique life of violence. the slain ones were all there: agamemnon, eurymedon, cassandra, and the royal escort, and for a moment they lay under his eyes, motionless. then—they vanished into nothingness—do you see?—like a vapor exhaled, like scattered foam, like flying dust, like i know not what frail and fleeting thing—engulfed in the same fatal silence that surrounded their radiant immobility. and there was only a handful of dust and a mass of gold!" daniele glauro, deeply moved, seized his friend's hand; and the inspirer read in his faithful eyes the mute flame of enthusiasm consecrated to the great work.
they stopped near a door in the dark wall. a mysterious sense of distance possessed the mind of each, as if their souls were lost in the mists of time; and they fancied that behind that door an ancient people lived enthralled by a changeless destiny. the sound of a rocking cradle came from the house, and the croon of a soft lullaby to a wailing child. the stars glowed in the narrow glimpse of sky; against the walls the sea was moaning. and in another spot a hero's heart suffered while waiting for death.
"life!" said stelio, resuming his walk, and drawing daniele with him. "here, at this moment, all that trembles, weeps, hopes, breathes, and raves in the immensity of life, gathers itself in your mind, condensing itself there with a sublimation so rapid that you believe yourself able to express it all in a single word. but what word? what word? do you know it? who will ever know it well enough to speak it?"
again he was distressed at his inability to embrace all and express all.
"have you ever seen, at certain times, the whole universe standing before you, as distinct as a human head? i have, a thousand times. ah, to cut it off, like him that cut off medusa's head, at one stroke, and hold it up before the multitude so that it never should be forgotten! have you ever thought that a great tragedy might resemble the attitude of perseus? i tell you this: i should like to take the bronze of benvenuto cellini from the loggia of orcagna and place it in the foyer of the new theater as an admonition. but who will give to a poet the sword of hermes and the mirror of athena?
"perseus!" continued the inspirer. "in the ravine, below the citadel of mycen?, is a fountain called perseia, and it is the only living thing in that place where all is parched and dead. men are attracted toward it as to a spring of life in that region where the melancholy whiteness of the dried river-beds is visible late in the twilight. all human thirst ardently approaches that freshness. and throughout my work the music of that stream shall be heard—the water, the melody of the water. i have found it! in that, the pure element, shall be accomplished the pure act which is the aim of the new tragedy. on its clear, cold waters shall sleep the virgin destined to die 'deprived of nuptials,' like antigone. do you understand? the pure act marks the defeat of antique destiny. the new soul suddenly breaks the iron band that held it, with a determination born of madness, of a lucid delirium that resembles ecstasy, or a deeper, clearer vision of nature. in the orchestra, the final ode is of the salvation and liberation of man, obtained through pain and sacrifice. the monstrous fate is there, vanquished, near the tombs of the atrid?, before the very corpses of the victims. do you understand? he that frees himself by means of the pure act, the brother that kills his sister to save her soul from the horror that was about to seize her, has himself in reality seen the face of agamemnon!"
the fascination of the funereal gold had taken fresh hold upon his fancy; the evidence of his internal vision gave him a look as of one under a spell of hallucination.
"one of the corpses surpasses all the others in height and in majesty: his brow is crowned with a golden diadem, and he wears a cuirass, shoulder-plates, and a girdle of gold, surrounded with swords, lances, daggers, cups, and countless golden discs scattered like petals over his body, more venerable than a demigod. the man bends over this body, while it is vanishing in the light before his very eyes, and lifts the heavy mask. ah, does he not then see the face of agamemnon? is not this corpse perhaps the king of kings? the mouth and the eyes are open. do you remember that passage of homer's? 'as i lay dying, i raised my hands to my sword; but the woman with dog-like eyes went away, and would not close my eyes and my mouth, at the moment when i was about to descend to the abode of hades.' do you remember? well, the mouth of this corpse is open, and its eyes are open. he has a high brow, ornamented with a single large golden leaf; the nose is long and straight, the chin oval"—
the magician paused an instant, his eyes fixed and dilated. he was a seer. all about him disappeared, and his fiction remained the only reality. daniele trembled, for he too was able to see through the eyes of the other.
"ah, the white spot on the shoulder, too! he has raised the armor. the spot, the spot! the hereditary mark of the race of pelops 'of the ivory shoulder'! is he not indeed the king of kings?"
the rapid, half-broken utterances of the seer were like a succession of flashes whereby he himself was dazzled. he had astonished even himself by that sudden apparition, that unexpected discovery which illumined the shadows of his mind, because exterior reality, and almost tangible. how had he been able to discover that spot on agamemnon's shoulder? from what abyss of his memory had suddenly surged up that detail so strange, yet precise and decisive as a mark that affords recognition of a body dead since the preceding day?
"you were there!" exclaimed daniele, intoxicated. "it was you yourself that lifted that armor and that mask! if you have really seen what you have just described, you are no longer a man!"
"i have seen! i have seen!"
again he became an actor in his own drama, and it was with a violent palpitation that he heard, from the lips of a living person, the words of the drama—the very words that were to be spoken in the episode itself: "if you have really seen what you have described, you are no longer a man." from that instant, the explorer of sepulchers took on the aspect of a noble hero fighting against the ancient destiny that had risen from the ashes of the atrid? to contaminate and overthrow him.
"not with impunity," he continued, "does a man open tombs and gaze upon the faces of the dead—and what dead! he lives alone with his sister, the sweetest creature that ever has breathed the air of earth—alone with her, in the dwelling full of light and silence, as in a prayer, a consecration. now, imagine one that unconsciously drinks poison, a philter, i know not what impure thing, which poisons his blood and corrupts his thoughts—suddenly, while his soul is at peace. imagine this terrible evil, this vengeance of the dead! he is suddenly seized by an unholy passion; he becomes the miserable, trembling prey of a monster; he fights a desperate, secret fight, without truce, without mercy, day and night, every hour, every moment—all the more atrocious the more the innocent pity of the poor creature inclines toward his evil. how can this man be freed? from the very beginning of the tragedy, as soon as the innocent one begins to speak, it is evident that she is destined to die. and all that is said and done in the episodes, all that is expressed by the music, and by the songs and dances of the interludes, serves to lead her slowly but inexorably toward death. she is the equal of antigone. in her brief, tragic hour, she passes accompanied by the light of hope and the shadow of presentiment; she passes accompanied by songs and tears, by the noble love that offers joy, by the mad love that engenders mourning; and she never pauses except to fall asleep on the cold, clear waters of the fountain that called to her from the solitudes with its continual murmur. hardly has her brother killed her when he receives from her, through death, the gift of his redemption. 'all stain,' he cries, 'is effaced from my soul! i have become wholly pure! all the sanctity of my former love has re?ntered my soul like a torrent of light. were she here now, all my thoughts of her would be pure as lilies. were she to rise again, she could walk over my heart as over immaculate snow. now she is perfect; now she can be adored as a divinity. i will lay her in the deepest of my sepulchers, and around her i will lay all my treasures.' thus, the act of death, into which he has been drawn by his lucid madness, becomes an act of purification and of liberation, marking the defeat of ancient destiny. emerging from the symphonic ocean, the ode shall sing of the victory of man, shall illumine the darkness of the catastrophe with an unknown light, and shall elevate to the summit of music the first word of the drama renewed."
"the gesture of perseus!" exclaimed daniele, still under the spell of exaltation. "at the end of the tragedy you cut off the head of the moira, and show it to the multitude, ever young and ever-new, which shall bring the spectacle to a close amid great cries of enthusiasm."
both saw, as in a dream, the marble theater on the janiculum, the multitude swayed by the idea of truth and of beauty, the illimitable starry roman sky; they saw the frenzied multitude descending the slope of the hill, bearing in their rude hearts the confused revelation of poetry; they heard the clamor prolonging itself in the darkness of the immortal city.
"and now good-by, daniele," said the master, reminded of his need to hasten, as if some one waited for him or called him.
the eyes of the tragic muse remained immovable in the depths of his dream, sightless, petrified in the divine blindness of statues.
"where are you going?"
"to the palazzo capello."
"does la foscarina know the thread of your work?"
"vaguely."
"and what figure shall you give to her?"
"she shall be blind, having already passed into another world, and gone beyond the life of this. she shall see that which others do not see. her feet shall be in the shadows, but her head in the light of eternal truth. the contrasts of the tragic hour shall reverberate in the darkness of her soul, multiplying themselves there like thunder among the deep circles of solitary rocks. like tiresias, she shall comprehend everything, permitted or forbidden, celestial and terrestrial, and she shall know 'how hard it is to know when knowing is useless.' ah, i shall put marvelous words into her mouth, and silences that shall give birth to infinite beauties."
"on the stage," said glauro, "whether she speaks or is silent, her power is almost more than human. she reveals to us the existence in our own hearts of the most secret evil and the most hidden hopes; by her enchantment, our past becomes present; and, by the virtue of her aspect, we recognize ourselves in the trials suffered by others throughout time, as if the soul she reveals to us were our own."
they stopped on the ponte savio. stelio was silent, under a flood of love and melancholy, which had suddenly come upon him.
"i wish i had not to leave you to-night, stelio," confessed the faithful brother, who was also invaded by a peculiar melancholy. "when i am with you, i breathe more freely, and live a swifter life."
stelio was silent. the wind had abated somewhat. the brown church and the square tower of naked brick seemed to be praying silently to the stars.
"do you know the green column that stands in san giacomo dall' orio?" daniele resumed, intending to hold his friend a little longer, because he dreaded to say farewell. "what sublimity! it is like the fossilized condensation of an immense green forest. in following its innumerable veins, the eye travels in a dream through sylvan mysteries. when i look at it i fancy myself visiting sila and ercinna."
stelio knew the column. one day perdita had leaned long against the precious shaft, contemplating the magic frieze of gold that curves above the canvas of bassano, obscuring it.
"to dream—always to dream," he sighed, with a return of that bitter impatience which had suggested sneering words to him when he had come on the boat from the lido. "to live on relics! think of dandolo, who overthrew the column and an empire at the same time, and who preferred to remain doge when he might have become emperor. perhaps he lived more than you, who wander in fancy through forests when you examine the marble he pillaged. good-by, daniele."
"i shall stop at the palazzo vendramin for news," said the faithful brother.
these words recalled afresh the thought of the great ailing heart, the weight of the hero in their arms, the terrible removal.
"he has conquered—he can die," said stelio.
