Pictor's Metamorphoses Part 4

The Enamored Youth.

A LEGEND.

THIS NARRATIVE REFERS to events which took place in the days of Saint Hilarion. In the town where he was born, near Gaza, there lived a simple, pious couple whom the Lord had blessed with a daughter of intelligence and great beauty. Reared by her parents in the ways of goodness, the sensitive girl, to everyone's delight, grew in humility and piety, and was, in all her discreet charm, as lovely to behold as an angel of G.o.d. Her dark, s.h.i.+ning hair played about her white forehead; long, velvety-black lashes shaded her modestly lowered eyes; she walked on tiny, delicate feet, slender and light as the gazelles under the palm trees. She would not even look at men, for in her fourteenth year of age she had taken deathly ill, and she had vowed-should He save her-to take none but G.o.d as husband, and G.o.d had accepted her offering.

A youth who lived in the same town fell in love with this picture of undefiled maiden chast.i.ty. He, too, was handsome and comely, the son of well-to-do parents, who had bred and raised him with all due care. But once he had fallen in love with the lovely young woman, he would do nothing but seek out every opportunity to see her; and when he did, he would stand enraptured before the ever so lovely child, gazing at her with ardent yearning in his eyes. When a day would pa.s.s without his seeing her face, he would mope around pale and dejected, eat nothing, and pa.s.s many an hour in sighs and lamentations.

Having had a good, Christian upbringing, the youth was possessed of a gentle and pious temperament, but now this violent infatuation reigned over his heart and soul. He was no longer able to pray, and instead of meditating on the holy things, he thought only of the maiden's long, black hair, her tranquil, beautiful eyes, the color and contours of her cheeks and lips, her slender, s.h.i.+ning neck, and her tiny agile feet. But he was reluctant to let her know of his great love and eager desire; for he knew only too well that she meant to take no earthly husband, bearing no love within her but to G.o.d and to her parents.

Languis.h.i.+ng with lovesickness, he finally wrote her a long, imploring letter in which he declared his ardent love; with all his heart he begged her to accept him, and, in days to come, to live with him in holy matrimony, as would please G.o.d. He scented his missive with a n.o.ble Persian powder, rolled it up, tied it with a silken cord, and secretly sent it to her by the hands of an old maidservant.

When the maiden read his words, she turned scarlet. In the first flush of confusion, her inclination was to tear the letter to pieces or show it immediately to her mother. But then, she had known and liked the youth well as a child, and in his words she perceived a certain diffidence and tenderness, so she did no such thing; instead, she gave the letter back to the old woman, saying: "Return this letter to him who has written it, and tell him that he may never again address such words to me. Tell him also that by my parents I have been promised as a bride to G.o.d; thus, I may never offer my hand to any man, but shall stand firm in my resolve to serve and honor Him in virginal purity, for love unto Him is higher and worthier than human love. Further, tell him that I hope not to find even one man whose love is higher and worthier than G.o.d's, and so I would persist in my solemn vow. To him who has written this letter I wish G.o.d's peace, which surpa.s.seth all understanding. And now get you hence and know that never again shall I accept such a message from your hands."

Astonished at such steadfastness of purpose, the maidservant returned to her master, brought him his letter, and reported all that the maiden had said.

Although she added several consoling words, the youth burst out in loud lamentations, rent his garments, and cast dirt upon his head. He no longer dared cross the maiden's path, and sought to catch sight of her only from a distance. Nights he lay sleepless in his chamber, crying aloud the name of his beloved, and a hundred fond terms of endearment; he called her his Light and his Star, his Roe Deer and his Palm, his Eyebright and his Pearl, and when he awakened from these reveries to find himself alone in the dark room, he clenched his teeth, cursed the name of G.o.d, and battered his head against the wall.

This earthly love had eclipsed and extinguished all piety in his heart. And scarcely had the Devil gained entry than he hurled the youth from one abomination to another. The youth took an oath that he would have the lovely girl for himself, and would do so by force. He journeyed to Memphis, where he entered the school of the heathen priests of Asklepios, and took instruction in the arts of sorcery. He zealously pursued these studies for a year before returning home to Gaza.

Upon his return, he incised on a copper tablet signs and words of power to induce a strong love charm. In the dark of night, he buried the tablet under the threshold of the house in which the maiden lived.

Even on the very next day, the girl was remarkably changed. She gave free reign to her once so modestly lowered gaze; she loosed her hair and let it fall freely; she neglected her prayers and failed to attend divine services, and to herself she sang a little love song which no one had taught her. Daily her condition grew more serious, and nightly she tossed and turned in her bed, crying aloud the youth's name, calling him her most dearly beloved, desiring him near.

Her much-altered condition could not long remain concealed from the bewitched girl's parents. Having become suspicious of her changed words and manners, they listened in on her at night, and were so shocked and horrified at what they heard that the father wanted to disown his ill-bred daughter, as he called her. The mother, however, begged him to have patience; they began to examine the matter more closely and recognized that their daughter must have fallen into such a sad state of confusion owing to the influence of a magic spell.

But the maiden remained possessed of a demon, spewing blasphemies and calling out loudly for her beloved. At long last, her parents remembered the saintly hermit Hilarion, who for many years had lived in a desolate spot far from the town and who was so close to G.o.d that all his prayers were heard. He had healed so many sick and had cast out so many devils that, next to Saint Anthony, he could perhaps be called the most powerful holy man of his day. They brought their daughter to him, and while telling him all that had come to pa.s.s, they implored him to heal her.

The saint turned to the maiden and bellowed: "Who has made of G.o.d's handmaid a vessel of unholy l.u.s.t?" But the girl, her body shrunken, her skin ashen, looked at him and began to revile him, boasting of her white skin and her sleek body, calling the man of G.o.d a scabious scarecrow, so that her poor parents sank down on their knees and hid their heads in shame. But Hilarion, recognizing the demon that resided in the girl, smiled and launched a vigorous attack, so that it acknowledged its name and confessed all. Forcefully, the saint exorcised the violently contentious demon from the maiden. Then she awakened, as if out of some feverish dream, recognized and greeted her weeping parents, asked Hilarion for his blessing, and was, from that moment on, the same pious bride to G.o.d she had been before.

The young man had been waiting for the charm to overpower the maiden and thrust her into his arms. He spent several days secure in his hope, during which time the things related with respect to the maiden had come to pa.s.s. Already healed, she had returned to the town, and as the youth was crossing the street, he saw her coming from afar and walked toward her. As she came nearer, he could see that her forehead again glowed with its former purity; over her face such a peaceful beauty spread that she seemed to be coming directly from paradise. Perplexed, the youth hung back, having begun, the moment he saw her, to feel ashamed of the sacrilege he had committed. But he defended himself against it, and when she came close by him, he put his trust in the efficacy of the charm, went over to her, took hold of her hand, and said: "Now do you love me?"

Without blus.h.i.+ng, the maiden raised her pure eyes, which shone on him like stars. An ineffable loving kindness radiated from them. She pressed his hand and said: "Yes, my brother, I love you. I love your poor soul, and I beg of you, deliver it from evil, and give it into G.o.d's keeping, so that it can again be beautiful and pure."

An invisible hand touched the youth's heart. His eyes brimmed with tears, and he cried: "Oh, must I renounce you forever? But give me a command, I will do naught but what you bid me."

She smiled like an angel and said to him: "You need not renounce me forever. There will come a day when we will stand before G.o.d's throne. Let us prepare ourselves for that day so that we can look Him in the face and endure His judgment. Then I will be your friend. It is but for a short time that we must remain apart."

Gently he let go her hand, and smiling she walked away. For a while he stood like one under a spell, then he too walked on, locked up his house, and went into the wilderness to serve G.o.d. His beauty left him; he grew thin and brown and shared his dwelling with the beasts of the field. And when he grew weary and suffered doubt and could find no other consolation, he would endlessly repeat her words: "It is but for a short time..."

And probably the time seemed long to him; he grew gray and white and stayed on the earth even into his eighty-first year. What are a mere eighty years? The ages flee and are gone, as if on the wings of a bird. Since the days of that youth, one thousand and several hundred years have gone by, and how soon, too, will our names and deeds be forgotten, and no more trace of our life remain than perhaps a short, uncertain legend ...

Three Lindens.

MORE THAN a hundred years ago, in the green cemetery of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Berlin, there stood three splendid old linden trees. They were so big that the branches and boughs of their gigantic crowns had grown tangled into one another, and they arched over the entire cemetery like one enormous roof. The origin of these beautiful lindens, however, lies several centuries further back and is the subject of this story.

In Berlin there lived three brothers, among whom there was such hearty friends.h.i.+p and intimacy as is seldom seen. It so happened one day that the youngest of them went out alone in the evening, saying nothing to his brothers, because he was to meet a young woman in another part of town and go walking with her. But before he came to the appointed place, as he made his way thither immersed in pleasant reveries, out of a dark and lonely spot between two houses he heard a gentle, plaintive cry and something that sounded like a death rattle, which he immediately walked toward; for he thought an animal, or perhaps a child, had met with misfortune and lay there waiting for help. Stepping into the darkness of the secluded place, he saw, with horror, that a man lay there in a pool of his own blood. He bent over the man and asked compa.s.sionately what had happened, but there was no reply except for weak moaning and sobbing. The injured man had a knife wound in his heart, and a few moments later pa.s.sed away in the arms of the one who had come to his aid.

The young man did not know what to do next, and since the slain man showed no further sign of life, the youth, dismayed and disconcerted, proceeded with uncertain footsteps to return to the alley. At that very moment, along came two sentries on duty, and while he was considering whether to call out to them for help or walk away in silence, the sentries, observing his terror-stricken condition, approached him. Seeing the blood on his shoes and coat sleeves, they seized him by force, scarcely listening to what he now was beseechingly trying to tell them. They found the dead man close by, the body already cold; and without delay they took the alleged murderer to prison, where he was put in irons and closely guarded.

The next morning, the judge heard his case. The corpse was brought out; and now, in broad daylight, the youth recognized him as a journeyman blacksmith whose companions.h.i.+p he had occasionally enjoyed. But in his prior testimony he had stated that he neither recognized nor knew anything at all about the slain man. Thus, the suspicion that he had stabbed the man grew stronger. And, during the course of the day, witnesses who knew the dead man came forward and testified that formerly the youth had cultivated a friends.h.i.+p with the blacksmith but they had fallen out on account of a young woman. Though there was but little truth in this, there was still a small grain, which the innocent man fearlessly admitted, a.s.serting his innocence and asking, not for mercy, but for justice.

The judge was persuaded that the youth was the murderer, and soon thought he had sufficient evidence to pa.s.s judgment and turn him over to the hangman. The more the prisoner disavowed his prior testimony, claiming to know nothing at all, the more guilty he appeared to be.

In the meantime, one of his brothers-the eldest had gone abroad on business the day before-returned home, and waited and looked for the youngest in vain. When he heard that his brother was in prison, accused of committing a murder which he stubbornly denied, he went immediately to see the judge.

"Your Honor," he said, "you have imprisoned an innocent man. Release him. I am the murderer, and I do not want an innocent man to suffer in my place. The blacksmith was my enemy; I had been following him, and last night I met up with him when some private urge brought him to that very corner; then I went after him and plunged the dagger into his heart."

Astonished, the judge listened to this confession and had the brother shackled and closely guarded until such time as the truth should come to light. And so both brothers lay in chains under the same roof, but the youngest knew nothing of what his brother had done for him, and he went on zealously protesting his own innocence.

Two days went by without the discovery of any new evidence, and now the judge was inclined to believe the testimony of the ostensible murderer who had turned himself in. Then the eldest brother returned to Berlin from his business abroad, found no one at home, and learned from the neighbors what had happened to his youngest brother and how his other brother had himself gone before the judge. Then he went out into the night, had the judge awakened, and knelt before him, saying: "Your Honor! Two innocent men are lying in chains suffering for my crime. Neither of my two brothers killed the journeyman blacksmith, but rather it was I who committed the murder. I cannot bear to have others imprisoned in my place, others who have committed no offense whatsoever; and I sorely entreat you to release them and take me, for I am ready to pay for my crime with my life."

Now the judge was even more astonished and knew no other recourse but to take the third brother into custody as well.

Early the next morning, however, when the warder brought the youngest prisoner his bread, he said as he pa.s.sed it through the door: "Now, I really would like to know the truth as to which of you three really is the monster." No matter how the youngest pleaded and begged, the warder would not tell him anything more; but the youth concluded from these words that his brothers had come to offer their lives in place of his. Then he burst into tears and demanded vehemently to be brought before the judge. As he stood in chains before him, he again began to weep and said: "Oh, your Honor, pardon me for having put you off so long! I thought that no one had seen what I'd done, that no one could prove my guilt. But now I realize that justice will have its way, I can struggle no longer and want to confess that indeed it was I who killed the blacksmith, and it is I who must pay for it with my wretched life."

Then the judge, thinking that he was dreaming, opened his eyes wide in astonishment; his wonder was indescribable, and his heart began to cower in the face of this unusual turn of events. Once again he had the prisoner locked up and put under guard, as he did his two brothers, and for a long time he sat lost in thought. He realized, of course, that only one of the brothers could be the murderer and that the others had offered themselves up to the hangman out of magnanimity and a strange kind of brotherly love.

His meditations came to an end as he understood that the reasoning that generally applied produced no results in this case. Thus, the next day, he left the prisoners in protective custody and went to see the Elector, to whom he related the remarkable story as clearly as possible.

The Elector listened to him with the greatest astonishment, and in the end said: "This is a strange and unusual case! In my heart I believe that none of the three has committed the murder, not even the youngest, whom your sentries apprehended, but rather that all he said in the beginning is the truth. However, since this concerns a crime punishable by death, we cannot simply allow the accused to go free. Thus I will call upon G.o.d Himself to p.r.o.nounce judgment on these three loyal brothers, and to His judgment they must submit."

And so his plan was carried out. It was springtime, and on a bright warm day the three brothers were taken out to a green plot of ground; and each one was given a strong young linden tree to plant. But they were to plant the lindens not with their roots but with their young green crowns in the earth, so that the roots stood out against the sky; and whose sapling would be the first to perish or wither, he would be regarded as the murderer and judged accordingly.

And so each of the brothers carefully dug a hole for his little tree and planted its branches in the earth. Only a short time had pa.s.sed when all three of the trees began to bud and set new crowns, a sign that all three brothers were innocent. And the lindens quickly grew tall and stood for many hundreds of years in the cemetery of the Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Berlin.

The Man of the Forests.

IN THE BEGINNING of the Age of Man, even before the human race had spread over the face of the earth, there were the men of the forests. They lived, timid and confined, in the twilight of the tropical primeval forests, perpetually in battle with their relatives the apes, while over them stood the one G.o.dhead and the one law that governed them in all their actions: the Forest. It was their homeland, refuge, cradle, nest, and grave, and life outside its boundaries was unthinkable. Even approaching its borders was to be avoided, and whosoever-through some strange turn of Fate-was forced toward them, in hunting or fleeing, told in fear and trembling of the white Void beyond, where one could see the fearful Nothingness glistening in the deadly burning rays of the sun. An old man of the forest, who decades before had fled from wild beasts beyond the forest's outermost rim, still lived, blind from that day. He was now a kind of priest and holy man and was called mata dalam (he whose eye is turned inward). It was he who had composed the sacred Song of the Forest, which was sung whenever there was a great storm, and the forest people listened to him. That he had seen the sun with his own eyes and had survived was his glory and the secret of his power.

The forest people were small and brown and very hairy; their posture was hunched, and they had timid, wild eyes. Like men and like apes, they could walk, and they felt just as secure high in the branches as they did on the ground. As yet they had no knowledge of building houses and huts, but they used various weapons and tools, and they made jewelry. Out of hardwoods they made bows, arrows, lances, and clubs. From bast fiber they made necklaces, hung with dried berries or nuts, and around their necks or in their hair they also wore other objects of value: boars' teeth, tigers' claws, parrots' feathers, the sh.e.l.ls of freshwater mussels. Through the middle of the immense forest flowed the great river; the men of the forest, however, dared to walk along its bank only in the darkness of night, and many of them had never seen it. Sometimes the more courageous crept out of the thicket at night, shy and wary, and in the s.h.i.+mmering darkness they would see the elephants bathing, and when they looked up through the overhanging treetops, with terror they beheld the radiant stars hanging in the network of the many-armed mangroves. They had never seen the sun, and it was considered extremely dangerous even to glimpse its reflection in the summer.

In that clan of forest people over which the blind mata dalam presided there was also a youth named Kubu; he was leader and spokesman for the young and discontented. Since the mata dalam had grown older and more tyrannical, the ranks of the discontented grew. Until now, it had been the blind one's special right to have his food provided for him by the others; they also looked to him for advice, and they sang his Forest Song. But gradually he began to introduce all sorts of burdensome new customs, which, he claimed, the G.o.d of the Forest had revealed to him in dreams. But a few young skeptics maintained that the old man was an impostor, who had only his own best interests in mind.

The most recent custom the mala dalam had inst.i.tuted was a celebration of the new moon. Beating on a bark drum, he sat in the center of a circle while the other forest people danced around him in a ring, singing golo elah until they dropped, dead-tired, to their knees. At this point, each male had to pierce his left ear with a thorn, and the young women were brought before the priest, who pierced each one's ear with a thorn. Kubu and a few of his companions had avoided this ceremony, and they were set on persuading the girls to offer resistance too.

One time they had a chance to put an end to the priest's power and to triumph over him. The old man was again holding the celebration of the new moon, piercing the left ears of the young females. As he did this, a strong young woman stood up and began to scream terribly; and so it happened that the blind one pierced her eye with the thorn, and blood poured from the eye. Now she screamed so desperately that everyone came running, and when they saw what had happened, they fell into a dazed and angry silence. Exultant now, the boys intervened and Kubu even dared to grab hold of the priest's shoulder. But the old man stood up by his drum and crowed in a scornful voice so ghastly a curse that everyone drew back in fear, and Kubu's own heart froze. No one could understand the precise meaning of the old priest's words, but the manner and sound of his utterance wildly and terribly recalled to them the awesome words of the divine service. And he laid a curse on the youth's eyes, which he commended to the hawk for food; and he cursed the youth's entrails, prophesying that one day they would broil in the sun in the open field. But then the priest, whose power was greater now than at any other time, ordered the young woman to come back to him, and he plunged the thorn through her other eye. And everyone looked on, horrified, and no one dared to breathe.

"You will die Outside," was the curse the old one had put on Kubu, and from then on everyone avoided the youth as one beyond all hope. "Outside"-that meant outside the bounds of their homeland, outside the bounds of the darkening forest! "Outside," that meant terror, scorching sun, and the glowing, fatal Void.

Terrified, Kubu fled, and when he saw everyone who encountered him shrink back, he hid in a hollow tree trunk and admitted defeat. For days and nights he lay there, vacillating between fear of death and defiance, uncertain now whether the people of his clan would come to strike him down or whether the sun itself would break through the forest, besiege and hunt him down, take him captive, and slay him. But neither arrow nor lance, neither sun nor bolt of lightning came to Kubu, nothing came but extreme weariness and the bellowing voice of hunger.

Then Kubu got back on his feet and crawled out of the tree, sober and with a feeling that bordered on disappointment.

"The curse of the priest is powerless," he thought in amazement. Then he went out searching for food, and after he had eaten and could again feel life coursing through his limbs, pride and hatred returned to his soul. He no longer wanted to go back among his people. He wanted to be a loner and an outcast, one whom the people despised, one upon whom the priest-that blind animal-called down impotent curses. He wanted to be alone and to remain alone. But first he would take his revenge.

He went off to think. He contemplated all those things which had ever sowed doubt in his mind, things which appeared to be deceit, and foremost he contemplated the priest's drum and his ceremonies; and the more he thought and the longer he was alone, the more clearly he could see: yes, it was deceit, all of it was nothing but deceit and lying. And since he had already come so far, he thought still further and aimed his now vigilant suspiciousness directly at all that was held to be sacred and true. What, for example, was the truth about the G.o.d of the Forest, and the sacred Song of the Forest? Oh, these too were nothing but sheer duplicity! And overcoming a secret terror, he began to sing the Song of the Forest with scorn and contempt in his voice, twisting all its words, and three times he called upon the G.o.d of the Forest, whose name it was forbidden to utter-to all but the priest-on pain of death; yet everything remained peaceful and calm, no storm rent the heavens, no lightning bolt fell from the blue.

For many days and weeks the solitary wandered, with furrowed brow and penetrating gaze. He did something else no one had ever dared: he went to the bank of the river on the night of the full moon. First he looked at the moon's reflection, then at the moon itself; then he gazed into the eyes of all the stars, long and boldly, and nothing untoward befell him. Whole moonlit nights he sat on the riverbank, cheris.h.i.+ng his thoughts and reveling in the forbidden delirium of light. Many bold and terrible schemes rose in his soul. The moon is my friend, he thought, and the star is my friend, but the old blind man is my enemy. Thus, the Outside may be better than our Inside, and perhaps the sanct.i.tude of the forest itself is empty talk! And one night, many generations before any human being did, he hit upon a daring and fabulous idea. In all probability, one could bind together some branches with bast fiber, set oneself on them, and float downstream. His eyes sparkled and his heart beat faster, but he did not act on his idea; the river was full of crocodiles.

There was but one way into the future: to go through the forest until he reached its end-if it really had an end-and there to leave it, and put his faith in the glowing Void, the evil Outside. He had to go in search of that monster the sun and endure it. Because-who could say?-in the end maybe even the ancient taboo on the sun was nothing but another lie!

This thought, the last in a bold, feverish sequence, made Kubu tremble. This was something that no man of the forest before him had ever dared: voluntarily to leave the forest and expose himself to the terrifying light of the sun. And from day to day he went about bearing this thought in mind. At last he took courage. Trembling, he crept toward the river in the glare of midday; warily he neared its glittering bank, and with timid eyes he sought out the image of the sun in the water. The radiance pained and dazzled his eyes; he had to close them quickly, but after a while he dared to open them again, and then one more time, and he succeeded. It was possible, it was to be borne; moreover, it made one spirited and brave. Kubu put his faith in the sun. He loved it, even if it should kill him; and he hated the old, dark, putrid forest, where the priests shrilled, and from which he, the young valiant, had been outlawed and outcast.

Now his resolve had grown ripe, and he plucked the deed like a sweet fruit. He made a fine, new hammer of ironwood and equipped it with a very thin, light handle. Early the next morning, he went after the mata dalam, tracked him down and found him, hit him on the head with the hammer and watched his soul escape through the crooked mouth. Kubu laid down his weapon on the old man's breast, so that people would know how the old man had met his end; on the hammer's smooth surface, with the sh.e.l.l of a mussel, he had painstakingly scratched a sign, a circle out of which radiated several straight lines: the image of the sun.

Courageously, he set out on his journey to the distant Outside, and from morning to night he walked in one direction, and at night he slept in the tree branches and continued on his way in the early morning, all day long for several days, crossing over streams and black swamps, and over rising land and mossy banks of stone, the likes of which he had never before seen, and finally upward more steeply, stopped by ravines, farther on into the mountains, and always through the eternal forests, so that in the end he became doubtful and sad, pondering the possibility that perhaps some G.o.d really did forbid the creatures of the forest to leave their homeland.

Then one evening, after he had long been climbing and climbing in ever-higher, drier, and thinner air, he came, unexpectedly, to the end. But with the end of the forest came the end of the earth as well; here the forest plummeted down into the emptiness of air, as if here the world had been broken in two. There was nothing to see but a distant, feeble redness, and above, a few stars, for night had already begun to fall.

Kubu sat down at the edge of the world and bound himself fast with vines so as not to fall off. He spent the night crouching in horror and wild agitation, his eyes wide open, and in the first gray of morning he impatiently jumped to his feet and waited, bent over the Void, for day to come.

Lovely yellow strips of light glimmered in the distance, and the sky seemed to tremble in expectation, just as Kubu trembled, never before having seen the coming of day in the broad expanse of the atmosphere. Yellow bundles of light flared up, and on the other side of the monstrous abyss, the sun sprang, huge and red, into the sky. It leapt up out of an endless, gray nothingness, which soon became blue-black: the sea.

Before the trembling man of the forests, the Outside lay unveiled. At his feet, the mountain plunged down into unknowable, smoking depths; opposite him, a craggy mountain chain sprang up, glittering like rosy jewels. To his side, the dark sea lay distant and immense; its coast was white and frothy, and the tiny trees that lined it nodded toward him. And over all this, over these thousand, strange, new, powerful forms, the sun rose and poured a glowing stream of light on the world, which took fire in laughing colors.

Kubu was not able to look the sun in the face. But he saw its light streaming in colorful torrents around the mountains and cliffs and coasts and distant blue isles. And he sank to his knees, bent his face to the earth, bowing down to the G.o.ds of this radiant world. Who was he, Kubu?! Only a small, dirty animal who had spent his whole musty life in a darkening bog hole deep in the forest, timid and gloomy, paying homage to obscure G.o.ds. But here was the world, and its supreme G.o.d was the sun. The long, ignominious dream of his forest life was behind him; now it began-like the sallow image of the dead priest-to be extinguished in his soul. On hands and feet, Kubu clambered down the steep abyss, toward the light and the sea. And his soul trembled in a fleeting transport of joy with the dreamlike surmise of a bright earth-an earth ruled by the sun, where bright, free beings lived in light, subject to no one but the sun.

The Dream of the G.o.ds.

Preliminary Remark.

TEN YEARS have now pa.s.sed since the beginning of the Great War. Among all the memories of that time, there exist in every part of the world numerous instances of presentiments, prophesies, prophetic dreams, and visions which relate to the war. These experiences have resulted in a good deal of humbug, and nothing is further from my intention than to count myself among the ranks of the many clairvoyants and prophets of the war! In August of 1914 I was as shocked and terrified as any man by the course of events. And yet, just like thousands of others, shortly before the onset of the catastrophe, I, too, had a presentiment. At least I had, some eight weeks before war broke out, a very remarkable dream, which I wrote down before the end of June of that year. To be sure, this sketch no longer is an authentic, literally faithful account of the dream; for at that time I made it into a small fiction. But the essential point, the appearance of the G.o.d of War and his retinue, was not a conscious invention; rather, it was true to the experience of the dream.

Not as a mere curiosity, but because many people may be inclined to think seriously about it, I present here that sketch from June 1914. [1924]

I WAS ALONE and helpless and saw it grow dark and formless everywhere, and searching I ran to find out whither all brightness had fled. And I saw a new building whose windows were radiant, and over its doors light burned clear as day, and I went in through a gateway and entered an illuminated hall. Many people had a.s.sembled here and sat silent and attentive, for they had come to the priests of knowledge to find consolation and light. On a raised platform before the people stood one of the priests, a quiet man dressed in black, with wise, weary eyes, and he spoke to the large audience in a clear, mild, compellingly serene voice. But before him on luminous screens were numerous images of the G.o.ds, and now he stepped in front of the G.o.d of War and told how once, in times gone by, this G.o.d had arisen out of the needs and wishes of a people, who had not yet recognized the unity of all the powers of the world. No, these people from an earlier time could only see the particular manifestation, and so they required and created a particular divinity for the sea, and for dry land, for the hunt and for war, for the rain and for the sun. And just so had the G.o.d of War arisen, and the servant of wisdom explained clearly and distinctly where the first images of that G.o.d had been raised, and when the first sacrifices had been made to him-until later, with the triumph of knowledge, this G.o.d had become superfluous.

With a motion of the priest's hand, the image of the G.o.d of War was extinguished and vanished, and in its place on the screen rose a picture of the G.o.d of Sleep, and this image, too, was explained-oh, far too quickly, for I would have liked to hear much more about this benign G.o.d. After his image sank out of sight, there appeared in succession the G.o.d of Drunkenness, and the G.o.d of Joyous Love, and the G.o.ddesses of Agriculture, of the Hunt, and of Domesticity. In its particular form and beauty, each of these divinities flashed like a salutation and reflection from the distant youthful days of humanity. And all were accounted for individually, along with the reasons they had long ago become superfluous. One image after another was extinguished and vanished, and every time this happened, a small and distinct exultation of the spirit, mingled with a feeling of gentle compa.s.sion and regret, pulled at our hearts. But a few people laughed continually, clapped their hands, and cried out "Away with it!" whenever another image of a G.o.d vanished at the signal of the learned man.

Listening intently, we learned that birth and death, love and envy, hate and anger no longer required special emblems, because, of late, humanity had had enough of all these G.o.ds, having recognized that no individual powers or properties resided in either the human soul or the interior of the earth and sea. On the contrary, there was only the great ebb and flow of the one original force, the investigation of whose essence henceforth would be the great task facing the human spirit. In the meantime, whether through the fading of the images, or as the result of other causes unknown to me, the hall had grown more and more dark and dusky, and so I realized that-even here in this temple-no pure and eternal source would illuminate me, and I resolved to flee this house and seek out brighter climes.

But before my resolve had turned to action, I saw the duskiness of the hall grow even murkier, and the people began to feel uneasy, to scream, to crowd and push one another like sheep frightened by a sudden storm, and no one wanted to listen to the wise man's words any longer. A horrible anguish and closeness had settled on the mult.i.tude; I heard sighs and groans and watched the frenzied people storm toward the gates. The air was clouded with dust thick as sulfur fumes, it had grown dark as night, but behind the high windows a turbulent incandescence-as of fire-flared muddy red.

My senses left me, I lay on the ground, and countless fugitives trod me with their shoes.

When I came to and raised myself on my bleeding hands, I was all alone in an empty, devastated house, whose crumbling walls split and threatened to crash down on top of me. And I could hear an indistinct din of distant thunder and desolate echoes raging. And through the shattered walls the luminous air, like an agonized, bleeding countenance, pulled away involuntarily from the glowing incandescence. But the suffocating closeness was gone.

As I now crept forth from the ruins of the Temple of Knowledge, I saw half the city in flames and the night sky suffused with pillars of flame and trails of smoke. The dead lay scattered among the debris; it was quiet all about, and I could hear the crackling and blistering of the distant sea of flames, but behind it, out of an even greater distance, I heard a wild and anxious howling, as though all the peoples of the earth raised their voices in one endless scream or sigh.

The world is going under, I thought, and this notion so little surprised me, it seemed as though I had been waiting a long time for just that to happen. But now, from amid the burning and collapsing city, I saw a boy come toward me. His hands were buried in his pockets and he hopped and skipped from one leg to another, resilient and light-hearted. Then he stopped and emitted an ingenious whistle-our signal to one another from Latin School days, and the boy was my friend Gustav, who had shot himself when he was a student. Immediately I too became, like him, a boy of twelve, and the burning city and the distant thunder and the bl.u.s.tering storm of howling voices from all the corners of the world sounded wondrously exquisite to our newly awakened ears. Now everything was good, and the dark nightmare in which I had lived for so many despairing years was gone forever.

Laughing, Gustav showed me a castle with a high tower, and just as he pointed, it all came tumbling down. Never mind if the things perished, no cause for sorrow. Newer and more beautiful things could be built. Thank G.o.d Gustav had come back! Now life had meaning again.

An enormous cloud had gathered above the ruins of the splendid buildings, and we stared at it in expectancy and silence; out of this dust cloud a monstrous form broke free, craning its divine head and raising its colossal arms, and it stepped, victorious, into the smoke-filled world. It was the G.o.d of War, just as I had seen him in the Temple of Knowledge. But he was alive and gigantic, and his face, lit by flames, smiled proudly in happy, boyish exuberance. And we followed him-our enraptured hearts beating wildly-as if on wings, above the city and the fire, rashly storming away into the broad, fluttering, stormy night.

On a high mountaintop the war G.o.d stood exultantly shaking his round s.h.i.+eld, and lo-from all the ends of the earth remote G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, demons and demi-G.o.ds arose and approached him, huge, holy, and splendid. The G.o.d of Love came floating, and the G.o.d of Sleep came staggering; the G.o.ddess of the Hunt strode slender and severe, and on and on, G.o.ds without end. And when, blinded by the n.o.bility of their figures, I cast down my eyes, I saw that I was no longer alone with my cherished friend, but surrounding us on bended knees were a new people, who knelt in the night to the returning G.o.ds.

The Painter.

A PAINTER by the name of Albert could not in his early years achieve the effects or results he desired with the pictures he painted. He went off by himself and decided to rely entirely on his own judgment. For years he tried to do this. But more and more it was evident that he alone was not enough. He sat working on the portrait of a hero, and while he painted, time and again came the recurrent thoughts: Is it really imperative for you to do what you are doing? Do these pictures really and truly need to be painted? Wouldn't it be just as well for you and for everyone else if you merely spent your time taking walks or drinking wine? What more are you doing with your painting than dulling your nerves a little, forgetting yourself a little, whiling away the time?

These thoughts were not conducive to good work. In time, Albert virtually stopped painting altogether. He went out for walks, he drank wine, he read books, he took trips. But he was not content doing these things either.

Often he had to reconsider those wishes and hopes he had when he initially took up painting. And he remembered what they had been: he had hoped there would emerge a strong and beautiful connection, a current between himself and the world, something powerful and intimate that would perpetually vibrate and make gentle music. In painting heroes and epic landscapes, Albert had sought to appease and express his inner self, so that later-reflected in the appreciative eyes and sound judgment of those who viewed his paintings-it would gratefully s.h.i.+ne back at him, invested with new life.

But this had not come to pa.s.s. It had become a dream, and even the dream gradually began to weaken and fade away. Wherever Albert roamed, in whatever remote place he sojourned alone, traveling on s.h.i.+ps or crossing mountain pa.s.ses, the dream returned to him more and more frequently, different from before, but just as beautiful, just as powerful, alluring, just as desirable and radiant in the new force of its wishfulness.

How often he had longed for it-to feel a sympathetic vibration between himself and all the things of the world! To feel that his own breath and the breath of the wind and the sea were one and the same, that brotherhood and fellows.h.i.+p, love and intimacy, sound and harmony existed between him and all things!

He no longer wanted to paint pictures that would bring him understanding and love, that would explain, justify, and celebrate him. He no longer thought about heroes and pageantry which-as image and empty smoke-would express and transcribe his own essence. He longed only for the feeling of that vibration, that power current, that secret intimacy, in which he himself would be annihilated and perish, would die and be reborn. Even now this new dream, even now this new, intensified longing made life bearable, brought something like meaning to it, transfigured and redeemed it.

Albert's friends, insofar as he still had some, did not find it easy to understand these visions of his. All they could see was that he kept more and more to himself, that he spoke and smiled more softly and more curiously, that he often disappeared, that he showed no interest in what other people held dear and important-neither politics nor trade, neither shooting matches nor ball games, nor clever discussions about art; in short, he took no part in any of those things in which the others delighted. He had become an eccentric and half crazy. He would go running through the cool, gray winter air, inhaling its colors and scents; he would run after a small child who walked along babbling to himself; he would stare for hours into a pool of green water, or at a flower bed; or he would lose himself-like a reader in his book-in the lines he found in a cross section of a small piece of wood, in a root or a turnip.

People no longer paid him any mind. In those days, he had gone to live in a town in a foreign country and one morning, while walking down a tree-lined boulevard, Albert looked out between the tree trunks and saw a small, sluggish river, a steep, yellow, clayey bank, where bushes and briers had taken root and dustily branched out over fallen rocks and bleak minerals. Then something in him began to sing, he stood still, there in his soul once again were the strains of an ancient song. Clay-yellow and dusty green, or sluggish river and precipitous bank, some kind of relations.h.i.+p between the colors or lines, some kind of tone, a peculiarity in the random scene was beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, touching and deeply moving; it spoke to him, was kindred to him. And he felt the sympathetic vibration and the most intimate relations.h.i.+p between the woods and the river, between the river and himself, between the sky, the earth, and the plants; all these things seemed to be there for the sole purpose of being reflected as a unity in his eyes and heart, at this hour coming together and bidding welcome. His heart was the place where river and plant, tree and air could conjoin, bond together, enhance one another and celebrate a banquet of love.

When this glorious experience had recurred a few times, a splendid feeling of joy enveloped the painter, thick and full as a golden evening or a fragrant garden. He tasted it, it was sweet and heavy, but he could not long endure it; it was too rich, it filled him to bursting, it made him agitated, anxious and frenzied. It was stronger than he, it carried him away, transported him, and he was afraid of drowning in it. And that was the one thing he did not want. He wanted to live, he wanted to live an eternity. Never, never before had he so intensely desired to live as he did now!

As if he had awakened from a spell of delirium, one day he found himself quiet and alone in a room. Before him were a box of paints and a small piece of stretched pasteboard-now, after years, he sat down once again to paint.

And so it went. The thought, Why am I doing this? did not enter his mind. He painted. He did nothing but see and paint. Either he would go outside and lose himself in the images of the world, or he would sit in his room and again let the abundance flow off. On his small pieces of pasteboard he painted picture after picture, a rainy sky with willows, a garden wall, a bench in the woods, a highway, or even people and animals and things he had never seen, heroes or angels perhaps, but things which were real and had their own existence, just like walls and forests.