(For PDF versions of all six parts of my translation of William Lovell, go to The Worldview Annex.)
William Lovell
Book Three
1793-1794
1
Mortimer to Charles Wilmont
I have not encountered you in London
I traveled hither in
the greatest possible haste, but in vain—he was already dead, already buried
when I got home. I could only visit his grave. Hitherto no event in my life has
grieved me so much as the fact that I was unable to fulfill the worthy man’s
last hope, his last joy: how often may he have sighed for me in his bed, how
often may he have looked towards the door that I was bound to walk through [at
any moment], and awaited me in vain. Charles, we never so keenly feel how much
a person is to us as from the moment of his death. If we do not quite encircle
a human being with the ardent entirety of our love, we are nonetheless agitated
by the thought that he [once] was and [now] is no more, a thrill
of terror in our soul, a curiously dismal feeling that contracts our heart.
But enough on this subject; I could say much more on it, but this
death has for [the past] few weeks embittered all pleasures. I could have
managed to be thankful to this uncle; the manifold proofs of his love are only
just now occurring to me; I always took his surly moods too seriously; in my
childish sensitivity I often went out of my way to interpret his remarks in the
worst sense. Ah, Charles! Man is a feeble creature; how many tricks do his
vanity and self-love play on him notwithstanding all of his philosophical
resolutions!
My relations and his
seem to have been thrown into a kind of panic by my arrival; we remain on an
almost friendly footing with one another, and as he has bequeathed to them
certain legacies I hope that upon the unsealing of the will everything will
take its course without any legal proceedings.
If my entreaties have any influence over you, come to London
Old Lovell, whom I
have visited several times, is among the most estimable people I have ever met.
Without [any of] the pretentiousness that among many professional scholars is
no less tiresome than ridiculous, he combines a large amount of knowledge with
an equally [abundant store] of experiences and a highly developed
understanding. His capacity for feeling is no less subtle than profound, and he
stands at equidistant removes from the cold-blooded and the hot-headed! But in
the main he has become invaluable to me by virtue of the heartfelt human
kindness with which he indulges every unfortunate soul; on account of the
readiness with which his sympathy, no less quickly than his succor, is pledged
to such wretches. For himself he feels less keenly than for others, for he
[manages] completely to conceal the grief that Lord Burton’s suit must undoubtedly
be causing him, especially as the particulars of the outcome promise to be
anything but favorable to him. Since I have come to know him better, I have
taken the warmest interest in everything that concerns him: Like me, all of his
[other] acquaintances are his friends.
I have also seen your
sister several times; she frets over the absence of Lovell, who probably more
often forgets her than she him, as it is a general and established truth that
the heart of a tender feminine creature cleaves faster and more ardently to the
object of [its] love, [and] tenders him far fairer and more abiding emotions
than [he] can ever reciprocate. It has occurred to me a hundred times in
connection with her that I would be happy if she could transfer this devotion
and love to me; I have often lingeringly and attentively studied the delicate
and highly intelligent structure of her face. Your sister’s physiognomy may be
classed with the most interesting ones, with those that do not captivate one’s
eyes with fugitively flashing glances, but that entice one’s gaze in silence,
that unobserved set the heart in motion and leave behind an enduring image in
the fancy. I have dreamt a hundred times—but farewell; who will recount all of
his dreams? I am always wide-awake—and even if I am never to be your
brother-in-law, rest assured that I shall perpetually remain
Your friend Mortimer.
2
Charles Wilmont to Mortimer
Charles Wilmont to Mortimer
Bondly
Yes, my friend, soon,
perhaps in a few days, I shall see you again; it is at last time for me to quit
Bondly. Or, rather, I should have quit it earlier, for it is now too late to
restore my former state of perfect tranquility. How full of absurdities and
contradictions is human existence! Since Monday I have been nursing a single
wound whose putrefaction I fully perceive, but that I am not even trying to
heal, quite apart from the fact that is now past healing. Let any number of
moralists gainsay me as they will, I at least find precisely therein a
consolation, [namely] that I am guilty of my own injury; I am aware of how it
has come into being by degrees and courtesy of my own negligence, and while I
am in the midst of tracing this etiology, discerning the efficient cause of
every symptom, I unthinkingly fall into a philosophy of sorts and complacently
surrender myself to the irrevocable. A [merely] accidental injury—a blow that
in one fell swoop had alighted on me from the heavens, one of the sort that
leads our understanding feebly to wrangle with itself in search of a cause—a
dig in the ribs administered to me by an invisible [elbow], would have driven
me mad: No, this resignation to fate, to providence, to contingency, or
necessity; whatever one calls it, is for me utterly unthinkable. I do not feel
in myself the slightest inclination towards this species of Christian
forbearance. Heaven has hitherto ordained that I should regard myself as the
guilty perpetrator of all of my own sufferings, inasmuch as I would otherwise
more than likely inaugurate a mighty hue and cry for the sake of deafening
myself if no one else.
I do not know whether
I should consider it a blessing or a curse that Emily is not indifferent to my
love. I wonder that no Frenchman has yet chosen this idea as the subject of a
tragedy; for it really is as tragic as only something out of the French tragic
drama can be. It is among the most select and refined torments of hell to
desire something quite palpably and yet not to be allowed [willingly] to see
one’s desire fulfilled. For if Emily loves me, she must perforce be unhappy; I
shall be going away soon; her father probably has in view a rich match [for
her]—ah, what do I really know of the many hundreds of circumstances that may
simultaneously conspire to embitter the joys of a worthy young man’s life?
If one is on fairly
confidential terms with oneself, one must very often smile at oneself. Now and
then one makes a truly serious effort to pull oneself together; with all [due]
gravity one’s understanding settles into his high-backed armchair and gathers
round himself all [of one’s] moods and passions and delivers to them a sober
and serious speech, as follows: “Listen, my children, you are probably all
aware of how that being known as man lives in society with us and is governed
by turns: you are also aware (or if you are not, I beseech you to take this
circumstance into careful consideration) that in my capacity as the cleverest
of all of you, I have been entrusted with sovereignty over you. But a few of
you are unruly and refractory” ([here] he addresses one of them, love, or
anger, or jealousy, etc.) “[and] threaten to become too much for me. But dear
friends, all of this engenders nothing but profound confusion and corruption;
consider that you thereby plunge this so-called human being into
misfortune, which you yourself on this account will deplore in the end, as
several examples thereof attest. In order to maintain inner happiness and
tranquility, you must therefore of necessity acknowledge my supremacy and
willingly cringe under my scepter; for otherwise my presence here would appear
to be entirely superfluous. Accordingly, we intend on this day to inaugurate a
new government, and I am confident that in future you will be better-behaved
and more restrained. Don’t you think?” Then they all bow and utter a submissive
“Yes,” although a few of them furtively laugh behind their hands or merely
mumble under their breath something that can as readily be taken for “No” as
for “Yes.” They withdraw [with] all [due] humility, and the understanding in
his high-backed armchair begins to meditate on what a splendid fellow he is [in
having] [everyone and] everything so [firmly] under his thumb; he forms
designs, as over time he intends to extend his dominion ever further, so that
in the end not even the slightest penchant, the faintest wish, should [be
suffered to] emerge from its hiding-place without his consent. His great plans
rock him by and by into a gentle mid-day nap, [from which he is eventually] all
too rudely awakened by a deafening succession of shrieks, rages, and alarms.
“What has happened this time?” he snaps. “Ah! Once again that accursed Love has
been up to its thousand tricks…and Jealousy has thrust in its bloody head and
cracked holes in three others to boot…and Anger has run amuck in one
[great]…--oh, there is simply no telling how many mishaps have taken place in
the interval.” The understanding smites his forehead with both hands and is now
obliged laboriously to bring everything back into line; oftentimes, though,
like a sovereign who can conceive of no means of ameliorating [a situation], he
precipitately abdicates his throne, slips away and out of his own
territories–and then everything is lost, the State itself is thrown into a
perpetual anarchy. It is to be hoped that I shall never be involved in this
last stage, but in all probability I shall often yet be involved in the first
one.
So firmly had I made
up my mind yesterday to be colder and more reserved to Emily, in such abundance
had I arrayed all of the rationales for doing so before my eyes, that it was
impossible for me not to see them except by closing my eyes outright. I
had formed for myself an orderly schema according to which I was determined to
proceed, and drafted for myself with precision all of the lines thereof, so
that I should not fail to anticipate any conceivable state of affairs. But I
[all too] often have the luck of an incompetent player at billiards who sends
his opponent’s ball in an entirely different direction from the one he intends,
or even off the table altogether. For no sooner had I exhausted the last of my
strength on the devising of my firm, unalterable plan than, as though [fate]
were spiting me, I encountered Emily in the garden. Now you have the fairest
opportunity, I thought to myself, to prove that your judgment is in command of
you; resist temptation like a man. Accordingly, I did not avoid her; on the
contrary, we walked up and down while conversing nonchalantly. She [even]
seemed to find my coldness strange; she said so once or twice during our
conversation; but I stood firm and inwardly rejoiced in my preternatural
spiritual strength. We were walking past a [rose]bush and Emily plucked a
late-blooming rose [from it] with [a] matchless[ly] charming innocence, and
offered it to me with that tender simplicity that finds its expression in the
absence of words. At this moment, with [all of my] projects I appeared to
myself so foolish and tactless, so prosaic and pitiful, that—that I would have
liked to sink down to her feet and tender apologies to her [then and there]. I
do not know how it happened, but all of a sudden the spirit of Lovell came over
me; enraptured, I pressed the rose to my lips. Our conversation now took a
different and more sentimental turn; I had forgotten [my plans for] departure
and everything [else], and with the utmost recklessness talked myself into a
[proper] warmth and intimacy that subsequently perorated with an out-and-out
declaration of my love.
Emily stood
perplexed, delighted, and distressed all at the same time, as it seemed to me;
she did not venture to answer me; she had seized my hand and [now] pressed it
silently but affectionately; oh, my dear Mortimer, I would have given several
years of my life if I could have arrested the bliss of this moment and held it
fast for but a few hours. Her father came upon us in this posture; we were both
somewhat disconcerted, and Burton
But of what use is it
to complain? It will not change the world; the pain of our sighs [alone] cannot
upset the situation [in which we find ourselves]. To the extent that the tiny
atom of my remaining good humor permits it, we will try to console each other;
friendship has a highly powerful influence over one’s state of mind; in
conversation, in a hundred little distractions these dreary feelings fade away;
by and by joy washes away the sorrow from our hearts—yes, we will nevertheless
be merry together. In mutual [activity], one can fashion a thousand [new]
pleasures and heighten familiar joys; [when one is] in the company of a friend
flowers fairly sprout from the parched earth; one laughs and revels in a
thousand trifles that one would scarcely take notice of in a state of solitude.
Oh, I am beginning once again to live when I picture all of this to myself
truly vividly and in a fair light. Perhaps the two of us will even go on a
jaunt to Scotland
I wonder why I am
taking the trouble to write so much to you, as we shall so soon be able to
speak to each other viva-voce—therefore, I am flinging away this sluggish and
wearisome pen from my hand in return for [the pleasure of] enfolding you a few
minutes earlier in my arms.
3
Old
Bondly
You will perhaps be
surprised, my highly-honored Sir, to receive a letter from a man against whom
you are engaged on Mr. Lovell’s behalf. As your erudition and the success of
your clientele had long been known to me, I was on the point of resolving to
request your services in my own best interest, when Lovell forestalled me
therein, to my greatest discontent. I am persuaded that by this single measure
he has obtained the greatest advantage over me, as I regret that I am all the
same while squandering the sums that I had earmarked for you on inferior
talents; and, moreover, I know that Lovell will never sufficiently value your
industry and merit. Inasmuch as your genius is at present merely being employed
on an unjust cause, your effort is in every sense wasted. Regardless of whether
you can indeed no longer serve me, I would beg you at least not to allow
yourself in your zeal to be seduced into feeling any outright acrimony
towards me. So long as you are on the side of one party in this case, you must
of course be the adversary, but by no means the enemy, of the other; I remind
you of this simply on account of the esteem that I have for your preeminent
abilities, which could impart the sheen of justice even to an unjust cause. I
should be very much obliged to you if in a brief reply you would make plain to
me the extent to which my apprehensions are well or ill-founded.
4
Jackson Burton
My most noble Lord,
My efforts directed
against your Lordship had already become a rather disagreeable duty, as I can
never be persuaded of the lawfulness of the cause for which I am fighting; but
since becoming acquainted, courtesy of your Lordship’s latest, with the
excellence and exaltedness of your most noble Lordship’s character, your most
humble servant has found the burden of his affairs doubly onerous. It will
accordingly and for ever be impossible for me to regard with sufficient
contempt the very notion of acrimoniously contesting a not-unjust cause, or of
offending a gentleman for whom I have the deepest and sincerest respect; and
your Lordship may be assured that I wish nothing more eagerly than that my
present circumstances did not constrain me from demonstrating the extreme
degree to which I am
Your Lordship’s most
loyal and obedient servant
Jackson.
5
Bondly
Your reply has given me great pleasure, for I gather therefrom
that I may now follow the course of the lawsuit with somewhat greater
equanimity. I only wish that you had as much confidence in my friendship as I
have in your abilities; for then I should be able to acquiesce even more
wholeheartedly in the justice of my cause and in the verdict of the court; then
I should be able to take for granted the frustration of my enemies’ designs. I
cannot and may not persuade you to forsake Lovell and come over to my side; but
as you seem to be satisfied of the unlawfulness of the cause for which you are
fighting, and as I perceive that I am addressing a reasonable man, perhaps we
can come to terms by another route. If it is our duty to act in accordance with
our convictions and to further the good insofar as we can, why do we insist on
timorously adhering to the external form of the object and paying no further
mind to our ultimate aim? Who can prohibit me from recompensing your talents
and your friendship as handsomely as I see fit, even if you also happen to be
my adversary in a lawsuit; and what rational motive can constrain you from
acting to my advantage, inasmuch as the latter coincides exactly with your
convictions? Why should one let slip the chance of exploiting your residence in
a locale that enables you to do far more for me than my own lawyer? Perhaps
because it is only a chance? As if therein did not lie precisely the
greatest difference between the course of life of a wise man and that of the
fool, that the latter wanders in every which direction, now passing by one
auspicious opportunity on his right, now another on his left; whereas the more
intelligent man incorporates every trifle and advantage into his plan, such
that for him there is no such thing as chance! I am persuaded that a man as
rational as yourself will in this instance not choose to tarry much longer amid
useless scruples. In this hope I am
Your friend and patron, Lord Burton
(Baron).
P. S. I shall stipulate as a condition of our correspondence,
because it is my universal custom to do so, that you return this letter, along
with my first one and all future letters from me; if you wish, I will deal with
yours in the same manner.
6
Willy to his brother Thomas
We are now, dear brother, already in the middle of so-called Italy Savoy Genoa
We are now in Florence
I don’t think much of
the paintings and a lot of the other things we’ve seen here every day; I really
don’t know why, but they don’t quite please me. Now and then to be sure some of
them are really quite pretty; sometimes the fruit is so natural-looking that
you’d like to eat it, but my master and Master Rosa don’t think much of these
paintings. But in order for a painting to be good it has to imitate the thing
it’s trying to imitate so well that you’d think you were looking at the thing
itself; but that’s not even possible in the rest of the big paintings. So I
always think that the painters from the Roman school (that’s what the paintings
that I don't care for are called) never had a decent schoolmaster who dealt
with them strictly enough; either that or the one they did have didn’t
understand things quite properly himself, because otherwise they would have
been able to paint a lot better and more naturally. But Master William thinks
of these paintings as the prettiest ones; but I think that Master Rosa is to
blame for this, because he’s from Rome
I haven’t noticed
anything special about the statues either; the ones that pass for antiques I
don't care for at all, these are supposed to be many thousands of years old,
but their age is maybe the best thing about them; a lot of them also look
completely ruined and on the point of falling to pieces. There’s nothing much
to any of these sorts of art; in a word, they don’t pay the rent.
Farewell, Thomas, my
dear brother; and think often of me; I think very often of you and often wish
you here, especially when time is passing slowly, which is often the case.
Remain my friend as I [remain]
Your brother.
7
William Lovell to Edward Burton
William Lovell to Edward Burton
My dear Edward, I am
now writing to you from the center of Italy, from the friendliest city that I
have seen until now, that lies amid the most fruitful plains and beneath the
most charming hills and mountains. Here, where the masterpieces of the greatest
geniuses of art are gathered around me, I confer in silent contemplation with
the exalted spirits of the artists; nature revives my soul with her infinite
beauty. I often feel my heart swelling up high [within my breast] when I marvel
at the thousand-fold charms of nature and art; oh, how very much I wish you
were at my side, that I might enjoy them with you, that I might see in your
drunken eyes the mirror of my own joy. I miss you so often, and most of all
when I forget the rest of the surrounding world. For only then, at such
moments, is my urge to travel, to see marvelous and distant places, ultimately
gratified. Already as a child, when I would stand in front of my father’s country
house, and, peering beyond the remote hilltops, descry a windmill at the very
edge of the blue horizon, I fancied that in turning it was beckoning me towards
itself; the blood would course more quickly through my heart, my spirit would
flee to distant climes, a strange longing would often fill my eyes with tears.
How my heart used then to throb whenever a post-horn sounded across the forest
and a coach drove down from the hilltop! In the evening I would return,
dejected and with a troubled soul, to my room; my thoughts were loath to be
recalled from those distant foreign climes; the familiar surroundings of home
pressed my spirit earthwards. Whenever I think back on those sensations of my
childhood, I appreciate my present circumstances all the more keenly.
I must tell you of a little incident that, at least in my travels,
which have hitherto been so uneventful, seems the closest thing yet to an
adventure. Rosa has brought along with him from Paris Rosa and Balder drove slowly up the incline, and Ferdinand and I
followed on our horses. Aloft, on the mountain, nature offered us a spectacular
view. The country, or at least as much of it as we could make out, was a veritable
chaos: before us, a thick fog had twisted itself around the mountains, and a
dark haze crept through the valleys; clouds and boulders that the eye could not
distinguish from each other were randomly disposed here and there in confused
heaps; a dark sky brooded over these interpenetrating forms. Now[, as the
morning progressed,] a red sunbeam thrust itself diagonally [hither] through
the dawn's confusion; gleams of light of a hundred different colors flickered
and sparkled through the fog in manifold rainbows; the mountains [assumed
definite] shape, and their summits stood like balls of fire over the receding
fog. I halted and contemplated for a long time the marvelous transformations of
nature that followed each other in such quick succession here; I had not
noticed that in the meantime the carriage had driven on ahead; when I next
looked up, I beheld five people running towards us from the nearby woods.
Ferdinand first noted to me their dubious appearance, and as we were talking
about them and just on the point of looking for our friends, one of these chaps
suddenly grabbed my horse’s bridle, while another at the same instant fired on
Ferdinand, but luckily missed him. I felt cold and slightly disconcerted, [and]
both of my pistols misfired; but Ferdinand straight away shot one of these
bandits dead and with his hunting-knife rushed after the other two with a
courageousness that I would never have believed him capable of. I then
surprised a second one who straight away took flight: no sooner did the remaining
two perceive that the combatants were now evenly matched and that, indeed,
being on horseback, we were more than a match for them, than they quickly
withdrew into the woods. Then Rosa and Balder, impelled hastily towards us by
the sound of the gunshots, arrived and marveled—Rosa especially—at Ferdinand’s
courage; on this score Ferdinand seemed to count himself quite fortunate that
he had managed to save me; he had never given a thought to himself, but the
danger he had seen me in had terrified him from the very start. And then old
Willy wheezed his way back uphill and regretted nothing more heartily than that
the rapscallions had already fled the scene, for otherwise he would have
insisted on having a scuffle with them. The dead man was carried to the village
that we had left just shortly before, and thus ended this misadventure with
good feeling all around with regard to [our escape from death].
Fruitful and serene
Autumn imparts a peculiar beauty to the countryside here; luxuriant Nature puts
all of her treasures on display; the raw verdure [in autumn?--DR], the blue
skies, refresh the eye and soul. I have already seen Vall’ombrosa, the
most delightful solitude; I am often up at Fiesole
But why is it (oh,
would that you could explain it to me!) that a [specific] enjoyment never fills
our heart entirely? What ineffable, wistful longing is it that impels me
towards new and unknown pleasures? At the apogee of my happiness, at the
highest pitch of my enthusiasm, I am coldly and violently seized by a [feeling
of] sobriety, a dark foreboding—how can I describe it?--like a damp,
commonsensical morning wind [blowing against] the peak of a mountain after a
sleepless night; like a [rude] awakening from a pleasant dream in a cramped and
dismal bedchamber. I used to think that this oppressive emotion was a longing
for love, a craving of the soul for rejuvenation in reciprocated desire; but it
is not that, not even by Amalie’s side am I tormented by this tyrannical
sensation that, if it were to gain sovereignty over my soul, could drive me in
my eternal empty-heartedness from one pole of the earth to the other. Such a
being must be the most wretched creature under God’s heaven: every pleasure
maliciously flees backwards while he clutches after it; he stands there, like a
fate-scorned Tantalus, in the midst of nature; like Ixion, he is driven in
every direction by a perpetual whirlwind of agony; of such a person one may
say, according to the Oriental expression, that he is pursued by the Devil
himself. One feels oneself, as it were, transported into such a state
whenever one lets one’s fancy roam too freely, whenever one traverses all of
the sprawling regions of enthusiasm; at length, we fall into a province of such
eccentric emotions—in the meantime we have arrived at, so to speak, the last
frontier of all perceptibility, and our fancy has worn itself out in a hundred
exaltations—that the soul at length falls back exhausted; everything around us
seems [immersed] in an insipid gloom, our fairest hopes and wishes stand there,
darkened and entangled in a fog; in our discontent, we search for the road back
from this hinterland, but the way is closed off, and so at length we are
overcome by that void in the soul, that heavy torpor, that deadens all of the
mainsprings of our existence. Accordingly, one ought to be wary of that
spiritual drunkenness that pulls us away from the earth for too long; at
length, we are reduced to the condition of aliens who imagine themselves
transported into an unfamiliar world, and who at the same time have lost the
propulsive power to hoist themselves back over the clouds. A certain degree of
domestication seems to me indispensable even with regard to the enjoyment of
poetry; one must forbear feasting now for the sake of not fasting
tomorrow—curious, that I heard all of this several months ago from Mortimer and
yet refused to believe any of it at the time! But inasmuch as I believe I have
come up with it on my own, I am entirely convinced by it. Isn’t that a
particularly petty piece of capriciousness?
But I now shun those strong excitations of the imagination, and
they are not even always the cause of that feeling of dejection that from time
to time pursues me against my will. No one knows as well as you do that curious
tendency of my soul, in the midst of the merriest surroundings, to go off in
search of some melancholy, mournful train of thought and then stealthily
insinuate it into the scene of gaiety; this seasons sensual pleasure through
the contrast with a more subtle sensation; our joy is mitigated, but its warmth
suffuses us more intimately; such are the ruins that the painter flings into
his sunny landscape to enhance its effect. I have this super-rarified form of
Epicureanism to thank for many of the fairest hours of my life, but now the
melancholy images occasionally attain such an overwhelming ascendancy in my
soul that a pall of gloom is cast over all other objects. The journey from Lyon
through France was exceptionally delightful; everywhere [we saw] merry
vintagers singing and gathering in the treasures [of their vines]; but for many
miles my fancy was haunted by a weeping beggar whom I had seen sitting by the
roadside and to whom, in the hurry of our passage, I had not managed to offer
anything. With what emotions must he have beheld the good cheer of his happy
brothers precisely when he so profoundly felt his own misery! With what a heart
must he have sighed after the carriage [so] swiftly rolling away from him! Then
[there] are so many little scenes of strife and persecution, [scenes] of
lamentable futility; [scenes involving multitudes] who take the tiny cranny
wherein they vegetate for the center of the earth—Ah! A hundred things of such
slight significance that they elude the eyes of most travelers entirely have in
very many hours robbed me of my good humor.
This may well be the excessive sensitivity that is inevitably
induced by relaxation, and that can even degenerate into hypochondria. During
many hours of our journey I was tormented by another curious image. I often
felt as though I had seen a certain town or piece of countryside before; and,
to be sure, with entirely different sensations and in entirely different
circumstances; I would then abandon myself to this singular reverie and seek to
render the memories more tangible and intelligible, and to recall the emotions
that I once felt in these selfsame places. Often, too, out of a silent forest,
or up from a valley, the [following] terrifying thought wafted over me: “I may
someday roam this same spot once again, but this time wretched and forsaken by
the entire world; such that the sunset will fall over the hilltops without
vouchsafing me the hope of a friend’s embrace, that the sun will rise again
without drying my tears.” I would then contemplate my surroundings more
punctiliously, in order to recognize them in this unfortunate light, and a tear
would often involuntarily steal into my eye.
But how have I
arrived at these mental images? You are right: melancholy is a contagious
malady, and I believe that in my case it is a non-congenital illness that I
have caught from Balder. I am now beginning to be quite worried about him, as
he is more reserved and mournful than ever before; now and then I encounter one
of his errant glances and am terrified for him. I have more than once already
pressed him to speak plainly to me of the cause of his profound sorrow, but in
vain. Can friendship afford him no consolation for his suffering?
Farewell; you shall
receive my next letter from Rome
8
William Lovell to Edward Burton
Dear Edward, today I
am still too full of the manifold impressions made by everything around me to
write you a long letter. The ashes of an heroic age lie beneath my feet; the
stately ruins accost me with an earnest grandeur; the artworks of the modern
world extort my adoration. I live here as in an infinitely spacious temple that
pours sacred showers down upon me; with every step I enter a place where some
Roman worthy of adoration walked, or where a great event took place. An impetus
towards action wafts over me [out of] every statue, shudders of inspiration
dwell in the ruins [hailing from] the mighty age of heroes; in the twilight of
evening I often fancy that the spirit of an ancient Roman is on the verge of
materializing before me behind the Arch of Janus or at the Spring of Egeria,
and at those moments I am immersed so deeply in my thoughts and in the
remembrance of ancient times that I often find it hard to get my bearings
afterwards. When I was driving through the city gates, having some time
previously seen the Vatican and the Church of St. Peter, my sensations had
reached such a pitch of intensity that my first glimpse of the Piazza del
Popolo and its three great [intersecting] streets, along with the obelisk,
hardly made the impression that I had expected. I alighted at my lodgings in
the Spanish piazza and lost myself in strolling through the unfamiliar city as
the sun was setting. Thus I happened upon the Pantheon; I went inside and a
shower of holiness surrounded me; I waited until the full moon stood [directly]
over the dome, and I then saw the magnificent circle illuminated by the most
wondrous radiance.
How can one in Rome
The sun is setting; I
am about to hurry up the great steps here on the square, to see the domes of
St. Peter’s and the Vatican, along with the whole city beneath me, burning in
shades of gold and purple.
9
Walter Lovell to his son William
Henceforth my time
will be limited by this irksome lawsuit of Burton Yorkshire ; his estate was sited in the
neighborhood of Bondly. I was his only son; two daughters and [another] boy had
subsequently died, accordingly he brought me up with the tenderest solicitude;
he stinted nothing in the formation of my capabilities and sought to instill in
me at the earliest possible age an affinity to all things noble and beautiful.
But as he had an immoderate partiality to rural solitude, the two of us were
seldom in the company of other people; we did, however, pay very frequent
visits to Bondly. Thus I grew up in his arms, so to speak, and became
acquainted with the world and other people solely through [the works of] a few
of my favorite writers; I was more at home in the innocent and artless age of
Homer than in the present; I measured all [other] people according to [the
yardstick of] my own sensations; everything that lay outside myself was a
foreign country to me. Such being the case, it was only natural that within me
a thousand prejudices should germinate and take firm root; the entirety of the
surrounding world was nothing but a mirror in which I rediscovered my own
image. None of my acquaintances attracted me so [powerfully] as did young
Burton, who at that time was twenty years old, only slightly older than myself;
our acquaintance soon developed into the most intimate friendship: a friendship
of the sort that is usually the first to be formed by young men of feeling—in
my opinion an eternal one. Damon and Pylades were for me still too humble an
ideal; my heated fancy promised to do everything for my friend, and likewise
exacted every [imaginable] sacrifice from him. In these years one does not take
the trouble to observe the character of one’s friend; or, rather, one lacks the
ability to do so; one thinks that one knows oneself and consequently also one’s
friend; one ascribes everything in oneself to him and one’s blinded gaze
discovers a thousand similarities between the two characters. Such a friendship
seldom lasts beyond the earliest years of youth; but there soon comes a time in
most men’s lives when they are compelled by a thousand circumstances to awaken
from their poetic reverie[s]; then the two friends—or at least one of them—find
that they have been swindled; this moment, wherein the roseate twilight of the
defrauded imagination little by little vanishes, is among the unhappiest of
one’s life.
My father, like every
other impartial [observer], saw from the first instant that Burton Burton
So I lived for many
years without my mind taking a different turn, my almost uninterrupted solitude
perhaps being the main reason for this. No sooner had I attained my majority
than my father died, and I was now left entirely on my own. My sorrow at the
loss of my father was fierce and unremitting, but Burton Burton Waterloo Italy
Waterloo’s wit, together with the rest of his talents, made him in
a short time a [much] sought-after guest in the neighborhood; he was invited
everywhere and from his first visit onwards was everyone’s friend; thus he soon
acquired the intimate trust of old Milford, whom he visited especially often. A
few weeks thence he became the [principal] friend of the family, and he himself
obliged me by [writing] the preliminary proposal to the [young lady’s] father
of a union between his daughter and me. I embraced him a thousand times; I
thanked him for his friendship; I boldly looked forward to a happy future. On a
certain occasion when I was visiting Milford and his daughter, I observed with
delight that Waterloo must have already secured his promise; I was received
more warmly than ever before; Marie [sic--DR] was less reserved; and when we
had been left alone for a few minutes in the garden, she said to me that from
the start my friend had drawn her father’s attention to me, and had very often
spoken of me with much high praise. I believed myself already certain of my
good fortune; I formed a thousand plans; I thanked Waterloo
Suddenly, my friend was cut short by a blow rendered all the more
terrible for me by its unexpectedness. I received one morning a letter from the
father of my beloved, wherein he tersely requested, for reasons that he was not
then at liberty to specify, that I should in future avoid his house. I stood
for a long time as though stunned; I could hardly convince myself of the
reality of what I was reading. I sought in a hundred possible causes an
explanation for this letter, a solution to this puzzle, but in vain; I rode
with all speed to Milford Waterloo Waterloo Burton London Burton London
I traveled on horseback and unaccompanied, lest my reveries should
be disturbed by the presence of another living soul. My journey proceeded but
slowly. I arrived in London Burton Waterloo London
I seemed in my own eyes like a fool who practically merited his
own misfortune, and in [such a state of consciousness] I slaved through one
turbulently sleepless night in my bedchamber; with renewed radiance Marie’s
image appeared before my soul; her father’s behavior was to me as inexplicable
as it ever had been. What could he possibly want of me? With what [infraction]
could he tax me? I rued the thought that I was dreaming away my days so far
from her and hardly knew in which direction lay my fate. London
I rose from my bed in a state of virtual intoxication; it was as
though my genius were impelling me to leave London Burton Milford Milford
Upon my arrival there I was roused from my stupor by the
not-too-distant sound of trumpets and loud music. I sprang from the carriage;
the servants in their preoccupation with their work scarcely noticed me; I
rushed like a madman up the front steps, flung open the door, and [found myself
standing] in the hall among a crowd of familiar and unfamiliar people; Marie
uttered a cry and involuntarily flew into my arms.
Everyone was stunned;
Waterloo Milford Waterloo
“Do you dare to show
yourself here?” he snapped: “Here and in this manner? Have you forgotten the
absoluteness of my prohibition?”
“Yes: I dare!” I
exclaimed: “I dare to do this and much more. Waterloo
I do not know what
else I said; but an unstoppable fury had taken possession of me; I felt my
whole body quivering with convulsions; my blood was boiling and I was grinding
my teeth. Milford
“You see,” he said
coldly, “how patiently I have endured these demented ravings of yours, and
perhaps it is my complaisance that has made you so insolent. On the whole, you
are a puzzle to me. What right have you to my daughter? She loves you, as they
say; but that word [love] does not have sufficient power to extort from
me my consent; and yet you accost me with the savagery of a madman, knowing
full well though you do that through a hundred perfidies you have made yourself
unworthy of a union with my family.”
“Perfidies?” I
exclaimed, and drew my sword from its scabbard.
“Enough!” cried Milford
And now he began to
present to me a register of [the] evils that I was supposed to have
perpetrated. The majority of these were entirely chimerical, or based on wholly
trivial actions and occurrences represented in an odious light; all of them
bespoke an inventive ingenuity of the most despicable sort; I [could not
refrain from] repeatedly blushing at the outrage[s] that had been laid to my
charge. “And am I,” Milford
I forced myself to remain calm. “Who,” I coldly asked, “is the
inventor of this, to say the least, ingenious falsehood?”
“One whom your
character has most keenly aggrieved—your friend Waterloo
I was astonished that
I had not even come close to seeing through the whole web of evil; the scales
now fell from my eyes. Great tears coursed down my cheeks; at that moment I was
losing a friend whom I had loved beyond the limits of expression; my heart was
fain to burst. I threw myself into [the nearest] armchair, that to begin with I
might allow the manifold passions that gnawed at my soul to spend themselves;
Milford coldly gazed down at me; he was uncertain whether to regard my distress
as a manifestation of remorse or of deep vexation. Finally I regained the power
of speech, and after I had fully collected my thoughts, I found it an easy
matter to convince her father of the groundlessness of all of his accusations.
He now raged against Waterloo Milford Milford Waterloo
I soon afterwards
fell ill, assailed by incessant giddiness along with convulsions and fainting
fits; the doctor discovered just in the nick of time that I had been poisoned,
and only the closest attention could save my life; for all that, I did not
manage to avoid a long and agonizing illness that, moreover, has been the
occasion of all of my subsequent calamities. All of this was effected by a man
who had once been my friend, whom I had loved with the greatest tenderness,
[all] for the sake of obtaining a handsome dowry from Marie.
Ever since those
days, Burton
But this is only a single
scene from my life; I have weathered other storms wherein my affections
were similarly traduced—on account of all of these storms, I have tried to make
you acquainted with the ways of man from an early age, and to mitigate in you
that fanaticism that is so peculiar to youth; heretofore my efforts have been
in vain; but you must surely gather from my history how indispensable such a
mitigation really is. Farewell; I hope that you manage to make the best
application of all of the preceding to your own [affairs].
10
William Lovell to Edward Burton
The Italian winter is already proclaiming itself in a welter of
rain showers. I shall postpone all of my observations on the artistic treasures
[of this city] to the date of our next meeting, when I shall refer you to my
journal of them. How lavishly do I intend to rejoice when I shall be able to
spread out all of my papers in front of you in my beloved Bondly, and you to
lecture me, and I to find fault with your lectures. In the interest of not
spoiling that pleasure, I shall tell you instead about my friends and general
acquaintance. Rosa interests me more and more with each passing day; without
even deliberately intending to do so, he has made me aware of many deficiencies
in my attitude towards many things that I had hitherto never given the least
thought to, and which for all that were perhaps eminently worthy of [the
closest] scrutiny; but indeed, my understanding [has] until [recently] not
ventured beyond a certain limit. Rosa incites me to slough off my shyness, and in many terrae
incognitae he is virtually my pilot. Balder often absents himself from our
company; he is perfectly happy daydreaming in solitude; my anxiety on his
account daily increases, for he himself is often not like himself. A few days
ago, when the weather was fairer than it usually is at this time of the year,
we went out for a walk in the country, and I tried to awaken his attention to
the beauties of nature, but he remained obdurately wrapped up, gloomily
brooding, in his own thoughts. . “What are you thinking about?” I pressingly
asked him; “you have been [strangely] uncommunicative for some time now; you
keep secrets from your friends, to whom you were always formerly so outspoken.
What ails you?”
“Nothing,” he coldly
replied, and resumed his brooding.
“Behold creation in
its delightful splendor around you,” I urged him; “behold how the whole of
nature rejoices and is happy!”
Balder: “And everything is dying and
decomposing; have you forgotten that we are treading on the corpses of a
million manifold creatures, that the pomp of nature is derived from rotting
animal and vegetable matter—that it is nothing but decomposition in disguise?”
“You have a dreadful
talent for unfailingly discerning a dismal picture beneath the gayest colors.”
“Joy and laughter?”
he snapped in reply: “What are these? I am haunted by this horror of
beauty—nay, of my very own self; annihilate this quality in me and I shall
cease to deem you and the rest of mankind so criminally vulgar.”
“But why,” I resumed,
“do you not wish to renounce this peculiar manner of looking at things, which
is well and truly but a piece of self-indulgence and unwholesome
capriciousness, and to search out once again the true shape of the world with a
gladsome heart?”
“But,” he replied,
“is your manner of looking at things, is your view, the true one?
Who among us is right? Or are we all deceived?”
“Perhaps, but let us
at least acknowledge as true the imposture that makes us happ[iest].”
Balder: “Your deception does not make
me happy; its colors are too wan for me; nature’s concealing cloak having
fallen away, I see her skeleton in all its gruesome nakedness. What do you call
joy? What do you call pleasure? Oh, how we would weep if we could tear off
nature’s disguise! In place of joy and delight we would discover a horror.”
“And why? If we are
not loath to proceed through life with riddles to the one side of us and
incomprehensibilities on the other, I intend to take pleasure in the sensation
of my existence, then to vanish from [the world] as I emerged [into it]: in
life alone lies sufficient joy for me. Your notions can [only] lead you to
madness.”
Balder: “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps? And you say
this with such hideous detachment?”
Balder: “Why not? Man and his essence are in
themselves so incomprehensible to me that I am equally and supremely
indifferent to their various contingent manifestations.”
“Indifferent
to them? Balder, you frighten me.”
Balder: “On account of this idea? It has always been an open question
for me whether I have more to gain or to lose by going mad.”
“But can you frankly
affirm that this torpid insensibility, this sub-verminous existence, this wild
hybrid of life and non-being, is by any stretch of the imagination a form of
happiness?”
Balder: “If you are happy, why should a
madman not also be allowed to be so? He feels just as feebly the tribulations
of nature, his sensorium is as impervious as yours to the cause of my distress;
why should he languish in misery? And his understanding—”
“—And has every
lineament of this divine insignia of humanity been utterly effaced from his
being? Or is it in folly that you discern precisely his highest bliss?”
Balder: “I discern therein his reason! Oh,
William, what is it that we call reason? Certainly many have gone mad because
they idolized their reason and abandoned themselves to their [reasonable]
researches. Our reason, which springs from heaven, is free to roam only
terrestrial zones; no one has yet managed to discover any firm truths regarding
God or eternity or the purpose of the world; we wander about within the
confines of a mighty prison; we whine about our lack of freedom and pine for
the light of day; we knock on a hundred gates of bronze, but all of them are
locked, and we are answered by a hollow echo. As if he whom we now call mad
were actually—”
“—I understand you,
Balder: Because our reason cannot achieve the impossible, we are obliged to
look down our noses at it and permitted to give up using it entirely.”
Balder: “No, William you do not
understand me. In lieu of a long-winded exposition of my beliefs, I would like
to recount to you a brief tale. In Germany I had a friend, an officer, a man of
discreet years and a cool temperament; he had never read much or done much
thinking, but he had done as much living in forty years as most men do in that
span of time; the few books that he knew had formed his understanding just
extensively enough that he had a strong aversion to superstition of any kind;
he often spoke to me with great ardor about the fear of ghosts and other human
weaknesses. This zeal for enlightenment gradually became his governing defect,
and his comrades, who knew this side of him, often needled him by feigning a
belief in miracles, and thus originated many frequent heated and
doggedly-pursued arguments; in these a certain Herr von Friedheim in particular
distinguished himself by his contradictoriness; he was a friend of Wildberg
(that was the other officer’s name), but he tried by this means to make his
defect as conspicuous as possible. An incident of the sort that often begins in
disputation and usually ends in laughter was thereby precipitated. On one
occasion, Friedheim said after many debates that, on the assumption that no
other ghost had ever appeared before his friend, he wished to die as soon as
possible, that he might himself play the role of a ghost. This comment induced
both general laughter and, at that very moment, a perceptible heating of the
quarrel and an increase in its stakes. Wildberg soon felt himself insulted to
the utmost degree, Friedheim had been driven into a rage; the company divided
into two factions, and the inflamed Wildberg demanded satisfaction of
Friedheim. The duel was fought in the greatest secrecy; I was Wildberg’s
second, another of our friends accompanied his opponent; we had done everything
in our power to effect a reconciliation, but offended honor nullified our
efforts. The space was measured out, the pistols loaded; Friedheim missed;
Wildberg fired; Friedheim fell down; a bullet through the head had robbed him
of his life. A number of auspicious circumstances conspired to keep the affair
half-hidden; there was no need for Wildberg to take flight. All of his friends
were delighted with the lucky hand fate had dealt him; he alone was sunk in a
profound state of melancholy. Everyone attributed this to his friend’s death,
which he had after all brought about [himself and] by the most violent means;
but his sorrow was never dispelled, inasmuch as every attempt to revive his
spirits was fruitless; inasmuch as, after numerous attempts thereunto, he let it
be known through many an inscrutable sign that the cause of his pensiveness was
not to be discovered. He now confessed, first to one of us, then to others,
that his friend Friedheim had definitely kept his word to visit him after his
death; to be sure, he did not come in person, but every night at the stroke of
twelve a death’s- head with a bullet-hole in it would glide through the middle
of his bed-chamber, hover silently over his bed as if staring down at him in
admonition through its empty eye-sockets, and then vanish; this horrifying
specter had robbed him of sleep and his high spirits; ever since its first
appearance he had been unable to think a single cheerful thought. Most of his
friends regarded this tale as the product of an unhappy imagination; only a
few, and these the most simpleminded among them at that, took it for the truth.
But Wildberg’s illness worsened; he began to recount his vision more often and
at greater length; he no longer protested against superstition: to the
contrary, he would now speak on behalf of the souls of the departed, and by and
by he acquired something of a reputation as a seer, and was regarded as an
all-around reasonable fellow who had simply had the misfortune to go a bit mad.
Wildberg now asked a few of his friends to stay up with him at night because
his terror and worry were increasing with every apparition; even I kept him
company on a few occasions. Towards midnight he would always become restless; at
the stroke of twelve he would stand up and cry, “Listen! It’s rattling at the
door!” We heard nothing. Then Wildberg would fix his eyes on the floor and
softly say, “See how he’s sneaking up on me! Oh, forgive me, forgive me, my
dear friend; harass me no more; I have suffered enough!” Afterwards he would
calm down and say to us that the head had vanished; we had seen nothing. It was
becoming ever more apparent to all of his friends that this was all nothing but
an unfortunate hypochondriacal hallucination, the deterioration of strong
remorse at the death of his friend into a kind of madness; we searched for a
means of delivering him from the futility of his visions and thereby restoring
to him his peace of mind. Many hypochondriacs have indeed been cured upon being
presented with a real and concrete version of their hallucination and
subsequently informed of the deception; it was precisely in such a fashion that
we attempted to cure Wildberg. We accordingly procured ourselves a skull,
through whose forehead we drilled a hole at the spot where the unfortunate
Friedheim had been struck by his friend’s bullet; we attached to it a thread by
means of which we were to drag it into the room, allow Wildberg to observe it,
and finally show him how we had deceived him. Of this cheat of ours we expected
the happiest of outcomes; all of the arrangements had been made and we awaited
with impatience the moment at which the church-bell struck twelve. Once again
the last peal died away, and once again Wildburg cried, “Listen! It’s rattling
there, at the door!” At that precise moment the skull was produced by one of
our confederates and dragged straight into the middle of the room. Wildberg had
up until now kept his eyes closed; he now opened them; and pale, shivering, and
practically transformed into a ghost [himself], he sprang from the bed; in a
blood-curdling tone of voice he exclaimed, “Almighty God: two death’s heads!
What do you want of me?”
Here Balder paused. I
must own that I had been struck by the unexpected ending of the tale, and that
it was now preoccupying my imagination; but I was still eager to hear what
application to his previous thoughts he would derive from it; after a short
silence he continued:
“Every thinker who
wishes to pursue the great questions, the ones that are most important to him;
the questions of immortality, God, and eternity, of mind and matter and the
purpose of the world, feels himself torn back from his goal by bands of iron;
the human soul seems tremulously to shrink back from the black slate on which
the eternal truths about itself are inscribed. When reason summons up all of
its forces, it ultimately comes to feel with what frightening precariousness it
is teetering on a thin ridge of solidity, and how it is in fact on the very
verge of plunging into the realm of madness. In order to save himself, the
terrified human being flings himself back on to the earth, but few have
had the sheer expeditious audacity to undertake the step forward; with a
sonorous clang, their shackles fly to pieces behind them; they plunge
irresistibly forward; in the eyes of mere mortals they are deranged. The
spiritual realm discloses itself to them; they see through the secret laws of
nature; their sensorium lays hold of what has never before been thought; their
indefatigable spirit roots in flaming oceans—they reside on the other side of
mortal nature; they have utterly perished as far as the human race is
concerned, and have moved nearer to divinity; they have completely forgotten
the notion of returning to the earth—and narrow souls with sovereign arrogance
stigmatize their wisdom as insanity, their rapture as madness.”
Balder was now
staring at me directly and fearlessly. He continued:
“Despite every effort
to deceive him, my friend Wildberg saw something that we could not see—can we
even know what he saw? The story is true, but even if it were only a
well-wrought fairy tale, for me it would still be well worth the telling, on
account of the profound meaning contained in it.”
“Where then do you
draw the line between truth and fiction?”
“Let us leave off
talking of this,” he abruptly insisted: “Today I have become quite a chatterbox
quite against my will; but as we had chanced upon the subject for once, I did
not wish to withhold any of these curious ideas of mine from you.”
We had by now made
our way back to town, and Balder was once again deeply immersed in his own
thoughts.
I have recorded this
conversation as well as I could; from it you will have become [broadly]
acquainted with the strange turn my friend’s thoughts have taken [of late]. I
now wish to close. Farewell.
And yet, my dear friend, I am taking up my pen once more, in
order to relate to you an incident that is certainly curious enough, albeit
that it may turn out to be utterly without sequel. Perhaps it is because the
above-recorded conversation has put me in a strange mood or because I am
feeling especially tired from having slept hardly a wink these past few
nights—but anyway, I want to tell you about this matter, such as it is; you may
well laugh at your friend, but what more can I say? It won’t happen very often
again. In order for you to understand me completely, I shall have to begin at
the very beginning.
My father has a small
collection of paintings that contains a very few historical pieces and
landscapes but is composed mostly of portraits of his relatives and other
people of interest to him. As a boy, I never willingly entered the room that
housed this collection, because I always felt that its crowd of strange faces
might all of a sudden come to life; but one of these paintings was always
particularly repulsive to me. The fireplace was situated in a corner of the
room where a heavy shadow fell, and a painting that hung over the mantelpiece
was always almost completely obscured. It was of a face that had—I don’t know
how to describe them—I would almost say iron features. A man of about
forty years of age, pallid and haggard, one of his eyes staring directly ahead,
the other turned askance in a slight squint; a mouth that seemed at first to be
smiling, but on closer inspection was simply itching to show its teeth; a
perpetual twilight huddled about this painting; and a mysterious feeling of
dread came over me whenever I regarded it; and yet my eyes were automatically
drawn to it whenever I entered the room; therefore, my fancy has quite
faithfully and indelibly preserved its image ever since. I have never quite
managed to outgrow the fear I felt as a child in the presence of this face; my
father told me that it was the portrait of no actual person, but rather the
realization of some figment of a skillful artist’s imagination.
I had finished my
letter to you; I was walking through the streets; the sun had already set and a
scarlet twilight shimmered about the roofs and over the empty squares. On my
way home I hurried through the lonely vineyards and past the temple of St.
Theodore; and I was approaching the arch of Janus, which would bring me back
into my beloved city, when just outside the wall I saw a figure staggering
towards me; the nearer it approached the less certain I was that it was an
actual person; I took it for a spirit, so old, decrepit, and amorphous was it
as it crept along; then suddenly it was standing face-to-face with me
and—Edward, you may have already guessed it—it was that ghastly face from my
father’s collection! All of the emotions of my earliest childhood swept
over me; I thought I was going to faint. It was the selfsame man, only thirty
years older, but with all of the same gruesome characteristic features imbued
with all of the inexplicably dreadful and terrifying essence of the abominable.
He had taken notice of my alarm; he looked at me intently and smiled—and then
walked away! Edward, I search in vain for words with which to describe to you
this face and this smile. It was as though my adversarial angel were standing
before me in visible actuality, while I simultaneously heard the happiest pages
being rent from the book of my life; this gaze, this smile, struck me as being
the prologue to a long and arduous career of misfortune and misery. Oh,
Edward—I am afraid this encounter has quite flustered me; I beg your pardon if
I have spoken of it too earnestly.
“Who could this man
be?” I keep asking myself, “and how did my father come to possess such an
uncannily accurate likeness of him?”
11
Charles Wilmont to Mortimer
Charles Wilmont to Mortimer
I have roamed through
the length and breadth of Scotland Ireland Abyssinia and return home not a jot cleverer.
All of my uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and cousins of both sexes have
scarcely recognized me; they have all sworn that I must have switched places
with some other person, so much for the worse have I been transformed by love;
I am beginning quite to lose my popular reputation of a wag; sentiment has made
quite a wretched hash of all my former mirth. Oh, my friend, I am now in the
most wretched city that I have yet known in the whole wide world; the Scots are
a truly splendid and hospitable people, but their present guest is too unworthy
of their hospitality, and so I shall in good time be obliged to return home. If
you have anything at all to write to me, please do so, as I think I shall be
here for a few more weeks.
It has occurred to me, Mortimer, that for our mutual amusement's
sake we could dedicate elegies to each other and thereby bequeath our names to
posterity; moreover, in poetry there must surely inhere a consolation for every
possible form of suffering; instead of pulling our hair out, let us chew on our
pens; instead of beating our breasts and sighing, let us tabulate lines of verse
on our fingers; I already have a few ideas for such poems in my head; and if I
am not done in by a hailstorm, they should yield a fine harvest.
Otherwise I am healthy, but the weather is turning nasty; I
wish it were spring, and that I could see Emily again and that—would you
believe it?—I were united with her in marriage and the father of ten
children—and—and—I assure you that I should like to end every sentence with
Emily’s name. God alone knows how this will all turn out for me. I hope that
with the advent of the new year we shall not have long to wait for things to
get better, and that it will bring you and me and all the [other] people of the
earth [at least] a taste of the highest happiness.
[I wonder] whether
she thinks of me every now and then? I certainly hope so. How are you faring in
London
12
Mortimer to Charles Wilmont
Mortimer to Charles Wilmont
I am glad that the
tone of your letter was still passably jolly; that can only mean that your
situation is hardly as dire as you would like to think it is. Today I must
succumb to the temptation to speak to you most earnestly; if you are at present
in too gay a mood to bear this, please set my letter aside and leave it there
until the mood passes. But I know that for you there is a time for laughter and
a time for earnestness, that you do not figure among those humorists who like
nothing better than to listen to the sound of their own voices and to deafen
themselves with their own prattle. The weather is turning very stormy; I
therefore think that the most sensible thing for you to do would be to come
back to London, for what enjoyment can you at present derive from your
wanderings?
Lovell is becoming a
negligent correspondent; he has not written to Amalie in a very long time. She
has expressed to me her sorrow at this with her characteristically amiable
candor, and it is sheer cheek on Lovell’s part to hold himself aloof of this
fair soul, so utterly unworthy is he of the distress that he has caused her.
Charles, I constantly
reproach myself for seeing her so often; I accuse myself of insulting Lovell in
virtue of my affection for her—but then again, can he ever hope to secure his
father’s permission to marry her? And does he even really love her? Has he not
perchance already forgotten her? If this turned out to be the case, perhaps she
would little by little transfer her love to me. Besides, Charles, I have
thought up a fine plan: believe me, Charles, it is as a paterfamilias that one
first becomes a citizen of the earth. [And if I were a paterfamilias] she would
be my wife; I have already selected a charming quiet little spot to build on. I
have drafted for myself no merely fanciful and sentimentally poetic
ground-plan; I have calculated everything in relation to everything else; I have
a fair notion of the pleasures that one may expect of this world, and my
demands are therefore hardly exorbitant; I have made it my pastime to plan my
household down to its minutest details; what a pity that I can so little count
on the attainment of its chief article. To be sure, the pleasures of the heart
are the purest and noblest in this world, and they can be enjoyed by [anyone]
who does not willfully disdain them. I therefore hope to see you once again and
shortly in London
13
Count Melun to Mortimer
Count Melun to Mortimer
You left Paris, my
dear friend, just I was making arrangements for my marriage to Countess
Blainville; as you once took an interest in my fate, I consider myself
duty-bound to impart to you some recent news regarding the sequel of this piece
of foolishness.
You would no longer
recognize my house in Paris, everything there has been turned so upside-down
and so altered and modernized; I am kept on such a tight leash that I have less
freedom than my servants; all of my former friends avoid my house and a flock
of transients have gradually ensconced themselves here, and now live off of the
liberality—or, rather, the extravagance—of my keeper; ah, Mortimer, I still
have an old age of dire poverty to look forward to. How severely do the fates
punish an old man who, despite years of experience, is foolish enough to go in
quest of a heart that will love him of its own free will. I should very much
like to put a period to this most recent epoch of my life; I should also like
to buy back many a year that can never be recovered, and I have surrounded
myself with a [version of] hell here. The countess has cozened me with her
dissimulative wiles; I dared to believe she had a heart, but she laughs at such
quaint humbug; she rejoices at my sorrow and dreams of my demise. Only a few
weeks after our wedding, I had already given up hope of a truly happy marriage,
but I had no notion of the sheer number of afflictions I would have to endure.
There exists no mortification that I am not suffering; my wealth is being
frittered away in the most absurd and senseless manner; she has a lover whom
she does not conceal from me, a blackguard who is conspicuous for neither wit
nor judgment, and whose coffers she is swelling as a means of inviting the
attentions of [his possible successors]. Some sort of consumption seems to have
a view to ending my suffering, for I feel more and more listless with the
passing of each day. Thus squalidly concludes a life of unspeakable tedium, a
life that I have sacrificed almost in its entirety to the fatuity of
convenience. Mourn [the destruction] of your friend, and never allow yourself
to be visited by a misfortune comparable to any of mine.
14
Walter Lovell to Edward Burton
I am writing to you
in a state of great distraction—nay, of dolor—induced in me by my son’s long
silence. The only [excusable] explanation I can divine for this silence—that he
is mortally ill—merely aggravates my sorrow. If he happens to have sent you any
news of himself during this interval, I beseech you to communicate them to me;
you would thereby assuage the sorrows of a father whose soul is haunted by a
procession of a thousand nightmarish visions, each one bleaker and more
terrifying than the preceding one. I therefore beg you to reply to me soon; for
I know that you have always kept up a correspondence with my son; perhaps he
has been less neglectful of his friend than of his father.
15
Amalie Wilmont to Emily Burton
Amalie Wilmont to Emily Burton
What am I up to, my
dearest friend? I myself scarcely know; I am not ill, and yet I am not well
either. If I could come to you there at Bondly, I would be most content; as
content as Lovell once was when he was your guest. I do not know why that
wicked man his father and the rest of us [down here] are so worried; he has not
written in a long time, and we now fear him dead. If it were a matter of simple
negligence, it would be unpardonable. Tell me what you think; I would like for
us to be able to speak freely to each other as friends, as we did in the old
days. You were always so kind to me; we were always so merry together; perhaps
you could cheer me up a bit; I really am in great need of gaiety; I feel as
though a constant ache were gnawing at my heart. Mortimer does everything
possible to make me happy, but even when I do occasionally laugh, I am still
thinking all the while of Lovell, and inwardly weeping, and Lovell—God! If he
were dead or—oh Emily, what do you think? Is it possible? Why should fate have
dealt me such a blow, seeing that I have done nothing wrong? Or was my good
fortune, were my [very] hopes, sinful [in themselves]?
16
William Lovell to
You are right, Rosa;
I am for the first time beginning to understand you. What has seemed obscure
and incomprehensible since I made your acquaintance is now emerging into
[clarity] as if from behind a cloud; the valleys that lie between the hills are
becoming visible, my gaze encompasses the landscape in its entirety. Your mind
is pulling mine across [the divide] and towards itself; precisely because, owing
to the precipitancy of youth (I can now frankly confess this to you), I
formerly regarded myself as your superior, I now feel myself especially humbled
[by your insight].
What are you and
Balder up to in Naples
Nevertheless, I have
you and you alone to thank for that self-sufficiency that only a short time ago
was so foreign to me. You have hoisted me aloft of those creatures who in their
deplorable cowardice dare not partake of the pleasures of life; who allow
themselves to be lorded over by an incessant despair and languish in the midst
of plenty; or who disdainfully traipse over nature’s living treasures for the
sake of ascending some barren promontory that they deem nearer to heaven. But
there they remain, forsaken [at the foot of the cliff]; their prospect is
delimited by sheer rock faces that no mortal hand can get a purchase on; in the
hope of making themselves more like the gods they die without ever having
lived. No, Rosa: away with this inconsolable hubris! I am satisfied with the
aspiration to be a human being; life slips so speedily away [from us]; woe
betide him who awakens from his terrestrial existence without having dreamt
pleasant dreams, for futurity is a dark and empty [place indeed].
Ever since I attached
myself to this conviction, heaven has smiled more amicably on me, every flower
has smelled sweeter, every tone has sounded more melodious, I contemplate the
whole world as I would my own estate; in comprehending each beauty I come to
possess it. Thus must the free spirit roam through nature, a king of all
creation, the noblest created being in virtue of knowing how to enjoy [life] at
the noblest [pitch]. I have abandoned my striving after wisdom, which no mortal
being can ever approach [,let alone attain]. Why does Sisyphus not eventually
leave off rolling his awful rock [up that hill]? Why do the Danaides never
weary of their miserable labor? Why do thousands of their own volition fashion
a hell out of this beautiful world?
You must forgive me
this [access of] poetic enthusiasm; for I happen to be writing at a
particularly lovely hour in the very garden that has served as the scene of so
many of our moments of shared delight. The air is cool now thanks to a
thunderstorm [that has just ended], and the black clouds are dispersing; a
narrow beam of light is piercing forth through the darkness and painting a red
stripe on the greensward; the mountaintops stand there [on the horizon] like
Elysian islands in the midst of a turbid ocean, in the distance a rainbow
wanders through the verdure of the forest; nature is once again fresh and new;
the meadow exhales a fragrance of ineffable sweetness; your companionship alone
is wanting to the perfection of Lovell’s happiness.
17
Rosa to William Lovell
Since my receipt of
your letter I have been all the sorrier for having journeyed hither in the
company of Balder the Melancholy; I shall return as speedily as possible. He is
becoming ever more glum and withdrawn with each passing day; his mind seems to
be in the perpetual grip of a curious kind of ecstasy. You will know that for
him the customary pleasures and amusements of life are always malapropos; they
serve only to impart a darker hue to his sullenness. Is it not childish to
curse oneself and the whole of nature [simply] because everything is not as our
[five] limited senses wish it to be? But I am also familiar with the charms
that this ecstasy vouchsafes us; we surmise that we are on intimate terms with
the spirits that enchant us; the soul bathes in the purest ethereal luster and
forgets to return to earth; but the power that the world refashions after the
image contained within the inflamed imagination soon dies; sensuality (for what
other name is there for such a phenomenon?) is exalted to so high a station
that it finds the actual world empty and prosaic; the less nutriment it
receives from outside itself, the more it glows with its own auto-generated
light; it fashions new worlds for itself and lets them perish; until at length
the too-tautly stretched bowstring snaps and a condition of total flaccidity
paralyzes the mind and renders us insusceptible to all pleasure; everything
withers, and eternal winter surrounds us. What divinity can then bring about
the return of spring?
It is a good thing
for you that you have escaped from such a state! You now know which
gratifications you are within your rights to exact of life. The ecstatic
dreamer understands [neither] himself [nor] his obscure desires; he demands the
enjoyments of a foreign world; [the word] emotion has no meaning for
him; sun and moon are too [sullied by] terrestrial[ity] in his
eyes; you and I, William, are happy to remain here below and to avoid reaching
after clouds and foggy exhalations; the moon and the stars above shall never
vex us—and so onward and into life [races] our carriage, over mountains and
through valleys, pulled by our fresh team of horses, until at length some
impassable obstacle obliges us to alight. I shall soon be back in Rome
18
Balder to William Lovell
Balder to William Lovell
When I set out on
this trip, I had high hopes for it, and now I am sorry I ever left Rome Italy Rome Naples
But why are human beings
so unfailingly hell-bent on not finding within themselves the satisfaction of
this craving? It now cheers me immeasurably to picture myself living in a tiny
cottage at the edge of a lonely forest, forgetting the entire world and
forgotten for ever by it in turn, acquainted only with as much of the earth as
my eyes can see, undiscovered by a single other human soul, saluted only by the
morning breezes and the rustling of the foliage; a small herd [of sheep], a
small field: what more does a man need in order to be happy? And yet, if I were
now suddenly placed in such a setting by some divinity, would I not pine for a
return to the distant region whence I had come? Would not my gaze as in earlier
times affix itself of an evening to the golden clouds of sunset for the sake of
sinking beneath the horizon along with them and visiting plains yet unknown to
itself? Would I not collapse under the onus of a musty solitude and hanker for
news of the world, for love, for the warm clasp of the hand of friendship? Life
lies before me like a long and tangled thread that a malicious fate compels me
to unknot and straighten; a hundred times I fling the wearisome task aside, a
hundred times I begin it anew without making any progress; oh if only merciful
sleep would overwhelm me!
My journey hither has
been completely spoiled by a fever; Rosa is a nuisance to me; I find even my
own company unbearable. I still feel my best in solitude, amidst daredevil
phantoms, gloomy speculations, and the terrifying images of my fancy—but when I
come into a place where there are people and they are merry—where there is
music and perhaps it is even danced to! Oh, William it is almost enough to tear
my soul to pieces. I dare cast only the briefest of woebegone glances at the
exultant mob, and with that glance and within every individual I immediately
descry the naked skeleton, the quarry of annihilation. I seem to myself a kind
of anonymous ghost that silently, funereally, uncommunicatively makes his way
unnoticed through the press of the human throng: to me they are a foreign
species.
Send me a reply if
you have not yet entirely forgotten me; if you cannot be numbered among those
people who are completely wrapped up in themselves like snails, blithely
heedless of the well or ill-being of their brethren. But do I not already know
that you are all egoists, and must perforce remain such?
19
William Lovell to Balder
The close of your
letter compels me to compose this one in reply, regardless of whether or not I
shall find it possible to prove to you herein that I cannot be numbered among
those egoists of whom you speak. To prove this to you could be as difficult as
to prove to you that you contemplate everything under the sun from an erroneous
vantage point and therefrom discern nothing but misery and squalor. For your
sake I wish I were a [furrow-browed] philosopher, that I might convince you
[with my deportment alone]. Admittedly, I can say nothing to you that you might
not have already learned just as well on your own—but my dear Balder, do please
leave off these melancholy musings that are destroying your mind and your body;
enjoy yourself and be happy. To which you will answer, “One might as well say
to a blind man, ‘Open your eyes and see!’” But you have yet to convert me to
your view that the will is not in absolute control of this state of affairs; I
do not regard it as an exclusively physical ailment, and even if it were, it
could still be cured. If you wish to be honest with yourself, you must admit
that amid all of these terrors and horrors the mysterious, incomprehensible
specter of sensual lust is greeting you with friendly and open arms; that it is
she, with her savage pleasures and insane raptures, that is keeping you shut up
under lock and key within your subterranean habitations. If you concede this,
you must also concede that at minimum the two of us are equally and patently
egoistic. But leave off these indulgences of your daredevil fancy that are
destroying you; return to earth and to the society of your fellow human beings;
[re]join the fraternal circle and accept the flowers that Mother Nature is
smilingly, obligingly offering you. Oh, if only I could exorcise that evil
spirit that dwells within you, that Lovell the Happy might once again enfold Balder
the Happy in his arms a few weeks hence.
20
Balder to William Lovell
My situation is much
changed since my recent letter. My fever is worsening with each passing day, in
tandem with my savage animus against the entire world. None of the people whose
passing acquaintance I have hitherto made has satisfied my expectations; even
about you, William, I have reason enough to complain, but you will at least
comply with a demand that I shall make of a certain person who happens to be my
friend: hearken therefore to the plea of your ailing friend, and fulfill your
half-joking promise to visit me here in Naples. In a most peculiar sense I feel
myself to be alone, in the shadows, [the faintest] sound can induce in me a
state of [the greatest] terror; every jolt makes the fibers of my body quiver
in a most distressing fashion; I do not know the nature of the strange horror
that surrounds me, my chest is constricted; I feel myself hemmed in as if by [a
host of] invisible foreign beings; come—perhaps you can console me. If I am
[after all] withdrawing from the world little by little like some withered
tree, I would prefer to expire in the arms of a friend; if you are that friend,
do not let me pine too long for your presence.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
forms my daily course of reading; here am I brought back to my senses; here it
is written how [“]weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable[”] life is, how madness
and reason interpenetrate and annihilate each other, how the skull at length
comes to [“]mock at its own grinning,[”] and nothing more is left of all beauty
and pleasure, all earnestness and affectation, than this loathsome white head.
Oh, my imagination is seeing shapes!
Or was it something
more than a figment of my imagination that caused me such terror at midnight last night? If it were something more! And yet it cannot be
so. But what mortal dares to draw the line at which reality must begin and end?
We rely too heavily on our brain, that [“]quintessence of dust,[”] when by
means of our everyday earthly scales and yardsticks we attempt to take the
measure of a world that defies every comparison to the one here below. Someday
the mind, deprived of its corporeal integument, will perchance sink to the
earth for the sheer shame occasioned by its own presumptuousness.
It was towards midnight ; my manservant was asleep, and the night-light imparted
only a faint illumination to the room; all was calm; a cricket on the hearth
unceasingly chirped out its monotonous melody. A curious play of ideas
commenced in my mind as I began my reading.
I saw the fantastic
night, the stars above that twinkled through the upper branches of a tree;
enormous shadows cast hither by the palace and lights in the distance, Horatio
tense with expectation as he listens to the unfolding of his friend’s curious
tale; and now suddenly the ghost enters, slowly and faintly it floats hither, a
black shadow around which flows a pale luster, dull like the blue flame of a
dying lamp. I felt as though some dreadful being were running its cold hand
from the nape of my neck to my back, the silence around me was becoming ever
more deathly, I retreated ever further into myself, and in my innermost
imagination placidly contemplated this apparition forsaken by the surrounding
world.
Suddenly I heard a
slow, faint, prolonged series of footfalls reverberating through the room; I
[again] raised my eyes, and a man was walking behind me towards the door of my
bedchamber; as I was looking round, his eyes met mine; an involuntary cry
escaped me; without any appearance of care or hurry he was entering my
bedchamber, I saw his white hair quite distinctly; his shadow, distorted in the
most terrifying manner, stalked him along the wall.
I myself cannot
explain why I remained on the whole so cool and calm; for I did nonetheless [at
the same time] feel a shudder in the very marrow of my bones; in my horror
inhered a kind of frenzied joy, a delight that perchance is sited [somewhere]
beyond the [very] limits of the human. Nothing frightens me more than the
thought of seeing this apparition a second time; and yet I am constantly,
deliberately recalling to mind the terror, the paralyzing gruesomeness of that
moment.
I called my
manservant; he had heard nothing; in the room there was not a sign that anyone
else had been there; even the door, the key to which I had left on a table [by
my bedside], remained locked. I let Rosa come in; he hardly recognized me; he
stayed with me; I did not sleep all night; I kept seeing the strange man
stealing through the room with his faint and measured pace.
If it was no
hallucination—and my consciousness rebels against the [very] thought [that it
could have been one]—what was it? If this was nothing real, then I am on the
point of interpreting the appearance of everything [in this world] as but a
sensory delusion; and according to such an interpretation, does not
everything—miracles and everyday occurrences alike—fall together [nicely and
coherently]? And who, in that case, am I?
In that case, I am at
present sitting here in a vast, soothingly sterile void; I picture myself
writing to a being that has never existed anywhere but in my imagination. Oh I
must cease [these speculations]; they can drive one mad; and if I were driven
mad? Perhaps then the barrier that now yet separates my mind from everything
inconceivable to itself would be rent asunder.
21
William Lovell to
Balder has written to
me and furnished me with a remarkable example of how far a person can go astray
when he hands over the reins of self-governance to an invention of his own
fancy. Terrified by phantoms of his imagination, immobilized by illness, he is
now on the point of doubting his own existence—the strangest and absolutely
most preposterous contradiction in which a moral being may indulge himself.
But I am familiar
with the course that Balder’s imaginings have taken; at one time I was even
close to such an unfortunate frame of mind myself. If it is by any means still
possible to do so, please do try to cure him, Rosa; reconcile him to life and
introduce him, in lieu of the gravity of Shakespeare, to the wanton playfulness
of the young Boccaccio; the colors of his [world-]portrait have peeled away,
and this is why he views everything in such a gloomy and inimical light; if you
will but make an attempt at reapplying them, then all will be as bright and
fresh [on the canvas] as it was in the old days. When he has awoken from this
disagreeable dream, he will regret the waste of time that it occasioned.
Admittedly I cannot
guarantee that the external world is as real as it seems to be according to my
perceptions; but it suffices that I myself exist; let everything around
me betake itself to whatever form of existence suits it best; a thousand
treasures are scattered among the totality of nature for us to enjoy; it is
beyond our ken to distinguish the true shape of things, [and even] if we could
do so, our knowledge of them would deprive us of the power to appreciate their
meaning. I hereby renounce the truth, inasmuch as I am more gratified by
illusions. I cannot and do not wish to inquire into what manner of being I am;
my existence is the only certainty that is absolutely indispensable
to me, and nothing can take this [certainty] away from me. This life is [the
peg] on which I hang all of my pleasures and aspirations; let the great beyond be
what it will: I prefer not to renounce guaranteed goods in exchange for
some [mere] dream.
22
Rosa to William Lovell
How directly you have
expressed the sentiments of my very own heart in your latest letter! Ah, my friend,
how few people understand how to live; they tug at their existence as at a
chain, and to the [bitter] end do nothing but yawn and laboriously count its
rings. You and I, William, intend for our part to tug at flowers, and to the
[sweet] end smilingly revive ourselves with their fragrance.
Let the external
world be what it will; a motley throng will be marching past me; I shall thrust
my hand impetuously into its midst and catch hold of what pleases me ere the
moment of opportunity is past.
Yes, Lovell, let us
savor life as one savors the last days of autumn; none of them ever returns;
the dawning of the next one may not be taken for granted. Is he not a fool who
stays cooped up in his darkened room estimating [mere] possibilit[ies] and
probabilit[ies]? The sunshine is wantonly disporting in plain sight of his
window, the song of the skylark is permeating the blue vault of heaven—but he
hears only his philosophy; he sees only the bare walls of his own lodging.
Who is the figure
that during our transports of delirious gaiety applies the bridle to our
galloping steed? Truth [or] virtue: a shadow, a phantom of mists [and vapors]
whose luster fades with the setting of the sun. Out of our way, o piteous
image! To disdain this fairy tale requires [not the slightest] exertion; a
[simple] healthy glance [at it] suffices.
Yes, Lovell: I am
pursuing this train of thought [even] further. Whither will it lead me? To the
greatest, fairest [form of] liberty; to an unbounded and god-worthy scope of
will.
All of our thoughts
and mental images have a common source: experience. In the qualia of the
sensible world inhere both the rules of my understanding and the laws that the
moralist imposes on himself through reason. But [as for] everything that human
language terms order and harmony, [or] the reflection of the eternal spirit,
everything that that language borrows from inanimate nature and imposes on the
animate human being—what more are these words than [mere] words? Our
understanding discovers the fingerprints of divinity everywhere in nature,
everywhere [it sees] order and the amiable juxtaposition of the elements—but
let it for once attempt to imagine disorder and chaos, or to discover only ruins
in devastation! It is incapable of doing this. Our intellect is inextricable
from this limitation; the notion of order holds sway in our brain, and in
everything around us we discover order: a candle that casts its flickering
light through [the slender aperture of] the lantern [and out] into the [vast]
nocturnal gloom.
It is midnight , and above me the [church-]tower clock is striking twelve.
If I imagine this clock as living and endowed with rationality, it might
perforce in time, which, according to certain arbitrary distinctions it does
without, rediscover those [very] distinctions, and never surmise that a mighty,
boundless, divine flood is rushing past [it], bold and majestic, and bearing in
its current not even a single trace of any wretched [system of]
classification.
Welcome, then, empty,
savage, gratifying Chaos! You liberate and ennoble me, [even] if in the rationally
ordered world I am obliged to make my way as a mere slave.
You see, Lovell: I am
beginning to fantasize along with you; but I hope that my fantasizing is not so
wild and incoherent but that my friend will manage to understand it. Oh, if
only Balder understood me, or [at least] wanted to understand me!
23
William Lovell to
No, Rosa: your friend does not find your ideas [at all]
incomprehensible. Is it not high time that I fully understood you and your
beliefs?
To be sure,
everything that I perceive as existing outside me may in fact exist only inside
me. My external senses modify phenomena, and my internal sense arranges them
and imparts coherence to them. This internal sense is like an ingeniously
contrived mirror that combines a number of widely dispersed and unfamiliar
forms into a single, well-defined image.
Am I not proceeding
through this life like a sleepwalker, with open eyes and yet blindly?
Everything that I encounter is but a phantom of my mind’s eye, of my innermost
spirit, which is withheld from the external world by impermeable barriers.
Everything lies about desolate and chaotic, unfamiliar and without form for any
being whose body and soul is organized differently from mine; but my
understanding, whose guiding principle is the notion of classification, cause,
and effect, discovers everything to be entirely coherent, because it cannot
attain cognizance of the essence of this totality via [the principle] of chaos.
How [cavalierly] man steps into the void with his magic wand; he waves it
around, and—presto!—the mutually antagonistic elements precipitously congeal;
everything flows together into a beautiful picture; he wends his way through
the whole [of his ostensible creation] and his gaze, which is capable only of
looking forward, takes in absolutely nothing, and fails to perceive that
everything behind it is breaking up and flying apart once again.
I welcome you sublimest notions
That lift me up to godhead’s height;
The narrow straits become like oceans;
Of health the invalid first feels the motions;
And sees now that he’s living right
The loom that weaves his fate and plight.
What is is what our mind professes;
In gloomy distance lies the world;
There falls into its dark recesses
A luster we ourselves have hurled.
Why does it not fall into wild decay?
We are the fate that forms its prop and stay!
Being myself the only boarder
In this hostelry void of crew,
I let whole worlds be their own warder,
Put their own elements in order;
At my behest change ambles into view,
Ever converting old things into new.
With cheer released from anxious fetters,
I walk through life with fearless gait;
No longer one of duty’s debtors,
The dupes of silly preachers’ bait;
My own is one with virtue’s state:
When I’m no more she’ll share my fate.
What care I for
shapes whose dull scintillation
My brain is both the seed and womb?
May virtue couple with vexation!
They both are vap’rous inspissation!
The light descends from me into night’s gloom;
But through my profession does virtue bloom!
Thus my external
senses hold sway over the physical world, my internal sense over the moral one.
Everything is subject to my whim; I can name every phenomenon, every action
whatever I choose; the animate and inanimate world is suspended from chains
governed by my mind, my entire life is but a dream whose manifold forms take
shape according to my will. I myself am the only law in the whole of
nature; to this law everything is subservient. I am disappearing into a vast,
infinite void; I am breaking off.
24
Willy to his brother Thomas
You have not received a letter from me in a long time, dear
brother; and this is because I have really had nothing to write to you about.
All of us here—by which I mean myself, my master, and his friends—all of us are
doing just fine, apart from Master Balder, who is laid up sick in Naples on
account of an attack of fever. They’ve been saying all sorts of things about
him; among which, that he takes leave of his senses for whole hours at a time,
that he isn’t even conscious then and just talks about one strange thing after
another. Whenever I hear about this kind of thing, Thomas, I just thank God
over and over again with all my heart that nothing like this has happened to me
yet; but maybe also, Thomas, in order to go properly mad a person has to have
more sense than we do between the two of us; by which I only mean that if a
person has got only just as much sense as he would need in a real emergency, he
can keep it all together without any special effort. But for someone who has
got too much of it, why, it chafes at the bit more, and so oftentimes turns
everything topsy-turvy and crosswise. I think it must work in something like
the same way as money: a person who always carries his wages with him in his
wallet generally keeps a good budget; but a person who has got so much money
that he can’t quite keep track of the sum of it in his head often overspends so
much that he runs into debt.
I still can’t at all
get the hang of liking Master Rosa. He strikes me as one of those
religion-bashers that I’ve already heard tell of back home; such people can’t
have kind hearts because they have no hope in salvation, and a person who has
no hope in that, Thomas, has no firm ground to set his foot on; [because, you
see,] this present life of ours has always seemed to me to be only a trial in
preparation for the life to come; and, well, these people make short and
slovenly work indeed of their trial, and play as many tricks on God and their
fellow men as ever they can manage. I don’t know what is going to become of
these people in the hereafter, Thomas; but in heaven they’d only spoil the
peace and harmony [of the place]. Let it all turn out as it may; I don’t want
to have anything to do with them.
But Master William
has now let himself be mightily influenced by this dangerous individual. The
two of them are now real intimate, and Master William oftentimes seems quite
odd to me; he is oftentimes not at all any longer the same worthy gentleman
that he was in the old days. If only that Italian had never led him astray!
It’s enough to make me die of grief. All of heaven and the delights of the
hereafter could never satisfy me if I knew my dear master was in another place
(you know right well which place I mean, Thomas).
You see, dear
brother, that I have been thinking a lot about death and the immortality of the
soul lately: this is because I now almost constantly have sad thoughts that I
can’t manage to stop thinking. Master William is completely to blame for this;
he is not as friendly towards me as he used to be; he doesn’t bother himself
about me much at all, and he often makes fun of me even though I am a good many
years older than him. Now surely you will agree that that’s wrong of him. The
other day, I began weeping [great] tears that I couldn’t hide from him, and
that made him laugh even more. May God forgive him as I have done. What’s more,
there’s no proper church here for people like us, which is a bad thing; my
master often goes to mass; but I can’t stop hoping he does it only on account
of the women, for if he actually started getting devout about it and became a
Catholic—no, Thomas, I could never get over that. And it is a seductive
ceremony, what with all of that singing and all of those splendid clothes;
indeed, dear brother, I have even myself been lured into going, and once or
twice (never fear!), I even felt a kind of pious reverence there. That mustn’t
be allowed to happen again. Ah, if I came home without my English piety still
sound and quite intact, what would you or any other Christian be obliged to
think of me?
I’ll leave off
writing now to spare you more of my complaining. But I wish I were sitting with
you back in our decent, God-fearing England; if it were possible, I’d very much
like to go back there; how joyously would I embrace you with these old arms of
mine, and cry out like a little child, “Thank God that I am back home, that we
are together again!” Farewell for now; heaven grant that we may see each other
again someday!
25
Balder to William Lovell
Balder to William Lovell
I sometimes feel as
though I am standing at a crossroads at which I am to take my leave of life; I
often even feel as though everything [in this world] is sited in the far, far
distance; with sad eyes I gaze down at the world as if from the top of a
watchtower, whence I am unable to make out a single distinct object. At other
times, though, I feel as though I am on the point of returning; my sensorium
again becomes receptive to [external] impressions, and my soul returns to its
body. But come to me, William; in your company I may perchance secure a fixed
and defined existence; I must presently either cross back to the world of men,
or be hurled into some dark, chaotic terra incognita wherein my mind will
perchance continue to evolve; wherein I, along with my soul, shall find myself
at home, and whither no other mortals will follow me.
Yes, Lovell, I am
forever despairing over what might become of me if people termed me mad; oh, at
many moments I feel that I am so near to this state of madness that I need take
but a few tiny steps forward to reach the point of no return thence. I often
brood for hours on end over the subject of [my fate]; sometimes it is as though
a rift has opened up, as if with a mere glance I can penetrate into [the gap
between] my innermost being [on the one side] and the future [on the other];
but then [the rift] closes, and everything that I would hold fast to slips
perfidiously through my fingers. As a child I would often stand with
reverential awe and foreboding before my parents’ harpsichord and unflinchingly
contemplate the cutout figure of a star in its sounding-board; I would
timorously peer through the star and into the darkness beneath it, for I
fancied that therein dwelt the genius of song that was set in fleet winged
motion whenever the keys of the instrument were struck. In my imagination, I
would often picture this genius ascending, gently divesting itself of its
retinue of dulcet notes and soaring ever higher and higher as a glittering
throng of harmonies gathered round it; then it would slowly and softly descend
back into its depths and once again abide there in silence. As I grew older, I
would often smile at the remembrance of these peculiar notions of my childhood
self and think, “Too clever by half!” But for all of my smiling, had I come any
closer to understanding the genesis and peculiar agency of musical sounds?
And so I am returning
to the ideas of my very earliest years; I perceive that I am now likewise
standing with a soul full of uncertainty and foreboding before the riddle of my
destiny and of the nature of my being. That perhaps that child that beheld the
light of day in his first moments is cleverer than us all. That the soul does
not yet know how to make use of the senses and organs it holds in reserve;
[that] its remembrance of its previous state is still quite fresh; it steps
into a world that it does not know and that is unworthy of its acquaintance; it
is obliged to forget its higher, characteristic form of understanding in order
laboriously to learn by rote the motley jumble of errors that men term reason.
That perhaps I can return thither, to the place where I was when I was born.
Forgive me my
rambling, especially on a subject that may be inexplicable to you; but come to
me, come! Oh, let me not beseech you in vain!
I have terrifying
dreams that rob me of my strength, and it is frightening that I also dream when
I am awake. Hordes of ghoulish spectres march past me and grin at me; grotesque
monstrosities cascade upon me like a roaring waterfall and crush me to pieces.
I do not sleep and cannot stay awake; when I do sleep I am harried by my
malevolent fancy; then I awaken and cannot wake up, but continue dreaming
instead. Howling hurricanes drive me onwards from behind and deafen me with
their din; I recoil, appalled, whenever I raise my hand; “Who,” I ask myself in
tones of alarm, “is this stranger who is saluting me with his outstretched
arm?” I reach out to it, and with a shudder catch hold of my own hand, a hand
that is as cold as that of a corpse, that is like some piece of foreign matter
that does not belong to me. Phantoms rush by me in rapid succession and in
their flight turn my blood to ice. Hideous faces protrude from the walls, and
when I look behind me, a snow-white visage lunges out at me and greets me with
a gruesomely melancholy smile. Come, William, and rescue me—come, why don’t
you? Come! Come! Can you not hear your poor friend’s fearful cry? Are you
laughing? Oh, woe betide you and me if you mock me; [for] in that case, I shall
dispatch to you all [manner of] ghosts [and phantoms] that will not suffer you
to enjoy a minute’s peace or slumber. Forgive me, but come.
I am virtually seized
by a blind fury when I hear the wretched doctors prattling about brain fever
and paroxysms. Because their eyes and ears are blind and deaf, they take him
who sees more than they do for a fool. Oh, I hear perfectly clearly the faint
and dreadful fluttering of the wings of my guardian angel; I see perfectly
clearly the hand that is beckoning me across the divide, into the great beyond.
Farewell, William! I am heeding this summons, and I shall never cross back over
to your side.
26
William Lovell to Edward Burton
You complain that I
have not written to you and to my father in such a long time. As you can see,
in this letter I am trying to make amends for my lapse; please see to it that
the enclosed reaches my father.
Oh yes, my dear
friend: I myself fear that it has been quite a long time indeed since I have
written to you. I have been ensnared by and entangled in everything here [in
one fashion or another]; the distracting companionship of a single individual
has snatched me from the arms of all my other friends; I have wandered into a labyrinth
from which I can emerge into the light of day only with the help of your
guiding hand. Oh, I feel as though I have been sitting bound in iron fetters
and dreaming of my deliverance; everything within my sight is dissolving into a
mystery; the whole of Italy
Amalie! Oh, that I am
able to mention this sweet name again! How is she faring? Does she still think
of me? Do you still recollect your friend William as often as of old? Oh, I
must here lay my pen aside for a moment; my soul is too full; my hand is
trembling.
I am resuming my
writing; but so far this letter must seem a riddle to you. Ah, Edward; I must
make a clean breast of my sins in the confessional of your friendship; pardon
me afresh; for after every trial I return to you with renewed affection.
After Mortimer’s
departure, Rosa became a close friend of mine; with each passing day this
friendship grew. Our souls became ever more intimately interchained; a hundred
ideas and notions flowed forth from his mind and into mine; in a short time I
was his student, the student of a philosophy of sensuality and egoism. He was
now my favorite and most frequented companion; everywhere I went, I would
encounter him, and every time I encountered him I was glad to see him.
Meanwhile, Balder had
fallen ill in Naples Naples
I found him
grotesquely transformed, pale; with deeply sunken eyes, a wandering gaze, and
all the signs of a grave affliction of the soul. When I entered the room, he
was delirious and did not recognize me; he was struggling with phantoms of his
imagination that harried him; he saw ghosts standing round his bed; his
skittish eyes glistened in a horrifying manner; he delivered a fluent oration
of nonsense whose peculiar and dreadful imagery often terrified me. Edward, he
described an old man whom he fancied was standing at the foot of his bed,
and—oh, imagine my horror!— feature for feature, his description matched that
of the elderly person whom I have recently told you about, who so uncannily
resembles the portrait in our house. I peered apprehensively into every corner
of the room; there was no one there, but he must have met this man; Edward; oh,
who knows how curiously the threads of my destiny are interwoven!
Do not smile at me,
Edward; before you have finished reading this letter, you will realize that you
have no reason for smiling. You will admit that I am right and will share my
friend’s horror.
Balder aroused my
deepest sympathy; I regarded him as a man who, without knowing it, was attuned
to my innermost thoughts; I could not sleep at night; his description had
vividly reawakened in my fancy the image of that strange and dreadful old man.
I felt that Balder’s illness might prove contagious to me, and so yesterday I
returned to Rome
Oh, Edward! Who could
remain calm and at ease upon seeing such a thing? At that very moment Rosa became a stranger in my eyes, and has
remained one since; since then Rome Italy
Yes, Edward, I now
wish to, I now must, return to my beloved England
And if this moment
never comes? If cold words strike my delight and despair alike to the ground?
The very thought brings cold tears to my eyes. Ah, my friend, as childish as
this may sound, I am daily haunted by the remembrance of many a ghost story
that I first heard in my childhood, and without fail I find these stories
applicable to my situation. Are you familiar with the fairy tale in which a boy
is unflaggingly pursued by a gruesome monster, in which he is perpetually
running from this monster only to find himself running into its clutches time
and again?
You have no idea how
strange everything seems to me; since yesterday I have regarded every object
with awestricken eyes, as though in expectation of a miracle at every turn; for
me at present nothing is beyond the range of probability. I have locked myself
in my room so as not to be caught unawares by Rosa ; the very sight of him might very well
petrify me with terror as effectually as the gaze of a basilisk.
In connection with
this, I cannot help thinking of how secretively Rosa ’s manservant Ferdinand has comported
himself for some time now; such that I have been thinking of him a good deal
lately. He clings to me at every opportunity, as if he had something to reveal
to me, but only at the cost of incurring some fearsome penalty at the hands of
his master. And to Ferdinand’s dread I look in the hope of extricating myself
at least partially from the darkness in which I am now immersed; I am
confronted by a riddle whose answer can but prove a source of fresh terrors to me.
Someone is knocking
at the door; that someone is undoubtedly Rosa . I cannot open the door; I am
picturing your image to myself with especial vividness in order expel the
horror that is seeping into me. Oh, my friend, he was walking arm in arm with that
creature!
He has walked away, and I am once again free. Oh, but what is this
to the moment when I shall once again salute the shores of my native land? I
hope this moment is not long in coming.
27
William Lovell to his father
Has my beloved father
been distressed by his son’s prolonged silence? Such a silence ought not to be
repeated; your son must not compound with additional grief those sorrows that
already afflict you. You feared that I had suffered some calamity? Oh, dear
father, may this letter set your mind at rest; that you may in turn set to rest
the mind of your son, who is about to tender you a proposal upon which the
fulfillment of his life’s happiness depends.
The thought that the
question of my well or ill-being should worry you so unceasingly impels me to a
confession that I have hitherto not ventured to make; but your affectionate
letter has forced my heart agape, such that I intend no longer to conceal from
you so much as a single wish or thought.
I desire to return to
England
Dear father, I am in
love! Oh, if only I were capable of saying all that I must needs say to
you in order to convince you of my love! Let your heart be my advocate, and
spare me those words that will amount to so much fog and vapor in face of the
fire that burns so clearly and unwaveringly in my soul. My beloved’s name is Amalie
Wilmont; my happiness now depends upon your utterance. Oh, let me be happy!
Alarmed, my genius
prompts me to leave Italy
Oh God, father, what a cheap and shabby canvas our life is! All of
its colors are crudely and clumsily daubed on; all its joy is but a less
oppressive version of tedium; everything flies and fades away; like beggars who
have long since gathered and spent their niggardly pittance of alms along the
way, we arrive at the end of our journey as poor as at the start of it. Only
one form of happiness accompanies us along the barren path and strews it with
flowers; all other phenomena that seek us out salute us and fickly go their
ways; only love seizes fast our hand and escorts us faithfully through life.
For the sake of this love, for the sake of the love you bore my mother, grant
my happiness your paternal consent. Do not think for a moment that some passing
and foolish fancy moves me to implore you thus; the chain of my life and virtue
is attached to Amalie’s soul; I feel this incontrovertibly in the innermost
core of my heart; if you tear us apart, you will likewise be cutting in twain
my happiness, my life, and my virtue. Within this circle alone are all of my
desires and forms of happiness lodged; oh, father, warm your paternal heart and
make it oblivious of worldly gains and goods; I entreat you not to reject my
petition. If you could change places with me, you would surely hasten with
trembling hand to write the letter securing my bliss; you would not hesitate to
write it, or ponder the consequences of writing it, for an instant; for the
hours are passing speedily away, and the flowers of joy are rapidly wilting.
Oh, no, father; I am unafraid of your reply; I have no reason to be afraid of
it. You are worried about me and suffer sleepless nights because you think that
I am ill; oh, you will not decree my lifelong misery with a single pitiless
stroke of a pen. Farewell and fare happily! Would that this letter could be
carried by a pair of wings, and yours by the swiftness of the wind!
28
Walter Lovell to his son William
Walter Lovell to his son William
I have received your
letter, along with another from your friend Burton
I hope that you are
not so arrogant as to maintain that you have thoroughly considered all of my
presumably offhand objections to your proposal. You young people too readily
suppose that you have run through all of the notions of your more-experienced
elders: you think that you have considered the intricacies of the world
thoroughly and from every angle with your understanding when you have but
peered into them once and briefly through your fancy’s eye. You are ignorant of
what I intend to do and in part have already done for your benefit; you are
unaware of all of the circumstances that are auspiciously conspiring to smooth
your path to good fortune; it is not for you to destroy, like some wanton boy
with a single throw of a pebble, what your father has arduously and for years
labored to assemble. No, son: I can never vouchsafe my consent to your proposed
union. You must not imagine that you will either beg or extort from me my
consent with a heap of letters on this topic; I am herein capable of a steadier
resolve than you perchance suppose.
Do not mention your
mother in this setting; unlike you, I did not love foolishly; our two families
were of comparable wealth and standing; I freely grant that mere chance has
decreed otherwise in your case; but the wise man avoids the obstacles that
chance has placed athwart his path, whereas the life of a fool is nothing
but a ceaseless and futile struggle against chance and want. Believe me: I
would have been fully capable of resisting my love had these
difficulties stood in the way of our union. Heed, then, your father’s counsel
and example.
On the whole, it
seems to me that you would do rather well to avoid comparing your love to mine.
Your mother was a paragon of femininity: gentle and intelligent, emotional yet
unsentimental; within her breast beat such a heart as is seldom to be found on
this earth; and you dare to liken Amalie Wilmont to her? Amalie Wilmont: a
creature whose affability and kindheartedness at best raise her a notch or two
above the common run of womankind. And what is more, you do not even actually
love her! This so-called love is but pap for your fancy, a feeble access of
sentimentality that has laid hold of your heart and whose origin you are
seeking to identify with a nonexistent passion for this young woman. Do you
really believe that with a heart truly full of love you would have been
able to travel to Italy
If you intend to
return to England London
I trust, in view of
the nobility and goodness of your heart, that you will not long remain cross
with your father on account of this letter.
29
William Lovell to Amalie Wilmont
William Lovell to Amalie Wilmont
It is determined, and
I can say nothing more than farewell! Farewell for ever! Confiding in my
father’s love, I sought his consent—but—oh, I should prefer to laugh at his
subtle, super-sagacious reply—but oh, have you not already guessed exactly
what he wrote? Oh Amalie, I intend to speak to you no further of my love, of my
hopes; all of those dreams have been dreamed through, and we are now both
standing here wide-awake and smiling at the remembrance of their vanished
parti-colored images. Forget me, for I am already laboring to forget myself. I
have been drummed out of the ranks of the fortunate, expelled from paradise by
paternal edict, and I now intend to fill my cup of misery to the brim! If we
are to serve as a grisly plaything of fate, let us at least flash a
contemptuous smile at our taskmaster as he fastens the iron yoke over our
necks. Farewell!
But why should we
even pretend that the ridiculous confederation bids fair to be a happy one? A
wonderful state of affairs! Yawning and sauntering one’s way through life on
the arm of a consort whose father can adduce proof of possessing, down to the
last half-crown, exactly as much money as mine; properly paired with one’s
perfect peer; creeping day by day towards death; this is our great and noble
destiny! You must imagine that I am overwrought and embittered. Oh, such is my
sang-froid at the moment that I could indite to my father a treatise urging
upon him the unimpeachable justness of his refusal. O Amalie! Must I tear your
name entirely out of this wretched, bleeding heart of mine? Must I
extirpate the root of my everlasting bliss, and thereby ensure that I will
never again be refreshed by the luster of new leaves? I cannot do it, and I do
not intend to do it.
Across the vast distance that separates us, I am stretching my
trembling hand out to you in a gesture of terrifyingly eternal leave-taking.
May my father forgive me for it; oh, his fear of my beleaguering him with
letters of petition is superfluous; he shall hear not another word on the
matter from me; henceforth, his son intends to address him as a servant does
his master; I guarantee that in consequence he will begin to find my letters reasonable.
I should begin raving
again if I could call your image properly and vividly to mind! Very well, very
well, let him have it! Already I can see the wild horses tearing free of their
reins; with a terrible clatter they gallop down the steep mountain path,
trailing the carriage behind them; then, the vehicle lies smashed to pieces on
the crags, and he stands there bemoaning the damage. He has willed it; let it
be!
Farewell, dear soul;
our paths will henceforth trace different routes: mine into the overgrown
thicket of the forest, where the wind whistles out of subterranean gorges, and
yours? Whithersoever it may lead you, I wish you happiness.
30
Amalie Wilmont to Emily Burton
My destiny is
determined! William has divulged his love to his father, and—ah!—Emily, these
lines are blotted with tears that speak eloquently enough. A cold shudder
convulses my frame when I reflect that it is determined, that it
is determined: the verdict that I always dreaded, but that from month to month
was continually deferred to some distant future moment. Now, at length and
without warning, has arrived the hour that ruthlessly fells to the ground
everything in its path and leaves nary a hope room to grow. Ah, Emily! My
friend! Do not attempt to console me, I beg you; for I am incapable of
understanding consolation; consign to me but a single tear; I desire nothing
more than that. You see now how much wrong you have done me in abjuring my
black premonitions as you do from time to time! Oh, my love kept its eyes shut
to the future and trembled all the while in anticipation of this dreadful blow.
Mortimer wishes to console me; I perceive the kindness of his heart and the
worthiness of his intentions, and yet I must needs weep, for I cannot cease to
be aware of the fact that is determined. I have wept the whole night
through, but what more is there to do? Exchange my tears for your sympathy? Ah,
my wounded heart—how it slowly and convulsively draws upward whenever I think
about what has happened! Ah, of what use is sympathy to me?
31
William Lovell to
I have, you say,
grown colder to you of late? Rest assured, my dear friend, if that had
been the case, it would have been so only in preparation for my rejoining you
with redoubled ardor. No: your friendship is precious to me; it is, indeed,
more precious to me now than ever before; let us never dissolve the bond that
we had sealed.
In triumph, I stand
high above life and its joys and sorrows; I gaze down with an imperious mien
upon the bustle of the world. Who are those wretched creatures that groan and
sweat so profusely under the burden of duty? Are they my brothers? Nevermore!
Choice is the hallmark of human freedom; released from all fetters, I rush into
the world like a tempest tearing down forests and riding over precipitous
mountain-ranges, whooping loudly and savagely all the while. Let the world
collapse behind me and totter before me; what can mere ruins do to check my
course?
Fly with me through
the clouds, Icarus; if our appetite for pleasure has been sated, let us
fraternally revel in destruction. We are our own subjects and legislators: let
us careen in our youthful frenzy towards the sunset and perish with its
declining beams.
32
William Lovell to Edward Burton
If only out of force
of beloved habit I must write to you, Edward. One might almost swear that life
itself was nothing more than a habit for most people, so soberly and
dispassionately, so wretchedly and phlegmatically, do they trudge along the
rutted course of time to which niggardly fate has consigned them.
You will have learned
by now that my father has rejected my petition, a state of affairs to which I
am now entirely indifferent. It often seems to me that I could easily become
quite indifferent to what in everyday life is termed misfortune. As I am
unable to find happiness on this side, I am naturally obliged to seek it out on
the other one. I intend to climb from one elevation to the next in order to
discover the highest and fairest summit of joy and look down at the crowd of
sorrows and abasements by which all of mortal humanity is pursued throughout
this life. If an access of vertigo sends me toppling thence to the ground, what
will I have missed?
I am standing at a
crossroads that would induce vertigo in many a brain, but I have remained
almost completely indifferent. I am beginning on the whole to become cold
and reasonable in accordance with my father’s wishes; I sincerely hope that
in the end I manage to extinguish that flame of fanaticism in my heart for
which you and he have so often rebuked me. But I wanted to relate to you a
curious incident that constitutes a remarkable enough sequel to the previous
ones.
The day before
yesterday a person I did not recognize brought me a letter that read as
follows:
Follow the bearer if
you wish to hear of something that needs must be of extraordinary moment to
you.
I accompanied the
stranger, who led me past Santa Maria Maggiore into the solitary region beyond
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme; from a secluded garden I entered a small cottage
that formed an annex to an ancient temple; all was solitary and silent; I
opened the door of one of the rooms within and was instantly greeted by a young
woman. I thought I was in for a jolly adventure and was not a little startled
to recognize in the young woman’s features the familiar face of Rosa ’s blond manservant Ferdinand.
We sat down; I was
nonplussed and disconcerted.
“For God’s sake,” she
began, very nervously, “I can no longer conceal it from you; it wrings my
heart: from the very day I met you I have been instinctively drawn to you; I am
aware of many things that bear upon you: be on your guard against Rosa !”
She uttered these
last words with a peculiar and significant emphasis; the dreadful old man
came over my soul once again; a cold shudder crept downwards along my spine. At
that very moment in walked Rosa , who was just returning from Naples
I have not seen this
young woman since then; the scene has been detrimental to my intimacy with Rosa , as he fully perceives. Each of us has
repeatedly wished to explain himself, and verged on doing so, only to stop
short every time.
Be on your guard
against Rosa ! What could he have in store for me? This question would preoccupy
many people in my situation. But after all, is not the whole theatrical
clockwork of life actuated by mutual deception? Everyone wears a mask in order
to impose upon the rest of the world; whoever appears without a mask is hissed
off the stage: what more is there to it?
[END OF PART II]
Translation
Copyright © 2009 by Douglas Robertson