by Gustave Kahn
It seemed to the young man that in that rigid heap of stone flowers and bushes, with the vivid roses and scarlets of its stained glass, its sunflowers, its lilies and its columns decked in honeysuckle, perhaps there was a soul asleep, as Merlin was asleep, numbed and enlaced by some Viviane. Until when?
His footsteps had brought him as far as a quay, and on the opposite shore, beyond the boats, he saw horsemen riding past in festival armor, young and joyous.
“Oh,” he thought, “in the midst of this city, and the world that the architects of the cathedral and the fathers of those gay cavaliers have made, where are the palaces of Viviane the artificer, she who draws men into her bosom and enchants them for a century with the sound of a song? Where are the palaces of Morgain, which draw them into round-dances where they sing and dance untiringly for a century for one of Morgain’s kisses? Where are the portals of the high blue valleys over which trail silver bands of cloud, veiled by distance to hide the shores of departure from those who cannot be summoned? Where are the springs hidden that are the fairies’ mirrors, and what harsh customs weigh upon the world as far as one can march, know and learn?
“Since Morgain’s companions collected the enraptured and broken body of Artus amid the reeds, the miracles of the land of dreams have scarcely been renewed; where are the great palaces with immense terraces overlooking the blue extent of a sea without ripples, whose foam seems a fringe of eternal celebration, and whose sky smiles as it drives away its white clouds in order the that golden fruits of Avalon might flourish? Who travels the roads strewn with ambushes, guarded by wild beasts and men-at-arms, paved with marvels, toward the unexpected houses in which the truth suddenly lights up, as simple as a beautiful festival evening, imprinted with fortunate melancholy and grave music? And how many people have their eyes raised without anyone knowing whether their gaze is still following the ascension of the already-vanished Grail, or whether they are waiting for the firmament to open to show them, in the distance, more distance, more space, more festival processions dressed with pomp, so very distant that they leave them no more than the confused memory of a chimera?
“And what should one do: live like them; or live according to the strict color of things; or gild the present of that in which one has the presentiment of eternity?”
How much of that did she contain, the glimpsed princess, so white and lily-like, with her long train, a circle of dull gold around her long hair, who listened so ingenuously, her lips parted and her eyes delighted, to the songs of minstrels, and seemed particularly pleased with her own? Would she love, since she seemed less apparent, less herself in lovely candor, on hearing the grandiloquent couplets of some singer, the lull of the music of Samuel and the freshness of his long, captured by the reeds of the river? Had she, perhaps, heard the frisson of the past mingled with the tremor of the future in his song, if she had really been the one to whom he wanted to sing, and if the evil magician who changes into copper the pieces of pure gold one brings out of one’s purse had not transmuted them while he was arranging them?
He saw again the pride of being summoned to the elite who are the music of a race and a time, the sound of whose voice is amplified in the throats of others, and to whose cadence the world marches. Perhaps there were blue valleys in the eyes of the gentle princess, and the reformed rigging of the sacred ship of love in her hair, and the dissolving delights of Avalon in her lips—and perhaps her voice would be able, in the white palace of her arms, in the blue valley of her unfolded cloak, to charm the poet in order that he might sing as in a dream, with his entire soul, for an entire century, in a single song with infinite modulations, a true life of love, unaware of the labyrinths of power and the undergrowth of force in which he lived.
These beautiful meditations brought Samuel to old Ezra’s door.
The people of the city knew almost nothing about the old man. He had arrived one day, long ago, from another capital. It was presumed, and rumored, that he was originally from the Orient, but many years ago, and his slow progress had been interrupted by sojourns, by long and patient healings. His old man’s face with its long white beard and keen eyes, offered no symptoms of age among the nuances of aging. He was stern and upright; the poor people of the low quarter always had recourse to his benevolence, the cheerful and powerful aristocrats to his science. He had often been seen entering the palace of the emperors, and within its marble-paved courtyards his footsteps marched in concert with those of a powerful bishop or a valued adviser.
Special virtues were attributed to him for calming poor madmen: those who make the attics of saddened houses resound to a slow but continuous ululation; those who scamper on all fours, swinging their haggard and drooling faces; those who hide their heads under a scrap of cloth, draping the air around then, staking a staff at the clouds and seeming to command infinity with a verbose gesture. For them he put dolors and ambitions to sleep, and brought back the poor powerful sovereign, betrayed and abandoned, to lie down in his wretched bed, and sent him back to the closure and calm of dreams. People brought the poor girls him who weep inconsolably and whose souls filter through staring eyes, and he lulled those sufferers, and resolved the excessively profound and silent dolors that weighed too heavily upon their hearts into thin, refreshing tears.
When he passed through the streets of the city, invariably clad in a long brown robe with a collar and a thick bonnet, fur in winter and velvet in summer, the townspeople in their doorways took off their hats, and the gentlefolk bowed to him, for everyone owed him some recognition. Nevertheless, in spite of his ever-steady tread, his silence broken only to reply or give care, and the simple monotony of his attire, for those people who saw him every day he remained a stranger, originally from the Orient, who might go back there, either by the road to the east, going to meet a caravan stopped at one of the great fairs, or the road to the west, on a ship chartered for the long haul.
His justice and his fair-mindedness had made him the arbiter of many disputes between individuals, and even some of a more general order, but that was also because it was felt that he had no particular interest in these litigations that were addressed to his firm clear-sightedness, being detached from overly personal impressions. He seemed to be under the jurisdiction of something more permanent, more exact and more personal than everything that surrounded him; the strictest modulations of organs were less distant than his thought, and theological discussions and disputes regarding the organization of the city appeared slightly juvenile in the regard of his aphorisms. Gravity marched by his side, and the mysterious prestige of his cures accompanied it. He was treated with a hint of fearful respect, because of his immediate utility, and his near-perpetual claustration, combined with his willingness to disturb himself, without haste or urgency, to soothe someone’s pain, was astonishing as his choice of friendships, careless of influence and advantages.
“You drink from a strange cup, Samuel,” said Ezra to the young man. “The wine of the chimera hides a hard wall on which one might break one’s head only too well. That is the whole of your malady, and your thoughts drift too freely. Take care that they do not tangle you in some knot of aquatic herbs above a whirlpool.”
“Is it a malady to be young, to sing?”
“No, but it is to dream of impossible places. Where are you trying to go? You’re physically weak, your eyes are not those of a conqueror but those of a contemplator. You’re able to understand the fugitive moment and pick the rare flower of emotion, but do you think you have the arms and the vigor to row against the current of an avid and harsh society? You can see—don’t seek to rule. There are too many petty monarchs of copper coins, wisps of straw and nutshells around you. Don’t strive, work, be silent and see.”
“But sage Ezra, that is my only desire and my only ambition.”
“Why, then, this wasted ardor, this lacerated heart, this expectation of a dream? What possibility do you see that a princess will emerge in life, as in ancient tales, and incline toward a poet a heart tha
t you would like to think gentle? Are you not familiar with the haughty mothers and harsh barons among her ancestors? And even if she wanted to escape the chains, the barriers and the silken bonds, where would you go with her? And your faith—don’t you give that any thought?”
“I have no other than what I have glimpsed in your teachings.”
“That doesn’t matter—you’re a Jew. Your entire race clings to you, in spite of itself. It will be forced to grip you again as you will hurl yourself toward it again, having no other route surrounded by menacing points—not swords, but instruments of torture.”
“But we live contentedly under the emperor.”
“A respite! Do you seriously think that the reproaches directed at the rich on the Pont des Orfèvres, at ship-owners and to the poor people in these back-street hovels really result from the participation of their forefathers in a great murder? No—but since a pretext suffices to drive them off the road, overturn their fortune or take away their power, the pretext is conserved. They are outcast, and if you, the minstrel, find concession to the extent of sometimes associating with the aristocracy, it’s because your youth is attractive—and youth is only temporary. Can you heal, as I do? Don’t you want to learn, in order be tolerated when you are withered?”
“I go toward the splendor of forms, the beauty of faces and clothes, the great gardens enamored of luxury and the beautiful processions in which I want to take part. Master, does your faith not lack audacity? Every day, do not the dusks in which you take pleasure anticipate the arrival of a soft night, full of attenuated lights on high, tempting for the human sun, propitious to a long, inert and sweet dream. O Master, everyday life breaks up our thoughts like the stones of an old wall, and seeds arrive there by means of the logical curves of gentle winds, and flowers are born there that are bound to come and are the perfume of the land. Why not mingle with active life, the life that smiles and creates—and weeps, I admit, but also laughs around us?
“Consider the procession at the head of which the emperor marches in his golden cloak, and his priests with gem-studded crosses behind him, and the sumptuous warriors with gem-encrusted blades, and the beautiful ladies, so high on their decorated balconies, from which they watch it pass by, so close to the music of the singer, the word of the poet; and the rich and the valiant, the former on their beautiful mules and the latter on their chargers—and can you not believe that there is a place on the borders of their route for everyone, for all those of courage, boldness, skill and honor? Isn’t it true that you, who dispense cures all day long and tire yourself out next to beds of fever, seek within yourself repose and pause for thought, while I, whose existence is attaining the rhythm of song and pursuing the slippery image, and the melody of the world that is coy and does not want to be captured, spend my spare moments dreaming, on the contrary, of those women whom one sees in their entirety, of mingling my fire with the flame of the world?”
“I see, on the contrary, that there exists close to you, within reach, a kind of happiness for you, and that, like everyone, you are letting go of it and turning your back on it to seek adventure. Do you think this is the first time that a cry like yours has reached my ears? That during my long years, of which you have perhaps never asked yourself the number, I have not seen the procession of which you speak approaching? But if you were to look at some of the members of that sequence of people, whom you think you see moving through the open air, with the eyes of experience, you would see that it is a solid mass, of iron or lead, of which you can see only one side, the more sumptuously decorated. The individuals within it are stuck within a matrix, each in a fixed cell, and it is always the same one who holds the same pace. This universe does not change. Fixed waves seem to break, sometimes the mass vacillates momentarily, but it requires a great many cracks for it to crumble, and for the passer-by on the road to mingle with it. Are you anything other than a passer-by? You can stop for a moment and, still numbed by your march, imagine that it is the others who are marching and not you. That’s all. But you will return from your chimeras by yourself, and I wish ardently that it might be soon and that you will not be badly bruised by them.”
MASTER ASVERUS
I
They were conversing in this fashion when the heavy door opened and a jovial and profound voice shouted: “Here I am, Master Ezra, back again. What a change in the fine city—in its soul, at least, for the streets and the people seem identical to me!”
The newcomer was tall, his accentuated features shadowed by an unruly graying beard. His costume was simple, like that of a traveler. All his features and his body indicated a considerable antiquity; his eyes were deep and harsh, his shoulders still square, his hands robust and muscular, the sinews as brutal as ropes.
“Be welcome Master Asverus. Here, things only change after a very long time—but you, the traveler, the pilgrim to the beautiful, and the shrewd merchant who knows all roads, what have you seen in your wandering?”
“Cities, cities, cities by the sea, cities on rivers, hanged men next to calvaries, galiots along the quays, cities preparing furs, cities collecting masses of wheat, cities in which thousands of weavers make cloth, and make canvas, so that great cities like this one might buy it, and, in many places, misers who count gold with a trembling hand. There are also sages—less wise than you, worthy Ezra—and numbskulls less stupid than you, Samuel. There are also bishops and monks who are ignorant, and savants who study, and the stewards of lords who are rich and shelter their full and indolent hands in fur gloves, and peasants who are not content. The world goes, as always, in an indifferent direction and a petty measured trot, in order to conform with the well-known expression: That’s the way of the world. The world, at present, is in the shade of a large tree that is not very solid. No one knows the condition of its roots, there are branches with somewhat disproportionate fruits, which might one day fall off and bloody a few noses, but it’s holding together quite well thus far. There are also boring-beetles in the woodwork of houses, which are audible in the evening when everything falls silent after prayers, but people go to sleep contentedly and seriously, as after prayers. It’s only idlers and dreamers who hear them. How is Rizpah, Samuel?”
“Well.”
“That’s curt. Well and what else?”
“She spins, she dreams, sometimes she sings quietly and sometimes thunderously; she plays the lute, she reads the old tales, sometimes, and hears the gossip of the century and the moment, no one knows how—from the breeze, the maidservant, for my distractions and he tales of my old mother, who still knows many things that were fresh half a century ago. She’s like all young women.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes.”
“What use is it to a dreamer to discern things so well? She sings, she spins, but do you know what is happening beneath that everyday appearance? She is beautiful, Rizpah?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Our young friend,” said Ezra, “spins with the distaff of legends. I believe that he’s besotted with Queen Genièvre; it seems to me that he has found a reflection of that vanished beauty, but he has sought her in places a little too high. It might cost him dear to love an inaccessible beauty. What can one say about a man whose life is sent contemplating the reflection of the Moon in a river, or waiting for a capricious fire-follet from which he is separated by an impassable marsh? Doubtless there are admirable reflections at night in the river and the lake, but can the melancholy heron catch one?”
Master Asverus became grave. “Samuel, you won’t listen to my experience; it’s extensive, however. Look twice before cracking the mirror of your life. Rizpah is beautiful; for you she is the future and the past. She’s a strong woman, like the one whose name she bears; she would be able to keep the eagles away from her sons’ gibbet, and keep watch in the desert, her eyes dry, eating hard bread, clad in an old sack.18 For you she will be the true magicians’ lamp, the lamp with the inexhaustible drop of oil. Pay attention: there are beings that one does
not have the right to offend; she is one of them. Think first of your duty and then of yourself. You have a good traveling staff; don’t break it.”
“I love her like a sister.”
“But when she has deciphered the first pages of the book of life—soon, now, very soon—will she love you like a brother?”
“Everyone fulfils his destiny.”
“Oh no—one follows one’s first error, when one does not know one’s destiny. And what is the reflection?”
Samuel remained silent, but Ezra said: “Princess Marie.”
Master Asverus studied the young man anxiously. “Where have you seen her?”
“At the palace; I sang there with others. She thanked me in a voice so soft and said such accurate things about my art that I am still charmed by them.”
“And here you are, drowned in the clear blue lake of her eyes, under the spell of that voice, which still seems to be modulating a romance. Here you are, having become quite impersonal, since you are not the only one that her beauty has ensnared. You love her because she is delicate and seems soft, all that heightened by the pomp of power—but can you hope, can you believe that she will descend from the high throne toward you, not for a minute, a minute of banal conversation, but to dream with open eyes for an entire lifetime? These slender blonde beauties are scarcely the work of old Asverus—for what can you hope? Will you sing for your entire life, arms upraised, to an image whose sapphire eyes bathe an entire room full of poets and warriors with soft light? If she is Genièvre, you are not Lancelot. Trust old Asverus: leave, and take Rizpah with you—there are other cities—or cut the dreaming part out of your heart. It isn’t an honest flame that’s consuming you; it’s only a smoky brand that it’s necessary to throw away. Leave.”
“Certainly not.”
“When bells tinkle and glitter about your head, my friend, put on a fool’s cap and go forth on the roads; cry that you are the knight of the impossible and the lover of the white phantom of the Dawn. Go stammer at the crossroads, go stammer, for what can you do, what can you learn, face to face with the portrait that you are carrying beneath your eyelids? For already, to be sure, a Princess Marie other than the true one—the one that exists, fair enough and good enough, but frail, very frail—is living in your head. A poet, a poet who has blood and sinews, who can sing as naively and frankly as a cockerel at sunrise, to an iridescent bubble of air! Beware, listen to Ezra; don’t seek to scale a tower without a ladder, to open a door without a key—and look after yourself. Unoccupied dolor is the most terrible thing in the world.”
