by Gustave Kahn
“Tell me, Asverus—you’re an ancient of days, I’m certain of that—tell me: when a man plunges into oblivion, is he an assemblage that disaggregates, is he a whole that goes to sleep forever? If I die, will I be a distraction that vanishes, will I be a murderer that has killed a dream? Asverus, I can still see, no longer my dream and its many details—all of that is within me, in a hard gray matrix that I have allowed to set hard and can no longer break—I can still see my life, and I see my hand striking my soul with dagger-thrusts. I see my soul palpitating in a corner, without granting it a glance. I see that in my life there has only been one beautiful and harmonious minute, and that it is not me who put it there but Rizpah. I’m already dead; I’d prefer to escape slowly and silently, and that the door should close behind me silently.”
“But why, Samuel, did you want to come back so near to the city? I had placed you in the most beautiful place—almost an Eden.”
“Yes,” said Samuel, “Almost an Eden, and with the primitive and virginal happiness of an Eden. I read the book of joy there; I deciphered love here—not that of poems, not the troubling anticipation that I once believed to be love, and which is merely an occasional portico. But Love breaks when force disaggregates it; Love is a good companion until the Autumn. In the winter of days, the guide, salvation—call it what you will—is no longer called Love.
“Love is not a child archer, as the Hellenes imagined it. It is a strong and robust woman, and yet with the movements of a child; she bears a lantern of solar brightness. She comes from the edge of forests through tree-lined avenues; she enters a garden full of sunflowers and red roses; she opens the door of a house; the lamp that she sets down shines brighter than daylight, and golden gleams play around divans; and the man gets up stronger, an adorable caress still adhering to his lips, when the beautiful form has drawn a few steps away from him.
“And the man who captures the eternal Eve and retains her in his house forgets the mists and the cool breezes of spring; he traverses Summer on a blazing river, seeing nothing of the sky but gleams on flowers, and sparks of splendor melt and dance everywhere around him. He traverses autumn with the lover at a slower pace, a more earnest pace, and the days declining amid the crimson and the gold of leaves seems slower to him, and the Sun set the entire day to melt in curtains of fire and flakes of snow among the porphyries of the palace of infinity.
“But in winter, Asverus, the beautiful and strong woman that you saw after dawn no longer comes, solar lamp in hand, through the avenues of frost and ice! She would be a poor shivering and dolorous woman, her light flickering. In winter, a woman in love is a mother, and a man in love a chilly child whom she coddles and warms up; perhaps that is salvation, but it is no longer victorious Amour, and that is one more defeat.
“One knows that, instead of entering the Palace of the Word and the Kingdom of the Future, one has simply whispered the tale of Speech, a vain tale, punctuated by interruptions, with bizarre tones and eccentric cadences; one has whispered; one has talked nonsense, and in what tale does the poem of Love end? Why does the power of Love die in a man before he does? Why has the Love that is illusion hidden the precipices from us for so long, suddenly to reveal them to us? Why does it lead two beings, who have traveled the entire road, laughing and singing beneath the benediction of the fires of midday and the caresses of the enchantment of the setting Sun, suddenly to leave them empty and shivering on the most somber of esplanades before the gulfs of shadow and infinity? Would it not be better that no cup of joy were brought to us than that that the only one given to us must run dry? Why that beautiful dream amid our nightmare, and that attenuation of all the simple horror to which we are dedicated?”
“You’re complaining, Samuel, Rizpah isn’t complaining.”
“Asverus, taking to you is causing me to suffer—submitting my momentary soliloquy to your temporal attention. You know, and I don’t, but am I any less delivered to myself alone and forced to learn all alone? For Rizpah, I’m the end; it seems to me that she has loved me. She has embellished the desert, she has garlanded the inanity and set vases of flowers in the margin of the void. If I am gone, she is gone; she has no goal—but did I not have a goal, myself? To resonate, to resonate so high that the promulgated swords would be laws, reflections of true laws. All Rizpah’s love and all her pity have fled, poured out into my hands. She has lived; she has been, if not happy, existent and complete; she has filled her phantom, and me—where is mine, which was an appearance external to me?”
“I asked you why you came here.”
“When I sensed my soul becoming drowsy, I wanted to come close to the place where I was happy and unhappy, where actions touched me brutally, but gave me by their blows the sensation of my existence. I can no longer do anything but dream; I would like to dream of action.
“Since I’ve been here, though, I haven’t headed toward the city; I remain a long way away from it, and from the Eden where I experienced love, and from the Garden of the Hesperides where I might see again…what triumphs? I take a hundred paces to the right and a hundred paces to the left. The horizon is, for me, a little less limited than the tomb, but every day it shrinks. I don’t even dream any longer about the dawn of my life. I hold myself ready, near the place to which it flows, in order better to relive my entire life in a minute between all my pasts, those of dolor and those of joy. I no longer dream about anything but the desire to dream.”
Rizpah came toward them. Asverus considered her long gaze, in which lamps burned directly; he saw her gaze embrace Samuel anxiously, and her tenderness sit down beside him full of mute interrogation.
“Rizpah,” he said, “if a long voyage would be a considerable source of felicity for Samuel, would the things of this world—your house and the sky—hold you back?”
“Not at all, Master Asverus, but is it truly a happiness that I can give him, thanks you?”
“Thanks to you only—but it will be necessary to see old Ezra again.”
“We’ll leave tomorrow, if you wish.”
“But Rizpah,” said Samuel, “I have no need of any happiness.”
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” she affirmed.
Chapter Two
THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION
Asverus’ ship has taken to the sea again. It is drawing away from the low and sandy coast, going toward the wall of mist on the horizon, as white as a snowdrift, which melts as it approaches. White birds keep it company. Great green plains are painted on the thick glaucous cloud, and yellow expanses like fields of wheat. Large green hollow cups are sculpted among the waves, and in the distance, it is as if large white flocks are huddling together and colliding. Occasional moving sails pass, hastily. On board, mariners are singing. The Sun’s glare is like a universal cupola.
The sea is populated by figurines in silver-hemmed robes. Enormous surges originated far away reach the hull, bending, breaking and licking as they arrive. A transparent plain looms up before the prow and the castles of the chimera superimpose their thousand terraces of red-streaked marble upon the sea. Shreds of the dawn are imprisoned in the blue of the sky.
The wind get up then, and plays, swelling the sails, running over the ship’s deck and moaning slightly, as if slightly fatigued by its race, and the majesty of the evening sends its pale, calm heralds in advance, which unify the bright colors of the waves and the sky as if with the slow movement of a scepter, and the Sun makes it way toward its retreat at a gentle pace.
On the lowest terrace of its occidental city it pauses, and blood flows from its breast, in a slow gesture of its arms which raises crimsons in the altitudes that it has just quit. And the wind, freed from a master, sensing that the king of the day is retiring before its moment of power, shrieks and moans more loudly, and begins its threat—and the great forces of oblivion drive black expanses with crests of foam to break upon the hull and licks the flanks of black wood.
It is as if an item of news were passing from hand to hand at the ends of a thousand arms, arrivi
ng from the vast sea, which is not communicated to wandering ships. The pale disk of the Moon appears, and for some moments—long moments—it dispenses with its veils before showing its pale round face. The sailors’ voices are melancholy.
It is now that the vessel senses that it is alone between the waves and the clouds; the urn of the stars is poured out over the sky, and here is the infinity of the torches of space; it is the immense domain of the unknown, which is, at this moment, a colossal city with densely-packed streets, lit by numerous torches; it is on the restricted earth that the desert of shadow and darkness extends.
Everyone on board falls silent, the pilots and watchmen go about with muffled footsteps; tomorrow there will be dawn.
And every day, the dawn that welcomes the ship is brighter, and the waves are bluer, running beneath a more beautiful sky, and the priests of the rising Sun stand up rosier above the clouds every day; and every evening, the sheets of scarlet raised by the blessed arms of the Sun become more imperiously dazzling, as violet nights surge forth, which coax and lull the waves, which dream rather than sleep. Forms allow long white robes to trail over the expanse of the swell, and sometimes the sea lights up. All the waves are ornamented with green gleams like meadows of tender grass.
Islets of florid spring and the gay dances of goddesses run over the crests of the waves, and from the immensity that plays and swirls perfumes travel, which pass over the ship and go toward distant coasts to fade away. Cool fingers caress the human foreheads. It is no longer a moaning wind but a whispering breeze, amusing itself, and total calm extends across the whole sky. The white sash of the clouds offers glimpses of profound plains strewn with sparks.
Now the ship is sailing on a blue mirror; the waves flex beneath its prow and close again gently, as if scarcely disturbed in a siesta. Enormous dolphins escort it, leaping joyfully. The ship has entered into a complete solar contentment. Softness flows from the tranquil sky, from the honest Sun, from the calm horizon, from the infinite plain of liquid azure. Perfumes blossom abruptly like enormous flowers.
The ship that bounded over northern seas glides over this lake of repose, rocked by the sweetest dreams. The sea is hospitable to the desire to live; the light reclothes the mind in a festival mantle, and happy pilots allow the serene contemplation of the voyagers to drift silently.
The pilgrims of dolor are borne away by the waves of a physical sensuality, and the cool of the evenings is tender, almost amorous—and after long days, the ship comes to shore, docking gently at the base of a stairway that descends into the sea, where droplets of the dying waves shine on marble steps.
IN THE CASTLE OF SILENCE
“Sire King,” said Asverus, “here are the pilgrims of life, vases of dolor. We have chartered them, to dwell among men; here are those who are returning to us, laden with all the sadnesses. Would you care to receive them in your palace, and, since they have not found their land in this world, would you care to resorb them here, in order that calm might penetrate them and prepare them for new thoughts, if destiny still keeps them captive in its eternal march?”
“Sire King,” Rizpah added, “I have often seen your serene splendor in my dreams, when you were the good Ezra. It’s true that we are a trifle weary. A few days will suffice for us to recover our strength. Outside the world, we shall revive more fully, and if new aspects come to flourish in our minds, which have suffered so long in looking through the monotonous windows of mediocre existence, we shall become young again in spirit and in vigor.”
“At least,” added Samuel, “We have turned our backs on the flat Earth, where I have suffered so much, where every object that my eyes encountered sufficed to evoke a cluster of bad memories. Oh, if I could renew myself, if the lustral night of refuge wished to cover me with its forgetfulness, if I could be reborn another...”
“Live here,” said King Balthazar—and he guided them toward the large terrace overlooking the sea. “Do you remember, Asverus, the day when you came here for the first time? The walls were ornamented with such ancient frescoes. They were destroyed; I didn’t find them here on my return. Immortality rolls many corpses in the equal waves of its minutes. Are we not as exhausted as them, as far as ever from the end and the goal? What are we, Asverus? Perhaps the frisson of a dream that is finding it hard to end, the thoughts of a colossal dreamer turning over in tormented sleep.
“Rizpah, Samuel, live here. You believe yourselves to be sorely wounded, worn out, very old; compared with us, you are perhaps still children, whose ages have scarcely begun. You entered into life by virtue of a little pain; who knows what is reserved for your souls in the long circumnavigation that they still have to travel, when the chains of our bodies are loosened?”
They went into a high-ceilinged room. On an altar, a wooden vessel shone with a soft light, and Rizpah—who recognized it—bowed.
“It’s really him,” said Balthazar. “The prophecies said that white hosts of innocence would rise up on his candor. I’ve shown him to the peoples of the Occident, and no one recognized him, and my spiritual sons, in the iron life of seekers of gold, have been reeds. Who will come now to reveal the old rite, which is vanishing from memory as our ship vanished over the horizon—who will come? Will anyone ever return to the castle lost in the light, as others are swallowed up in perpetual mists? Come on, rest, live here, let yourselves live. The unknown will speak to you here, and you will doubtless comprehend. Collect yourselves in the Castle of Silence, sleep beneath the cool and pacifying palms of Silence.”
Samuel woke up light and lively, almost fluid. A ray of sunlight threw mobile flowers into the room; physical wellbeing and moral lissomness generated happy laughter, so youthful that Rizpah got up from her sleeping-mats and put sandals on her feet in order to run to his arms—but he exclaimed: “Rizpah! Rizpah! The mirror! Look at yourself!” And he leapt to her side, and picked her up.
In the large metal mirror, raised up by an iron claw, Rizpah admired the past—the already-distant past. It was her at twenty, the eyes smiling with a generosity in which a hint of dolor had left a kind of spark, like a minuscule drop of dew on a leaf; the forehead was pure and pretty; the cheeks fresh beside the mouth of hope and love, and especially the ebony eyes and the moonlight of the unbound hair, flexibly curled as if in friendly struggles; and the straight, round neck, a proud and solid channel of life and thought. It was her, her at twenty years of age!
“O mirror of marvel and of derision, dolor evoked...” But she interrupted herself and uttered an exclamation: “Samuel, your youth!” For he had placed his head on her shoulder, and she perceived his black hair, his solid forehead, his bushy black beard of yesteryear.
“But the mirror does not lie for you, Rizpah; here are your snows melted, winter vanquished amid the bushes of summer.”
“No more for you, Samuel, since I see you again as in the hours of childhood dreams, when you came home and your smile filled the little house; here you are, young—shall we be immortal?
“Oh, whether this is eternal youth, or merely the reflection of a past happiness, or a mirage that has gripped our two souls, let us not waste the Edenic moment. We arrive here refreshed from former suffering; it appears to us more beautiful for all the distance that separates us from a similar vision of ourselves. Rizpah, I love you, and blessed be the man who had regilded that avowal with all our youth.”
“Samuel, my soul as well as my body is hanging on your lips, O blissful mirage.”
“This is no more a mirage than were the hours when my fingers untied your tresses,” Samuel said, “when my lips respired your love on your forehead, and the petals of its flowers in your thoughts. This is no more a mirage than your moment of awakening in my arms, when you perceived that there was something other than songs and words. This is no more a mirage than our expectation of a renewal of spring, and since the fatigued, gasping Earth produces flowers every year in its blood-stained harvests, why can’t we, the witnesses of the world, also flower again, flower again etern
ally? And who knows whether the limit is true that age obstinately raises up before our will? Oh, I have prayed so often to the gods of youth that perhaps they have granted my prayer.”
“And I have begged them too, for my child, for you, my child, whom I cradled on my shoulder. O fountains once frozen, in which I saw my shadow quiver, the formidable fist of our desires has broken your ice, and your crests of white frost are no longer anything but diamond ornaments and luminous bracelets on our wrists. The horses of the dawn are galloping unbridled, O my wealth, O my law.”
“And life is only serene and just in being durable. Come toward the Sun, beneath the pavilions of summer.”
“Sun, master of destinies, profound nurse, total matrix, Sun of young years replanted on the summits, on the snowy summits where you still smile.”
“Sun king, Sun god, philter of forces, clarity supreme.”
“Sun that I drink at dawn.”
“Sun whose evening fall bears me away and causes me to vanish.”
“Kind Sun, terrible Sun, Priapic Sun.”
“O gentle master whose force makes languor, and resuscitates force from reawakened languors, benign Sun.”
“Divine Sun, solar altar, I burn in your heart and die.”
“Sun, your guiding hands return us to wakefulness.”
“O Rizpah, your hectic curls fall on the nape of your neck, and the Sun amuses itself; it has its milky way in the white span of our shoulders.”
“O Samuel, the lotus grows and blossoms with all its pistils of love.”
