by Susan Sontag
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I feel clearer now. To sleep was refreshing. I cannot hear Tolo and my wife anymore, though I can still feel them. Their clothes. If I were not so cold, I would be very comfortable. It was always very cold at the summit of the volcano when it was abominably hot below. I do not see why even the timorous would not want to climb the volcano, what do they fear. I could never persuade Charles to make the ascent with me, and Catherine was too frail. And Pliny too fat. It is unwise to let oneself become corpulent, although I have perhaps become too thin. I should have insisted that they climb with me, it is an exhilarating effort, especially during an eruption. While I advance fearlessly, the guides will pull them up with thongs. Everyone should climb the volcano and observe for himself that the monster is quite harmless. I can smell its hot sulphurous breath. And the odor of roasted chestnuts. No, it might be coffee, but if I ask for a spoonful of coffee I suspect they would not give it to me, they would tell me it will keep me awake. The light is keeping me awake now. A current of orange-red light. To lure the sedentary, tender, and decayed to the summit, I shall offer them a musical assembly after their efforts. Catherine will play the piano, and she who no longer loves me will sing. Rule Britannia. And I will play the cello, for one does not forget the skills of one’s youth. After making sure that walls have been erected to protect us from the wind, there is a great deal of wind inside my head, the wind must not get out and tip over Catherine’s piano. Thus protected, thus protected, Tolo is squeezing my hand, al fresco, most original, everything is here, carried in strong arms, on strong backs, up the slopes of the mountain. All gathered in one site. I observe that most of my guests are examining my pictures and vases. A few would be interested in my samples of volcanic rocks. And what do you think of all this, Jack. The monkey has thrown me a look I cannot but think mischievous, Jack has lowered his head to his little red prick, Jack is whispering to me. Though all evils are burdens, yet an erected spirit may bear them, but when the supports are fallen, and cover the man with their ruins, the desolation is perfect. A most remarkable creature. He understands me very well. I shall write a communication to the Royal Society, which is the most important scientific academy of Europe and of which I have the honor. Fortitude, patience, tranquillity, and resignation. And a shimmering. A cold musty smell like a mofetta. Oh beware. It is possible to be too fearless. Jack has darted behind a rock. Someone must watch that the rascal does not approach too closely the brink of the crater. I shall save him. He is here. He is sitting on my breast. I can feel the weight, I can smell the stench of his animal bowels. I shall not breathe in any more with my nostrils. And when the guests have departed I shall return to bed, for it is permitted to rest if one has greatly exerted oneself, one need not be elderly to tire after a great exertion. My breath. I always found the energy to do what pleased me. And the more I exerted myself, the livelier I felt. It is staying so long in bed that has enfeebled me. Being an antiquarian has not made me old. Rather, the objects I have loved have kept me young. My principal interest was always the extraordinary times in which I have lived. I do not like what is said about me now. The friends who understood me are all dead. Even to them I seemed eccentric, although perhaps I was not eccentric enough. But a man in my position does not defend himself, like a common author, and every day I can see the happy results of my endeavors in the improvement of taste and increase of knowledge throughout the room. I meant something other. I do not mean the room. Among people of fashion. Like a ship, rocking. Admiral. Admirable. I was always clear about what I admired and wanted to explain to others. I could see that I held their interest. The light is white. They respected my judgment. My enthusiasms made me visible, that is why I do not have to open my eyes. I was expected to fall into excess. Only what is excessive makes a lasting impression. But then they learned to mock me. Taste is fickle, like a woman. Are they still here? A woman’s arms cradling my head. My wife I think how comforting. Yes, about that for which I am renowned. Approbation may wobble but I have exerted considerable influence. I would like to place my hand in front of my mouth, the air is leaving my head. But my wife who means well is grasping me too tightly. The air is streaming out of my mouth. Let me see if I can draw some of it back in. Then I will hold it. Little sips. There. Fortunate to have lived at the same time as and enjoyed the friendship and esteem of so many great men, I can take pride in my role in devotion to energies on behalf of. Air. No, influence. Still inside my mouth. I wager I will be remembered. But history teaches us that one does not always live on in the minds of men for that for which one desires to be remembered. One applies oneself diligently, one’s achievements mount, genuine achievements, and then, alas, a story becomes attached to one’s name, everyone hears it, everyone tells it, and that is all finally which anyone recalls. Such was the fate of Pliny the Elder. I will let some of the air out now. He who never wasted a moment, never stopped studying and collecting facts and writing his hundred books, what would be Pliny’s thoughts could he have known that all his vast labors would be overrun, swallowed, absorbed, the air is still coming out, that his knowledge was nothing, because knowledge sweeps forward, devouring, burying the hard-won knowledge of the past. Enough breathing out. That he would be remembered only for one story, his end. That only because of Vesuvius does everyone still pronounce his name. Now I will take some of the air back. I think he would be quite disappointed. Only a little air is returned to me, I have given too much away, but I will make do. Well, well, if one is to live on in history for one story only, one event of a long crowded life, I suppose there are worse fates than being remembered as a volcano’s most famous casualty. I was luckier. The volcano never did me any harm. Far from punishing me for my devotion, it brought me only pleasure. This time I will not let any more air out of my mouth. I have had a happy life. I would like to be remembered for the volcano.
1
I cannot speak of myself without speaking of him. Even when I do not mention him, he is present by omission. But I will speak of myself, too.
I was his first wife.
I was plain. I was often unwell. I was devout. I loved music. He married me for my money. I fell in love with him after we were married. My God, how I loved him! He grew to love me, more than he had expected.
He had not had much affection from women. His mother, lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales and the mistress of her royal husband, was rather hard on him. And in the eyes of his severe father he was only a fourth son, almost a stranger, since as a child he was taken by his mother to live at court. How unlike my own dear kind parents, who lavished affection upon me and shed tears when I departed to live in a heathen land, fearing that they would never again see their only child, who might be killed by bandits or perish of the plague. And I, ungrateful daughter, was so happy to leave.
We left England, as I say, for my husband had become a diplomat. He had hoped to be posted to a more influential capital, but had decided, as he always did, to make the best of it. For the salutary climate alone, and the resulting improvement in my health, he would be reconciled to the disappointment. Soon after we arrived, he discovered many other advantages, advantages for himself, in his new situation. He was incapable of not enjoying himself, whatever he did, and incapable, too, of not pleasing and impressing others. He allowed me to contribute to his ascendancy by being a perfect wife.
I would have liked to be perfect. I made an excellent ambassador’s wife. I was never lax or inattentive or ungracious, but—this was thought becoming in a woman—neither did I appear to be thoroughly enjoying myself, which might have led me to want to enjoy myself more, in a fashion incompatible with my duties. He knew I would never fail him. He hated failure, bad temper, grief, anything difficult, and apart from being sometimes ill, I made sure that he had nothing to complain of me. What I liked best about myself was that he had chosen me, and that I did not disappoint him. What he liked best about me was that I was admirable.
I was regarded as far superior to the generality of my sex because
of my solemn demeanor, my dull plumage, my appetite for reading, and my attainments at the keyboard.
It was an exceedingly companionable marriage. We both loved music. I knew how to distract him when he was exasperated by some vile or tedious business at court or made anxious by a protracted negotiation for a painting or a vase on which he had set his heart. He behaved toward me with the utmost attention, with the result that I was constantly reproaching myself for a want of gratitude or an encumbering predisposition to melancholy. He was not the sort of man to wring a woman’s heart, but mine was a heart that could not help but be wrung; and mine the fault, for rising to a pitch of unseemly fierceness of attachment.
Talking with him was like talking with someone on a horse.
I felt yearnings, which I thought were for God, or heaven’s mercy. I do not believe they were for a child, although I regret I never had any children. A child would have been another soul to love, and would have helped me to mind his absences less.
I am grateful for the consolations of faith. Nothing else makes any response to the awful darkness which, at one time or another, we discern around us.
As a child one of my favorite books, given me by my excellent father, was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I thrilled to its stories of the wickedness of the Church of Rome and the inspiring courage of the noble Protestant martyrs, who were beaten and scourged, whipped and bastinadoed, whose flesh was torn with red-hot pincers, whose nails were pulled off and whose teeth were wrenched out, whose extremities were doused with boiling oil, before they finally received the mercy of the stake. I saw the faggots being kindled, the mantle of flame enveloping their garments, and the backward arc of their necks and shoulders, as if they wished to toss their heads to heaven, leaving their poor bodies to burn below. With pity and awe I mused on the glorious doom of Bishop Latimer, whose body was forcibly penetrated by the fire, and whose blood flowed abundantly from the heart, as if to verify his constant desire that his heart’s blood might be shed in defense of the Gospel. I longed to be tested as they were and prove true to my faith in a holy martyr’s death. The dreams of a foolish, presumptuous girl. For I was not brave, I think, though I never had the opportunity to give proof of bravery. I do not know if I could have borne the stake, I who could not even bear to look down from a safe distance into a volcano’s fire!
My husband fondly described me to others as a hermit. I do not have the temperament of a recluse. But I could not overcome my distaste for the ignoble, dull-minded court, and he was often in attendance at court, and I preferred his company to that of anyone else.
I took pleasure only in him. What music gave me could not be described as pleasure, for it was more bracing than that. Music stretched my breath. The music held me. The music heard me. My harpsichord was my voice. In its lucent sound I heard the pure, thin sound of myself. I composed delicate tunes, which were neither original nor very ambitious. I was bolder when performing the music of others.
Since regular attendance at the opera was required of everyone attached to the court, indeed everyone of condition, I professed to enjoy it, as he truly did. I do not like theatre. I do not like what is false. Music should not be seen. Music should be pure. I told none of my companions at the opera of these scruples, not even William, the ardent unhappy young man who came into my life toward the end and gave me a taste of what it was like to feel understood and to understand myself. With William, I could speak of my cravings for purity; in his company, I dared to acknowledge fancies incompatible with my destiny. I was often called a paragon, an angel—ludicrous compliments—but when William spoke these words, I heard them as the genuine effusions of a thankful heart. I thought he meant he was very fond of me. I had been kind to him. He was my friend, I thought, and I his. Then I understood he did regard me as an angel, I who brimmed with unruly humors. Once, after we played a four-hand sonata, he left the piano to recline on a sofa and close his eyes. When I cautioned him against too sensual a reaction to our music-making, he replied: Alas, it is very true that music destroys me—and what is worse, I love being destroyed. I fell silent when I might have continued my homily, for I realized that I was capable of an utterance no less extreme. I would have said not that music destroys me but rather that I destroy others, with music. While I was playing, even my husband did not exist.
I was younger than my husband, but I never felt young. I cannot imagine that I could have had a better life. A woman’s weakness bound me to him. My soul clung to his. I did not respect myself enough. I am surprised that I find so much to complain of, since it is my belief that a wife’s part is to excuse, to pardon, to bear with everything. To whom would I have disclosed my chagrin? I was not blinded by the partiality of love, but it strained me to judge him. I was never angry. I never had any harsh or base feelings. It is a relief to admit to them now.
I suppose I must acknowledge that I was unhappy, or lonely. But I do not ask for pity. I should scorn to cry about my lot when there are so many truly unfortunate women, such as those deceived or abandoned by their husbands, or those who have borne a child only to lose it.
