by J. M. Synge
May 5. I am in the country at last — near the end of Finisterre. Since I came here my daily readings of the saints and Stoics have lost their interest, and I live simply and naturally as the peasants do. This ordeal I have passed through has left me without a trace of apprehension. My system saved me, yet when I look back on it now, it seems a childish escapade. I have my fiddle here and I make the peasants dance in the evenings. My skin shivers while I play to see that in spite of the agony of the world there are still men and women joyous enough to leap and skip with exultation.
May 7. Yesterday I was out fishing with some of the fishermen, and as I walked home to the village, sunburnt, hungry and healthy, with my old coat on my arm, I could not find any connection between my present self and the self of last winter’s diary.
May 20. I am hearing many ghost-stories. Since I have come back to nature my rather crude materialism has begun to dissatisfy me. Nature is miraculous and my own dreams were something extrahuman.
September 15. Paris again. It has given a certain tremor to my nerves, to come back to these places that recall the Celliniani and my own despair. The Chouska is here again and talks a great deal of her spiritualistic studies. She says the ordeal I have passed through and what she is pleased to call the bravery with which I overcame it, form a direct initiation to the spiritual power that is needful for the mystic. It appears that she came to Paris the day before I saw her in the street, under the impulse of a strong intuition, and now she believes that the work intended for her was to make my acquaintance and to insert the keystone in the arch I have constructed.
Sept. 23. She is a wonderful woman, and, I think, has grown more like the Celliniani since she has given herself up so exclusively to the study of these mysterious tenets. Yesterday she came dressed in the pale green material the Celliniani wore at the concert. We are indeed such stuff as dreams are made of. At first I loved, as it were, one ideal woman divided between my two friends, now I find two women in the one.
I am reading her books, and assenting with provisional delight to complex theories of the world. If four or five scientists are agreed on any subject which they alone have studied the opposite opinion of the rest of the world is of no value. In this sense the great mystics are surely worth more attention than they are usually given. The Chouska is urging me to write for my occupation as I dare not return to music.
Nov. 1.1 am yielding up my imagination to the marvellous. These things cannot be understood without an intimate if cautious sympathy, and I long to lift the veil and to see with my own inward sight the pretended symbols of the soul. In this mood I seem to gain the width and dignity my efforts of the spring lacked so utterly.
Nov. 11. Yesterday when the Chouska was here the concierge’s child came up to me with a letter. As she was running away she fell over my violin case and hurt her knees. The Chouska picked her up and as we consoled her a new idea came between us — if we love?
Nov. 15. I have passed the threshold and seen the face of the unseen. I have moved amid a myriad Egyptian forms, have called in defiance to the reptile godheads of the East, bidding them place their foreheads upon mine that knew no apprehension.
I have seen symphonies of colour that moved with musical recurrence round centres I could not understand: I have passed the solitude of seas and felt with cold hands the tropical profusion in their caverns of undulating gloom and then all these things rolled themselves in a vortex and left a single lily in their wake.
Nov. 16. My hands bound upon my now imperial forehead I count the glories I have known. But what is to follow?
Nov. 20. Symbols of things beyond my comprehension cloud through the waving of the inward light. Strange stars shine upon me with prophetic rays. Purple feathers float in my hands, and choral symphonies wind themselves about me. Two divine children haunt the twilight of my sleep. Are they souls that would create their lives in my passion for the Chouska?
Nov. 23. I am sick of the ascetic twaddle of the saints. I will not deny my masculine existence nor rise, if I can rise, by facile abnegation. I despise the hermit and the monk and pity only the adulterer and the drunkard. There is one world of souls and no flesh and no devil.
Dec. 10. A letter from the Chouska: —
‘We dream and marriage would wake us. Do not talk of it. I leave your love not as a thing that I renounce, but cling rather to the heaven I know. I have learned in Paris that I am not destined to achieve distinction in my art; you tell me that your poetry is of no value. But be sure that we at least have failed because we feel the inexpressible. Art is but expression. Without any pride or self delusion we can look upon the writers and sculptors around us “with a sad disdain”. Mon ami, we have walked with God; do not envy the frail glory of your comrades.’...
Feb. 22. I have answered at last: —
‘For us marriage would be a mere copy of the world, and I see that in this you are wiser than I am....
‘I have come out among the hills to write music again if I am able.... All art that is not conceived by a soul in harmony with some mood of the earth is without value, and unless we are able to produce a myth more beautiful than nature — holding in itself a spiritual grace beyond and through the earthly — it is better to be silent.... When I am here I do not think without a shudder of the books of Baudelaire or Huysmans. Among heather I experience things that are divine, yet I know not how I should express them. Music is the finest art, for it alone can express directly what is not utterable, but I am not fitted to be a composer. To-day I burned many sonnets written in Paris with an ecstasy of pride, for they were but a playing with words and I blushed to bear them before the solemnity of God.... There is little poetry that I can read here, except the songs of the peasants and some of Wordsworth and Dante.’...
Another letter from the Chouska: —
‘... Your letter shows that my instinct did not lead me erroneously. Is it not better that two souls who have loved in each other the quiet that surpasses love should retain their solitary mood... and not descend to common oblivion. Simple human life has health and dignity, yet no one would put a bride bed in the Sainte Chapelle, and my room and yours are not commoner than Christ’s. Mon ami, our love is religion. When all mankind are religious humanity will cease for the task of flesh will be accomplished. This mood of it may be more than saintly isolation is one fit to be arrayed in art, yet what form is undefiled? When I think of Paris my marble dreams shrink from incarnation. In art as in love tranquillity is heaven.’
I reply to her: —
‘Do not exceed, nor lose all life in exaltation. If you renounce all offspring from your body do not likewise with your soul. You have elected a life of saint-like meditation, yet heed the actions of the soul... and the things that spring from it. Forget Paris and the world and shape your clay without fear or hesitation. I turn daily further from the poetry which is but a shaping of jewels and seek a tone as long and calm as night upon the hills. Yet stories in verse are pointless now, sincere drama has the weight of earthly passion, description is vain, and lyrical poetry is but a substitute for the singing voice or violin. Literature is not alive. I will be silent.’
Final words from the Chouska: —
‘... The earth is beautiful, and I live as I write in a mist of abstract meditations, though the children teach me that I am a woman.
‘You will not follow my advice even as I have not followed yours. In the end we will dream away our existences, happier than in the world.’
ON A TRAIN TO PARIS
ONE NIGHT WHEN I was travelling from London I found myself in a compartment with eight ballet girls for the last stage of our journey from Dieppe to Paris. Our crossing had been the wildest of the season, and the boisterous gaiety of my companions contrasted curiously with their crumpled clothes and their drawn, handsome faces. For a while they sang songs and talked eagerly about Paris and their journey. Then one by one they leaned over on each other and went to sleep. Some had laid aside their hats and thrown loose shawls over th
eir heads; others had retained their hats but allowed them to work down gradually with their unfolding hair upon their ears. The whole party, swaying in two lines of sorrow, gave the impression of feminine weakness and disorder which produces a potent yet human influence on a man with a conscience. What were these weak and tired girls that they should be compelled nightly to exhibit the strained nudity of their limbs to amuse the dregs of masculine cupidity? Opposite from myself, one who lay back in the corner with a wisp of hair pushed out beneath the shawl she held tightly round her small half-childish face recalled with grotesque yet irresistible irony a picture of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf that I had delighted in, in one of my first picture books. Her face was still radiant, even in fatigue, with the imperial grace and purity of childhood, although she was probably seventeen or eighteen.
The strong coffee I had taken on leaving the boat kept me awake. The sun was rising on the fresh and tranquil fields, and I looked out every few moments into the wonderful purity of the September morning, then back again to the gallery of sleeping girls. Is life a stage and all the men and women merely players, or an arena where men and women and children are captives to be torn with beasts and gladiators who appear only to destroy and be destroyed?
After a while I grew so bitter in my strange and solitary watch that I sprang up and cried out to them that we were nearing Paris. They roused themselves with stiff and dreary expectation. I could have kissed and comforted them each in turn despite the rouge and sea salt that lay upon their lips. In a few moments their traditional gaiety reasserted itself. They threw aside their shawls and hats and began to do their hair with combs and looking-glasses, plying me with questions about Paris life and theatres, throwing in at times a remark of naïve yet frank obscenity.
Morituri te salutamus! The pity I felt changed gradually to admiration as I warmed myself with their high spirits and good humour.
UNDER ETHER
Personal Experiences During an Operation
THE operation was fixed for Saturday; so at ten o’clock on Friday evening I found myself at the door of the private hospital where I was to lodge. I was received in the office by Nurse Smith.... Nurse Smith gave me her parting directions — I was to be in bed before midnight, when a night nurse would come round to bandage my neck — and went off to other duties. The door closed behind her and I was alone. For a while I roved through my room, peering into cupboards and presses, half dreading to unearth the débris of mutilated victims. Then I sank into a chair, and drew out the last volume I had been studying. It was Spinoza’s ethics, and I found my excited thoughts refused the lead of the great pantheist, and I abandoned myself again to incoherent reverie till eleven and a half struck heavily on the clock before my door. Then I unpacked the few necessaries I had brought with me and arranged them in drawers with which the room abounded, and went to bed in a few moments.
Next morning I found the operation was not to take place till mid-day, so I had long to wait. However I found a fellow patient in the drawing-room, and the morning passed languidly in conversation.
At half-past eleven I slipped down to get a look at the preparations in my own room. They were worth seeing. In the window stood a long stretcher, some four feet high and two wide, rigged out as a bed but looking ghastly enough. Every available table was covered with enamelled hardware, showing many fantastic shapes whose use I was yet to learn. Strange bottles stood in groups beside articles I had never seen, even in the windows of surgical outfitters. My room looked south, and the low winter sun threw in an almost dazzling illumination at the large panes from which all blinds had been removed. While I was taking an inventory of what was to be seen a nurse came in, and was horrified to find me on the scene of action. Patients, as I afterwards learned, are banished till the last moment to avoid needless anxiety.
The doctors were now announced, and I was hurried upstairs to give them a moment to make ready their own instruments. In a few minutes Nurse Smith came and brought me down. Three doctors were awaiting me, and I was followed by Nurse Smith and two younger nurses. I was irritated by the solemnity of the whole party. When I tried jokes on my own account they met them with sickly smiles, as an attempt to cloak a timidity I did not feel. In a moment the surgeon directed me to mount the scaffold. At other times one would feel an embarrassment in divesting oneself to a single smock in the presence of three young women, but it seemed as natural in the circumstances as walking bareheaded in a church. I mounted the operating table, warning them as I did so that they would have no slight task to retain me on my plank bed. The moment my head touched the pillow one of the doctors bent over me to test my heart. An instant later he placed something over my mouth and nose directing me to breathe with usual regularity. He was standing behind my head, so I saw only his face stooping above me. I clasped my hands over my breast, and decided to allow my fingers some motion to let off the inevitable excitement. The only anxiety I remember to have felt was lest I should become unruly as the ether gained on me, and disgrace my stoic resolution.
For what seemed an eternity no change came. Suddenly the light grew brighter, and a rigidity tingled through my limbs. It was not pleasant, and I felt my fingers flying in a rhythm of fearful velocity. Even this was not enough; my toes — always agile as a monkey’s — joined in the dance. I wondered how long I could retain self-control in presence of such awful discomfort. A change passed across me, and my fingers locked with sudden stiffness. Speech was gone. Volition was gone. I was a dead weight; a subject on a board; toy of other wills. It was agony. My eyes rolled swiftly from one side to the other, seeing now with phantasmal and horrible distortion. A break came, and I forgot one moment where I was. I passed again into sense; my mouth was uncovered; no one seemed at hand. Horrible noises were in my ears. The ceiling, which now shone with terrible distinctness, seemed bending over the nurses; and the nurses, some without heads, some with two, were floating in the air. Voices were behind me. Fifty suggestions flashed through my brain; had the ether apparatus broken? Did they think me insensible? Would I have to lie feeling all with treble intensity, unable to speak or move? I raised myself on my elbows and asked with sudden effort:
‘What has happened?’
Two doctors were at my side in an instant. They assured me that I was doing excellently, and begged me to lie still for my further dose of ether.
Now I was told to draw long breaths, and I drew eagerly and angrily, resolved to put myself, at any cost, out of pain.
I felt what seemed currents of blue vapour curling to my utmost extremities. Suddenly I was in a chaos of excitement, talking loudly and incoherently. Clouds of luminous mist were swirling round me, through which heads broke only at intervals. I felt I was talking of a lady I had known years before, and sudden terror seized me that I should spread forth all the secrets of my life. I could not be silent, The name was on my lips. With wild horror I screamed:
‘Oh, no, I won’t!’
‘No, I won’t!’
‘No I won’t!’
‘Oh, no, I won’t!’
‘No, I won’t!’
‘No, I won’t!’ using the sullen rhythm that forms in one’s head during a railway journey. This did not suffice; I changed to a shrieking imprecation. Another blast of ether rolled through my veins. My hands broke from my control and waved in the luminous clouds. I saw them, and in an instant one hand went out before the other, my fingers spread and one thumb approached my nose after the manner of a street arab. At the same moment the clouds rolled aside, and I saw the doctor bending over me. He called to the surgeon:
‘Batby, look!’
The words reached me and I echoed:
‘Batby, look, amn’t I funny?’
They laughed aloud.
‘Now you’re laughing,’ I cried: ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Mimicking with a frantic crescendo. Then their mirth infuriated me.
‘I’m an initiated mystic,’ I yelled with fury; ‘I could rend the groundwork of your souls.’
Not wishing to
exasperate me they grew serious. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ I roared in ironical triumph, ‘now you’re serious. Now you know what you have to deal with.’
The clouds rolled over me again, now heavy, now opaque. Something thrilled in my neck. Were they beginning? The memory of control was obliterated; I yelled, I writhed with appalling agony. Another paroxysm of frenzy, and my life seemed to go out in one spiral yell to the unknown.
The next period I remember but vaguely. I seemed to traverse whole epochs of desolation and bliss. All secrets were open before me, and simple as the universe to its God. Now and then something recalled my physical life, and I smiled at what seemed a moment of sickly infancy. At other times I felt I might return to earth, and laughed aloud to think what a god I should be among men. For there could be no more terror in my life. I was a light, a joy.
These earthly recollections were few and faint, for the rest I was in raptures I have no power to translate. At last clouds came over me again. My joy seemed slipping from my grasp, and at times I touched the memory of the operation as one gropes for a forgotten dream. I heard noises and grew conscious of weight. The weight took shape; it was my body lying motionless in a bed. The clouds broke, and I saw a gaselier over my head. I realized with intense horror that my visions were fleeing away, leaving scarcely a trace. I groaned in misery.
‘Oh, if I could only remember! If I could only remember — remember.’
I was sick, and people were attending me.
I groaned still: ‘Oh, if I could only remember.’
The clouds rolled further away; I recognised one of the nurses, and called out to her with sudden incongruity:
‘By Jove, there’s Nurse Smith!’
She heard me, and bending over me she said: ‘Are you coming to? It was very satisfactory.’
