The Ark

by André Arnyvelde

  “Those poor heroes shirked the most difficult, but most properly divine, aspect of their task. Perhaps they were not armed to do better, being too weak and too timorous to go beyond murder, fearing that if they did not slay the monster with the first blow, they would be vanquished themselves in the ensuing struggles…in brief, not being at all certain of still having the upper hand. In any case, they were too weak to attempt the great work: that which slowly transmutes darkness into light, lead into gold and Lucifer into a seraph. Trembling that they might be taken by the darkness, devoured by the inferno, burned in the athanor before the transmutation is achieved.

  “Kill! Slay! Destroy! Such is the watchword of gods, angels and heroes. Siegfried would not have had the Ring if he had spared Fafner; Perseus only possessed Andromeda after having slain the Gorgon; Jesus only opened his heaven and Buddha his nirvana to those who kill their own terrestrial passions.

  “These monsters that haunt all fables, whatever the ages and skies, are allied by the same sign, with is adapted to the unkind forces of the cosmos as well as the passions of human nature. In the same way that in the physical realm, a Franklin captures the incendiary lightning and utilizes it—for what works of power!—in the psychic realm, humans, within themselves, far from extinguishing those flames, that blood of the soul, those vital sources of force, can gaze at them, scrutinize them, proof themselves against their assaults, and learn to measure and manipulate their power.

  “In the belief of fable, the heads of the hydra grow back apace if one cuts them off one at a time, and it is the same with all the passions, venomous flowers of a single stem, and their devouring danger remains the same, whichever one it is that is uprooted, until the moment when they are all scythed down at a single stroke—the virtuous method of the church! Effective, but too simple, and in the final analysis, disastrous.

  “Is one any further forward for having ruined the treasure given, dried up the torrent, broken the irresistible lever of rude tasks that the muscles alone, too paltry, renounce? And it is in holding one of them that one can hold the others, not by means of the cutting blade, the consuming pyre or the stifling cilice, but proudly, by means of the audacious joy that raises them from their lairs, by means of charm, science, the lucid intelligence that assigns to each one, in accordance with its nature, delights other than and superior to those that it savors when served by instinct alone or blind heredities, making them, in the perpetual exaltation of all their resources and all their enthusiasm, the militias of the will of love and life...

  “But enough preaching! We have better things to do, my friend.”

  35

  Then, he resumed the game of comparisons by which he intended to specify for me the extent and the quality of his privileges. Apollonius of Tyana, by great efforts of fasting, incense and pentacles resuscitated the dead, or at least, it is said, caused a few phantoms to appear? The arcandre, by lifting his little finger, resuscitated not merely an individual but an entire city, an era, a sequence of centuries. Without any visible talisman, had he not transported me to the nebular age of the sun, to the planet in the time of the waters, and to the little family drawing room in an evening of my childhood?

  I had strolled in Florence in the epoch of Savonarola. It had only required me to pause on the reflections of the vortex of images to share the intimacy of Corneille at Petit-Couronne or the meditations of Jacob Boehme in his shop, and eat Semiramis’ pastries... In sum, I only had to report to any one of the prodigies that had been granted me to conclude without appeal that the slightest detail of such a confrontation sank all the spells of old Apollonius pitifully.

  As for what was said about walking over water, again I was able—not without finesse, I thought—to make the observation to the arcandre that that was a miracle that humans operated continually with the greatest simplicity in the world, in that any one of them crossing a bridge was, in sum, doing neither more nor less than well and truly walking over water.

  The arcandre having smiled at that quip, as I might have expected on the part of such a gracious individual, replied that even in taking the letter of the miracle as Jesus—or, in the case at hand, Apollonius—accomplished it, in stepping out of a boat at sea, he, the arcandre, could reply to the said miracle that he was not only able to walk on the water but in it: properly speaking, in the interior of rivers, seas and oceans, and at any depth; and that with as much liberty and ease as if he were walking along the path of some terrestrial garden. Even better, while walking in the waters, here and there, he was able to incorporate himself with the fish, the vegetation and fantastic minerals that populate them. In brief, that what we had once done in the soil, where I was a root, we could reproduce just as perfectly and picturesquely in the ocean or a river.

  And as he finished that statement, we suddenly found ourselves on the edge of a real ocean. A boat was dancing, moored to the shore, into which the arcandre invited me to climb, and then climbed in with me. He raised the anchor and took the oars. We were soon out of sight of the coast. Then my companion abandoned the oars, stood up, took my hand, stepped over the side of the small vessel with no more ceremony than if he was passing over a doorstep; we traversed the empty space smoothly, entered into the ocean, and sank, continuing to walk and converse as if it were nothing.

  36

  Just as I did not relate the transfiguration and the endeavors of the beast of Lerne, I shall not describe at present my adventures in the interior of the sea. After having swooned by turns with pleasure, stupor and wonder at the revelation of a diversity of forms, lines and actions, so extraordinary that the craziest creations of the human imagination are by comparison as candle-flames are to the stars, I penetrated their internal attributes.

  Immersed in the secrets of monsters without eyes, carnivorous plants and living gems, not only did I retain intact, as in previous proofs, my faculties of intelligence and sentiment, but I communicated them to the objects of that prodigious consubstantiation. The inorganic was animated, marine stones and vegetation acquired intellect and language. The ephemeral habitations that my curiosity chose revealed their aggregations or their fibers to me. Creatures of dream and nightmare told me their history, that of their species, the benefits and malevolence of neighboring species. In locations whose colors and arrangements have no expression in terrestrial language, I shared strange felicities and baroque tragedies or grandiose individuals that move beneath twelve thousand meters of water...

  What I have depicted with some detail in the course of this narrative might have prejudiced what I could have said at length about the singularity of the diversions and dramas that I knew then. I can affirm that no tale of Armor18 in which young fishermen are conducted by silvery sirens to the palace of the king of the Ocean, the loves of young fishermen with princesses with emerald eyes and algal hair, none of their nuptial feasts, no streams of diamonds in the treasures of the old sovereign of the Waters—no enchantments, ins sum, of those phantasmagorias that dazzle the infancy of maritime people—could equal in splendor or bizarrerie the spectacles and scenes of submarine reality to which the arcandre drew me...

  One day, I will relate that enchantment, the most numerous and magnificent of all, and the emotions that I experienced there, by which my heart and my knowledge were permanently wonderstruck. Presently, I want to come to the moment when that new prodigy concluded, and I found myself back on my flowery bank on the Rhune.

  The arcandre argued that the honorable Apollonius had undoubtedly been the pretext of the copious expedition that we had just accomplished, but that, all things considered, the disproportion seemed very great between the petty cause and its beautiful consequence. For that reason he wanted to benefit from the said expedition to pursue his work of comparison, enriching it by as much.

  37

  For if we cared to suppose the most privileged princes in the world, and all the great possessors of felicity, that he might take an example, and suppose them to be aboard the same boat from which we had just d
escended into the sea, would it not be slightly comical to contemplate, at that moment, resigned or furious, those to whom no whim was forbidden, and before whom the universe seemed to be enslaved...whether it be great Solomon, whose glory is sealed by the Bible, Caesar, the emperor of Rome, the Medicis surrounded by the most subtle ostentations of art and intellect, the king of France for whom the palace of Versailles was constructed…or any other that I care to imagine…?

  “Draw,” he said, “upon fable or history, and name the man who could have offered himself the strange pleasure that we have just taken, or, more simply, could have had a license merely to stroll, without risk of perishing, at a miserable pace at a depths beyond the length of his own body, through the marvelous would from which we have come? But would we not rather see each of our omnipotent and most fortunate individuals stop at the surface of the waters, and immobilize there, in his poor human condition, as a fly is imprisoned in the hollow of a child’s hand?”

  But that was only a small detail of their incapacity to accomplish the slightest of the gestures that we had made here and there in our enjoyment! Of their incapacity to be roots, to witness the genesis of worlds, etcetera, etcetera, as well as to transmute themselves, as we would have been able to do before, when my friend offered me the first enchantments, into a bird, a star, a ladybird, a butterfly, or pollen: in other words, into any object, any being, substance or element that my caprice had designated in the innumerable choice of the universe.

  In brief, those princes, those fortunate individuals, those dazzling possessors were strangely limited to a very narrow category of possessions. If I had invoked the quality, the majesty and the abundance of the terrestrial wealth of which they disposed, to compensate in their own eyes for their defeat at the side of the boat or their impotence before any one of the extraordinary kingdoms to which the arcandre had opened the door to me, whether to their spiritual quality—in depth—or to their enjoyment the arcandre had the response that he had their possessions, their enjoyments and their happiness as well. What for them was splendid compensation for everything that they could not attain was for him merely a simple adjunction to what he had. Whatever, in fact, their victories, their voluptuousness and their ostentations were, he could recreate them; their palaces, their treasures, as many concrete and spiritual, were floating around his desire and he had only to reach out his hand to enjoy instantly whatever he wanted to enjoy. And all the powers and jubilations of those kings put together, in their unparalleled glory, only formed, in the final analysis, little more than a chord in the concert of his hours, a wave in the ocean of his joys.

  And that said, could I believe, could I not take it as duly assured, that whatever individual I took as an example, the arcandre could always say in his regard: “I have all that he had, and I also have everything that he could not exploit or attain, in time and space, from the greatest density of the earth to the utmost depths of the sea and the detail of substances, in the stars and in souls...”

  He added: “I have not brought you into the souls of human beings. The enchantments in which I guided you were all petty excursions into the curiosities of matter. But perhaps there is nothing in human souls but the refractions of matter…and the matter that is refracted there is not the matter I have shown you—which is only the matrix.”

  38

  But at that moment, seized by I don’t know what disturbance, without asking him immediately what he meant by that final remark. I questioned him thus:

  “What about Tristan, the image of the most beautiful love? That love of Tristan, which you claim to surpass? Thus far you have said nothing, have accomplished nothing, in which there is love. What woman, thus far, has featured among your prodigies? What Helen? What Iseult? Of all the passions, delights and fevers with which you have caused me to burn, none was the desire for or the possession of adorable flesh. Nothing of the kiss, which is the veridical location of the greatest of prodigies, and the veritable athanor of all transmutations!

  “As it seems that the summit of a mountain gathers, hoists, elevates and extends to the highest light the fields, the forests, the meadows and the individuals who live at its base and on its sides, so the kiss elevates toward the beloved lips the sum of the pride, dolors or crimes by which the soul is agitated. The flames of pride, dolors and crimes become honey in the mystery of joined lips. Then, all magic is possible. Pride, dolors or crimes, in the immense silence into which consciousness sinks, can receive the sign that transmutes them...

  “But let us leave that, and tell me, arcandre, what reign you assign to amour? In what way to you surpass Tristan, whom no lover equals in passion, in misfortune and in felicity? And if you are strong enough to grant all my prayers as soon as I ask you, at present, give me amour. What Helen, what Iseult, will rise up to my appeal?”

  39

  What happened then suspends my pen as a tremor in the hands of a hunter hinders the weapon if, from the thicket in which the prey is for which he is on the lookout, all the beasts of the forest, and, from the trees, all the birds, launch forth at the same time. How can I render in words the succession of fulgurance and unanimity that was, in an instant, simultaneously, produced in every part of me and outside of me?

  It suddenly seemed to me that all the cells composing my body—its fibers, its blood, its nerves, its flesh, the billions of cells that are the body, from the extremities of the limbs to the tips of the hairs—that every one of those cells began to beat like a heart and light up, like those suns that once formed the third body of the arcandre, that every one of the billions of cells of my body was a heart and a sun.

  And each of the particles of the earth, the grass, the flowers and the neighboring rocks, or the air and the mists, before, behind, beneath and above me, every particle of everything that I could embrace with my gaze seemed to beat to the rhythm of my cells, and shine with a similar light. A shining heart, that grain of sand; a strange undulation of palpitations and fires, that blade of grass; a thousand beating and sparkling hearts, the stem of that campanula; a dance of scintillating hearts that the wind sways, the corolla of that colchicum…and likewise every object and every substance...

  And simultaneously, in, through and amongst the substances and objects, there was a similar unfurling of images of the universe, just as before, on the template of the arcandre, but this time whirling with all of space for a field, filing the expanse, from the mists of the Rhune to the depths of the sky.

  At the hazard of the unfurling, women passed by: those that I had named, Helen and Iseult, Scheherazade and Broceliande,19 and Melisande, and mingled with those fabulous women, saints, queens, courtesans, the heroines of noble amours, daughters of all races and all rejoicings, and unknown women, grave, languid, ardent, those who elevate dreams, those who stimulate pride…and like leaves around a tree, around them all, or reflected in them like the décor of the banks in a river, all that there is in the universe, always passing in the flux of images, everything that is, from the bed of the ocean to the confines of the ether, and from the Orient to the Occident of creation...

  And me...

  It seemed to me that I was, as well as the billions of hearts whose beats formed my being, simultaneously each of the forms and figures of that universal diversity, and the unique heart of everything...

  I felt myself simultaneously dissolved in that enormous ensemble and containing it in its entirety. I grew all the way to the infinity of space; I was simultaneously vertigo, voluptuousness and immense possession, softly balanced above the ocean of forms and burning in each of my billons of hearts.

  Now, I sought the arcandre in that innumerable enjoyment, and found him: as if all the palpitating gleams of my body were emanating a kind of arch of light above me, which occupied the total extent of space…as if the rhythm of the things whirling in that space were emanating a kind of arch palpitating with all the rhythms, as the song that rises from an organ forms a harmonious and invisible vault above the organ…as if the fire burning in e
very heart of millions of hearts were emanating and aren’t sea that set space ablaze…that light, that fire, that rhythm were the arcandre. I saw him by way of the spiritual gaze, I knew that he was still in my presence, and his voice expressed itself as the light of the light, the face of the fire and the palpitation of the rhythm.

  40

  And I heard:

  “Take, then. Choose. Fix your desire. Embrace. Possess. Al this is yours. Each of your billions of hearts has its pasture here. As many hearts as you see beating and shining, as many unions permitted for you with an object, a creature, a particle of creation.”

  The voice paused. I sensed myself floating and burning in an innumerable swoon, as various as if I were experiencing, at the same time, the passion and enjoyment of all the odors, tastes and voluptuousness contained in the passing images.

  The arcandre’s voice continued: “In addition to the hearts that you see here, which are merely your body of flesh, there are all those that beat in every vibration of your spiritual body and which correspond to the invisible things, flora, fauna, mountains and seas of planetary consciousness, immaterial kingdoms, secrets of souls…everything that cannot attain the physical senses alone.”

  There was a momentary silence.

  “Thus, the number of your hearts is infinite, like the number of that which is in the visible universe and in the invisible universe.”

  Suddenly, a sort of laughter undulated through space, similar to a distant rumble of thunder in a summer sky, and which was prolonged in melodious resonances throughout the expanse.

  “Are there enough women here for your liking?” the voice interrogated. “Choose, summon, cherish, embrace. But the one that you select will only ever be one crumb of the totality of these things that belong to you, and the pasture of a single one of your billions of hearts. Whether it is a matter of Helen, Iseult or Broceliande, it would be neither more nor less than if it were a matter of that grain of sand, that blade of grass, or that colchicum at your feet. As soon as one of your billions of hearts designates one of the particles of the universe, your consciousness comes running and accomplishes the nuptials. From that moment on, the couple can grow to infinite proportions, to be an ephemeral spectacle, an amusement of your intelligence, or an alliance requiring the totality of your being.