Read Ebook: The Flame by D Annunzio Gabriele Ranous Dora Knowlton Translator

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Ebook has 1541 lines and 90947 words, and 31 pages

But her voice shook a little.

Then, in the dreamy twilight, on the water as silvery-green as the leaves of the willow, they watched the passing boat overflowing with that emblematic fruit which suggests things rich and hidden: caskets of red leather, surmounted by the crown of a royal donor; some closed, others half-open, revealing their close-packed gems.

In a low tone, the tragic actress repeated the words addressed by Hades to Persephone in the sacred drama, at the moment when the daughter of Demeter tastes the fatal pomegranate:

She shrank under the eyes of the master of her spirit; she suffered because of that mask which he admired on her face, and because of that strange joy that she was aware was continually up-springing within him, like a perpetually playing fountain. She felt oppressed by her own personality; troubled because of her too-expressive face, the muscles of which possessed a strange power of mimicry; pained to think of that involuntary art which governed the significance of her gestures, and of that expressive shadow which sometimes on the stage, during a moment of anxious silence, she knew how to throw over her face like a veil of grief--that shadow which now threatened to remain among the lines traced by time on the face that was no longer young. She suffered cruelly by the hand she adored--that hand so delicate and noble which, even with a gift or a caress, had power to hurt her.

He spoke with perfect freedom, as if the mind of the listening woman were a chalice into which he poured his thoughts till it was full to the brim. An intellectual felicity filled him, blended with a vague consciousness of the mysterious action whereby his mind was preparing itself for the effort it was soon to make. From time to time, as if by a lightning flash, his mental vision beheld, as he bent toward his beloved friend and listened to the beat of the oar in the silence of the great estuary, the crowd, with its thousand faces, gathering in the vast hall; and he felt a rapid throbbing of his heart.

"It is a very singular thing, Perdita," said he, gazing at the pale distance of the waters, "to observe how readily chance aids our imagination in ascribing an element of mystery to the conjunction of certain appearances with the aim we have fancied. I do not understand the reason why the poets of to-day are so indignant at the vulgarity of the present, and complain that they were born either too late or too early. I am convinced that to-day, as always, every man of intelligence has power to create for himself his own beautiful fable of life. We should study the confused whirl of life with the same lively imagination that Leonardo encouraged in his disciples when he advised them to study the stains on the wall, the ashes on the hearth, the clouds, even mud, and similar objects, in order to find there 'wonderful inventions' and 'infinite things.' In the same way, he declared, one can find in the sound of bells every name and every word that can be imagined. That great master knew well that chance--as the sponge of Apelles had already shown--is always the friend of the ingenious artist. For example, I never cease to be astonished at the ease and grace with which chance favors the harmonious development of my inventions. Do you not believe that the dark god Hades forced his bride to eat the seven seeds of the pomegranate in order to furnish me with the subject of a masterpiece?"

He interrupted himself with one of the bursts of boyish laughter that revealed so clearly the persistence of natural joyousness in the depths of his heart.

"See, Perdita," he continued, still laughing, "whether I am not right. Early in October last year I was invited to Burano by Donna Andriana Duodo. We passed the morning in her flax-fields, and in the afternoon we went to visit Torcello. At that time I was beginning to saturate myself with the mythical story of Persephone, and already my poem had begun to take shape in my brain, and it seemed to me that I was floating on the waters of the Styx, and that I should arrive at the abode of the Manes. Never had I experienced a purer and sweeter understanding of death, and this feeling seemed to render me so ethereal that I fancied I could tread the field of asphodel without leaving there the least trace of my footsteps. The air was damp, warm, the sky was gray; the canals wound between the banks covered with half-faded verdure. But all this time some one was talking, arguing, and declaiming in Charon's boat. The sound of praise roused me from my reverie. Francesco di Lizo was speaking of me, regretting that such an artist, so magnificently sensual--I quote his own words--should be obliged to live apart from the obtuse and hostile throng, and to celebrate the feast of sound, color, and form in the solitary palace of his dream. He abandoned himself to a lyric impulse, recalling the joyous and splendid life of the Venetian painters, the popular favor that swept them, like a whirlwind, up to the heights of the glory, beauty, strength and joy which they multiplied around them in producing countless images on walls and domes.

"Then Donna Andriana said: 'Well, I promise solemnly that Stelio Effrena shall have his triumphal feast in Venice.' The Dogaressa had spoken! At that moment I beheld, on the low, mossy bank, a pomegranate laden with fruit, which, like the hallucination of a vision, broke the infinite squalor of that place. Donna Orsetta Contarini, who was sitting beside me, uttered a cry of delight, and held out her hands, as impatient as her lips. Nothing pleases me so much as a frank, strong expression of desire. 'I adore pomegranates!' she cried, and she seemed fairly to be tasting its fine, sharp flavor. She was as childish as her name is archaic. Her cry moved me; but Andrea Contarini appeared severely to disapprove of his wife's vivacity. He seemed to me like a Hades that has little faith in the mnemonic virtue of the seven seeds as applied to legitimate marriage. But the boatmen, too, were stirred with sympathy, and rowed toward the shore, approaching it so close that I was able to jump out first, and I began at once to despoil the tree, my brother. It was another case, albeit from the lips of a pagan of the words of the Last Supper: 'Take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' How does this seem to you, Perdita? Do not think that I am inventing this story. I assure you it is true."

La Foscarina allowed herself to be fascinated by the free and elegant fancy whereby he exercised the quickness of his wit and his facility of expression. In his words was something intoxicating, variable, and vigorous, which suggested to her mind the double and diverse image of water and of fire.

"What! Are you not to read it to-night at the festival?" inquired La Foscarina in surprise, fearing that, with his well known heedlessness of engagements, Effrena had resolved to disappoint the expectant public.

He understood her anxiety, and chose to amuse himself with it.

"This evening," he replied, with tranquil assurance, "I shall take a sherbet in your garden, and delight my eyes with the sight of the pomegranate, with its jewels gleaming in the starlight."

"Ah, Stelio! What do you mean?" she cried, half rising.

In her words and movement was so keen a regret, and at the same time so strange an evocation of the expectant gathering, that his mind was troubled. The image of the formidable monster with innumerable human faces amid the gold and somber purple of the vast hall reappeared before his mental vision; in fancy he felt its fixed regard and hot breath. He realized also the peril he had resolved to face in trusting only to the inspiration of the moment, and felt a horror of a possible sudden mental obscurity, an unexpected confusion of his thought.

He threw around him an all-sweeping glance, as if exploring the waters and the sky in search of an invisible presence, or a newly arrived phantom. A yellowish light spread toward the solitary shores, which stood out in sharp lines like the dark veins in agate. Behind him, toward the Salute, the sky was scattered with light rosy and violet ribbon-like clouds, giving it the appearance of a glaucous sea, peopled with Medusas. From the gardens near the water descended the odor of foliage saturated with light and heat--an odor so heavy one might almost see it float on the waves like aromatic oil.

"Do you feel the Autumn, Perdita?" Stelio asked his dreamy friend, in a penetrating voice.

Again she had a vision of the dead Summer, enclosed within opalescent glass and sunk among the masses of seaweed.

"Yes, I feel it--within myself!" she replied, with a melancholy smile.

"Did you not see it last night, when it descended upon the city? Where were you last night, at sunset?"

"In a garden of the Giudecca."

The playful irony with which he had been speaking was suddenly extinguished in his last words, and again he seemed plunged in his own thoughts.

"It is already late; the hour approaches; we must return," he said presently, rousing himself as if from a troubled dream, for he had seen reappear that formidable monster with the thousand human faces filling the depth and width of the great hall. "I must go back to the hotel in time to dress."

Then, with a return of his boyish vanity, he thought of the eyes of the unknown women who would see him that evening for the first time.

"To the Hotel Danieli," La Foscarina said to the boatman.

While the dentellated iron of the prow swung around on the water, with a slow, animal-like movement, each felt a sadness different but equally painful at leaving behind them the infinite silence of the estuary, already overcome by darkness and death, and being compelled to return toward the magnificent and tempting city, whose canals, like the veins of a full-blooded woman, began to burn with the fever of night.

They were quiet for some time, absorbed by their interior agitation, which shook each heart to it depths. And all things around them exalted the power of life in the man who wished to attract to himself the universe in order not to die, and in the woman, who would have thrown her oppressed soul to the flames in order to die pure.

Both started at the unexpected sound of the salute at the lowering of the flag on board a man-of-war anchored before the gardens. At the summit of the black mass they saw the tricolored flag slide down the staff and fold itself up, like a heroic dream that suddenly vanishes. For a moment the silence seemed deeper, and the gondola glided into darker shadows, grazing the side of the armed colossus.

"She is the daughter of the great sculptor, Lorenzo Arvale," La Foscarina replied, after an instant of hesitation. "I have no dearer friend than she--and in fact she is my guest at present. You will meet her at my house this evening, after the festival."

The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the Angelus, and their powerful notes spread in great waves of sound over the water, vibrating among the masts of the vessels, and creeping out upon the infinite reach of the lagoon. From San Giorgio Maggiore, San Giorgio dei Greci, San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, San Giovanni in Bragora, and San Mois?, from the Salute, the Redentore, and beyond, over the entire domain of the Evangelista, to the distant towers of the Madonna dell' Orto, San Giobbe and Sant' Andrea, tongues of bronze responded, mingling in one great chorus, seeming to extend over the silent stones and waters a single immense and invisible dome of metal, the vibration of which might almost reach the first sparkling stars. Those sacred voices seemed to lend to the City of Silence an ideal and infinite grandeur.

"Can you still pray?" said Stelio in a softened voice, looking at the woman who, with eyes downcast, and hands clasped on her knees, seemed absorbed in a silent orison.

She did not reply; she only pressed her lips together more closely.

The minds of both were confused by the strange, the new image, and the new name, that had risen between them. Perturbation and passion seized them again, drew them near each other with such force that they dared not look into each other's eyes, for fear of what might be read there.

"Shall I see you again this evening, after the festival?" said La Foscarina, with a slight unsteadiness in her voice. "Are you free?"

She was eager now to hold him, to make him her prisoner, as if she feared he would escape her, as if she had hoped to find this night some magic philter that would bind him to her forever. And, though she comprehended now that the gift of all she had to give had become necessary, she realized only too clearly, nevertheless, even through the intoxication that bewildered her, the poverty of the gift so long withheld. And a mournful modesty, a mingling of terror and pride, contracted her slender frame.

"I am free--and I am yours!" the young man answered in a half whisper, without raising his eyes to hers. "You know that nothing is worth to me what you can give."

His heart, too, was stirred to its depths, with the two aims before his ambition toward which, this night, all his energy bent, like a powerful bow: the city and the woman, both tempting and mysterious, weary with having lived too much, and oppressed with too many loves; both were too much magnified by his imagination, and both were destined to disappoint his hopes.

In the moment that followed, a violent wave of mingled regret and desire swept over him. The pride and intoxication of his hard, persistent labor; his boundless ambition, which had been curbed within a sphere too narrow for it; his intolerance of mediocrity, his demand for the privileges of princes; his superb and empurpled dreams; his insatiable need of pre?minence, glory, pleasure--surged in his soul with a confusing tumult, dazzling and suffocating him. And the craving of his sadness inclined him to win the final love of this solitary, nomadic woman, the very folds of whose garments seemed to suggest the frenzy of the far-off multitudes, whom she had so often thrilled and shaken with her art, by a cry of passion, a sob of grief, or a death-like silence. An irresistible impulse drew him toward this woman, in whom he fancied he saw the traces of all emotions and experiences, toward that being, no longer young, who had known so many caresses, yet was unknown by him.

"Is it a promise?" he murmured, bowing his head lower to conceal his agitation. "Ah! at last!"

She made no reply, but fixed on him a gaze of almost mad intensity, which he did not see.

They relapsed into silence again, while the reverberation of the bells passing overhead was so penetrating that they felt it in the roots of the hair, as from a quiver of their own flesh.

"Good-by," said La Foscarina, as they were landing. "When we leave the hall, let us meet in the courtyard, near the second well, the nearest to the Molo."

"Good-by," he answered. "Take some place where I may see you, among the crowd, when I speak my first word."

A confused clamor arose from San Marco, above the sound of the bells, spread over the Piazzetta, and died away toward the Fortuna.

"May all light be on your brow, Stelio!" said La Foscarina, holding out her burning hands to him passionately.

THE FACE OF TRUTH

When he entered the court by the south door, Stelio Effrena, seeing the black and white throng that swarmed up the Giants' Stairway, in the ruddy light of the torches fixed in the iron candelabra, felt a sudden sensation of repugnance, and paused at the entrance. He noted the contrast between this paltry crowd and the noble architecture which, magnified by the unusual nocturnal illumination, expressed, by their varied harmoniousness, the strength and the beauty of a day that was past.

"Oh, how miserable!" he exclaimed, turning to the friends that accompanied him. "In the Hall of the Greater Council, from the throne of the Doges, how is it possible to find metaphors that will move a thousand starched shirt-bosoms? Let us go back; let us inhale the odor of the real crowd, the true crowd. The Queen has not yet left the royal palace. We have time enough."

"Until the moment that I see you on the platform, I shall not feel sure that you will really speak," said Francesco de Lizo, laughing.

"Yes, certainly," said Stelio, "if the harangue had power to prevent or to precipitate an irreparable act. I hold that we use the written word to create a pure form of beauty, which, even in an uncut book, is enclosed and shut in, as in a tabernacle that may be entered only by election, with the same premeditated will used in the breaking of a seal. But the spoken word, it seems to me, when it is addressed directly to a multitude, should have only action for its aim. On this condition alone can a proud spirit, without lessening itself in dignity, communicate with the masses by means of voice and gesture. Otherwise, his effort becomes merely histrionic. And so I repent bitterly of having accepted this function of an ornamental orator, who must not speak unless he speaks agreeably. Consider, I ask you, how humiliating for me is the honor that they think to do me, and consider also the uselessness of my speech. All these people, strangers here, have left their mediocre occupations, or their favorite amusements, to come and listen to me with the same vain and stupid curiosity that would lead them to listen to some new virtuoso. For the women that will listen to me, the art with which I have tied my cravat will be much more appreciated than the art with which I shall round my periods. And, after all, the only effect of my speech will be a clapping of hands, deadened by gloves, or a brief, discreet murmur, to which I shall reply with a gracious inclination of the head. Does it seem to you that I am about to attain the summit of my ambition?"

"You are wrong," said Francesco de Lizo. "You should congratulate yourself for this happy occasion, which will allow you, for several hours, to impress the rhythm of art on the life of a forgetful city, and to make us dream of the splendors that might embellish our existence by a renewed union of Art with Life. If the man that built the Teatro di Festa were there, he would praise you for that harmony which he predicted. But the most wonderful thing about this affair is the fact that, notwithstanding your absence, and your ignorance of the project, the festival seems to have been prepared under the direct inspiration of your genius. This is the best proof that it is possible to restore and diffuse taste, even in the midst of the barbaric present. Your influence to-day is more powerful than you think. The lady who has desired to honor you--she that you call the Dogeressa--at every new idea that came to her, asked herself: 'Would it please Effrena?' If you only knew how many young and eager spirits put to themselves to-day the same question, when they consider the aspects of their inner life!"

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