Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Volume I Part 14

Men require of a new Prince, Bishop, Domestic Tutor, Nursery Tutor, Capon-Stuffer, Town-Musician, or Town-Recorder _only in the first week_ very special merits which were wanting in his predecessor; for in the second they have forgotten what they required and what they missed.

Such sentences please women most and stay by them longest.

Therefore, by way of reward, I will manufacture more than one upon themselves.--They regard others only as younger, not as fairer, than themselves.

They are even ten times more artful and false towards each other than towards us; but we are almost more honest to each other than to them.

They look to it only that one _does_ justify himself with them, no matter _how_.

They forgive a loved man more stains than we do a loved woman. Hence the romance-writers let the heroes of their quill guzzle, storm, duel, and stay overnight anywhere and everywhere, without the least prejudice to the hero.--The heroine, on the contrary, must sit at home by her mother and be a little angel.

On the whole, they are so delicate, so mild, so sympathetic, so refined, so loving and love-thirsty, that I cannot get it into my head why it is that they cannot really like each other, unless it is for some such reason as this, that they are too courteous to each other to be formally reconciled or formally at variance with each other. You dear ones! you sometimes love a man because he has a friend and is one.

O how beautifully would a friend of your own s.e.x _fit_[158] you!

One learns taciturnity best among people who have none, and loquacity among the taciturn.

If self-knowledge is the road to virtue, so is virtue still more the road to self-knowledge. An amended and purified soul is darkened by the least moral poison, as certain precious stones are by every other, and now after the amendment one observes for the first time how many impurities still lurk in all corners.

I will close with some rules for improvement. Never, when the bosom has to fear that thorn in the side, anger, eloquently represent to any one his faults; for in the very act of convincing him of his guilt thou persuadest thyself of it, and so becomest exasperated. Picture to thyself every morning the possible situations and pa.s.sions into which during the day thou mayst fall; then thou wilt deport thyself better, for one seldom behaves badly, in a repeated case, the second time.--Is thy friend angry with thee, then provide him an opportunity of showing thee a great favor. Over that his heart must needs melt, and he will love thee again.--No resolves are great save those which one has more than once to execute. Hence _forbearing_ is harder than _undertaking_; for the former has to be kept up longer, and the latter is also linked with the sense of a double expression of power, a psychological and a moral.--Only despair not at a single failing; and let thy whole repentance be--a n.o.bler action.--Only make thyself (by stoicism, or in ally way thou canst) _tranquil_, then wilt thou have little trouble in making thyself _virtuous_ also.--Begin the culture of thy heart, not with the rearing of n.o.ble motives, but with the extirpation of bad ones. When the weeds are once withered or uprooted, then will the n.o.bler flowerage spontaneously and vigorously spring up.--The virtuous heart, like the body, grows sound and strong more by _work_ than by good _food_.

Therefore I can stop.

13. DOG-POST-DAY.

Concerning his Lordship's Character.--An Evening of Eden.--Maienthal.--The Mountain and Emanuel.

In regard to his Lordship I have three words to say, that is, three opinions to state.

The first is wholly improbable; it is, that, like all men of the world and of business, he regards mankind as an apparatus for experiments, as so much hunting-gear, war-material, knitting-work: such men look upon heaven only as the key-board to earth, and the soul as orderly-sergeant of the body; they carry on wars, not for the sake of winning crowns of oak-leaves, but to secure the oak soil and acorns; they prefer the successful man to the deserving one; they break oaths and hearts to serve the state; they respect poetry, philosophy, and religion, but as means; they respect riches, statistics of national prosperity, and health, as objects; all they honor about pure Mathesis[159] and pure female virtue is the trans.m.u.tation of each into impure for manufactures and armies; in the higher astronomy all they care for is the transformation of suns into odometers[160] and way-marks for pepper-fleets, and in the most exalted _magister legens_[161] they seek only an alluring tavern-sign for poor universities.

The second opinion is at least the opposite of the first, and an improvement upon it: it is, that to his Lordship, as to other great men, the race-course is the goal and the steps taken the garlands.--Fortune and misfortune differ, with him, not in _worth_, but in _manner_; both are, in his view, two converging race-tracks toward the eternity's ring of inner promotion; all accidents of this life are to him mere arithmetical examples in _unknown_ terms, which he solves, not however as a merchant, but as an indifferentialist[162] and algebraist, to whom products and multiplicands are of equal interest, and to whom it is all one whether he reckons by letters or by hundredweights.

Verily, a man has almost as much to reproach himself with, if he is discontented, as if he had committed a crime; and inasmuch as it depends upon his ocean of thoughts, whether he will raise out of it as an island an Otaheite-Arcadia or the lowest h.e.l.l, he deserves all that he creates....

Nevertheless, the third opinion is the true one, and at the same time it is mine: his Lordship, how much soever he may seem to be an indeclinable man, who has no object, but is a verb in _mi_, has nevertheless the following paradigm (and so inversely we find in the most ordinary man a short plan for the most singular one): he is one of the unhappy great ones who have too much genius, too much wealth, and too little repose and knowledge, to be habitually happy; they hunt pleasure instead of virtue, and miss both, and cry out at last over every bitter drop which is given them in a sugar-loaf; like silver-plate, precisely at the point of melting in the fire of pleasure are they the most inclined to overspread themselves with a dark skin; their ambition; which otherwise hides with plans the emptiness of high life, is not strong enough for their heart, which in this emptiness withers; they do good from pride, but without the love of doing it; they play with the empty sh.e.l.l of life as with a ringlet, and deem it not even worth the while to shorten it; and yet they do deem it worth the while, when they, who stand through this night-frost of the soul, outwardly smiling and cold, inwardly all in a fever, without hope, fear, or faith, renouncing all, making light of everything, and shut up in themselves,--when they feel a stroke of death, a great sorrow clutch at their unhappy hearts.----Ah the poor lord! can thy heart then find no rest till it finds it under the lid of black marble?

"Ah the poor lord!" his son incessantly repeated, as with oppressed soul he went toward Maienthal. The outward heaven around him was still; a great cloud completely overspread it, but rested on a blue rim along the whole circle of the horizon. In Victor's breast, on the contrary, streams of air rushed against each other and whirled together into a hurricane, drinking up brooks and tearing up trees. His father's image hung pale in this tempest. Victor's future days were hurled to and fro.--His future life was compressed into a narrow, veiled image, and it distressed him just as much to think that he _must_ live it as _how_ he must.

What saddened him most was the mere external and trifling circ.u.mstance that his father had remained alone and concealed in the depths of the island. Once the conjecture came over him, whether the greater part of what he had witnessed had not been mere dramatic machinery which his father (who in his youth had been a tragic poet) had employed to give more firmness to his vow of silence; but he was immediately disgusted at his own heart. Why are the purest souls tormented with a mult.i.tude of disgusting, poisonous thoughts, which like spiders crawl up on the shining walls, and which they only have the trouble of crushing to death? Ah, our _victories_ are not wholly distinguishable from our _defeats_!

It is singular that the _perspective_ thought of Clotilda's blood-relationship to Flamin was the one which he followed out least of all.

When man can obtain from reason no balsamic relief, he begs it at the hands of Hope and Illusion; and they two then willingly share his sorrow. Just as the blue sky of to-day by little and little peered through light seams in the clouds, and the sea of mist collected into hanging lakes, so also did the dark thoughts break asunder in Victor's soul.--And when the swollen ma.s.ses of cloud in the broad blue pa.s.sed into fleece, till at last the blue sea swallowed up all banks of vapor, and bore nothing on its infinite expanse but the blazing sun, then did Victor's soul also cleanse itself from vapors, and the sun-image of Emanuel, whom he was to-day to reach, shone soft and warm and cloudless into all his wounds.... The form of his loved Dah.o.r.e, the form of his loved father, the form of his hidden mother, and all beloved images, reposed like moons in a mournful group over his head; and this sadness, and the sacred oath to keep himself virtuous and obey all his father's wishes, breathed upon his inflamed bosom some solace in regard to his father's fate.

He could even to-day see the sun go down behind the church-tower of Maienthal.

The broad cleared-up sky made him more tender, the thought of falling to-day upon the heart of a n.o.ble man, whose soul dwelt above this blue atmosphere, made him more exalted, the hope of being consoled by this man for his whole life made him more tranquil.--

He hastened, and, his haste drew out the saddest lute-stop of his soul.

For he seemed not to be going over the summer fields, but they seemed rather to be hurrying along before him; landscape after landscape, theatres of woods, theatres of grain-fields, flew by; new hills rose with other lights, and lifted up their woods, and others with theirs dropped down; long, shadowy steppes ran backward before the flood of yellow sunlight; now valleys full of flowers billowed around him, now bare, hot hill-sh.o.r.es carried him upward; the stream murmured close to his ear, and suddenly its windings glistened from far away across poppy-fields; white roads and green paths met him, and fled from him, and led round the broad earth; full villages, with gleaming windows, swept by, and gardens with undressed children; the declining sun was now lifted up, now lost again, and now withdrawn to the summits of the hills.--

This fleeting of Nature's dissolving views bedimmed his moistened eye, and brightened the inner world; but the steady abiding of an incessant music, the constant choir of larks above him, whose contending cries melted to one in his soul, this distant hum from air and woods and bushes, this harmonica of Nature, moved him to say to himself: "Why do I in this solitude hold back every drop that would fall? No; besides, I am too sensitive to-day, and I will exhaust myself before I see the beloved man."

At last he ascended the broad mountain that stations itself with its scattered columns of trees and gray cubes of rock before Maienthal, which lies in greenness at its foot.... Then the earth, tuned by the Creator, rang with a thousand strings; the same harmony stirred the stream, divided into gold and gloom, the humming flower-cup, the peopled air, and the waving bush; the reddened east and the reddened west stood stretched out like the two rose-taffeta wings of a harpsichord, and a tremulous sea gushed from the open heavens and the open earth....

He burst into a mingling flood of tears at once of joy and sorrow, and the past and the future simultaneously stirred his heart. The sun with ever-increasing swiftness dropped down the heavens, and the more swiftly did he climb the mountain, the quicker to follow its flight with his eye. And there he looked down into the village of Maienthal, that glimmered among moist shadows....

At his feet, and on this mountain, lay, stretched like a crowned giant, like a transplanted spring-island, an English park. This mountain toward the south and one toward the north met and formed a cradle in which the peaceful village rested, and over which the morning and the evening sun spun and spread out their golden veil. In five gleaming ponds trembled five duskier evening heavens, and every wave that leaped up painted itself to a ruby in the hovering fire of the sun. Two brooks waded, in shifting distances, darkened by roses and willows, over the long meadow-land, and a watering fire-wheel,[163] like a pulsating heart, forced the sunset-reddened water through all the green flower-vases. Everywhere nodded flowers, those b.u.t.terflies of the vegetable world, on every moss-grown brook-stone, from every tender stalk, round every window, a flower rocked in its fragrance, and scarlet lupines traced their blue and red veins over a garden without a hedge. A transparent wood of gold-green birches climbed, in the high gra.s.s over there, the sides of the northern mountain, on whose summit five tall fir-trees, as ruins of a prostrated forest, held their eyrie.

Emanuel's small house stood at the end of the village, in a tangled growth of honeysuckle, and in the embrace of a linden-tree which grew through it.--His heart gushed up within him: "Blessings on thee, quiet haven! hallowed by a soul which here looks up to heaven, and waits to launch into the sea of eternity!"--Suddenly the windows of the abbey where Clotilda had been educated flung upon him the flames of the evening-redness,--and the sun went, softly as a Penn, toward America,--and the thin night spread itself over nature,--and the green hermitage of Emanuel wrapped itself in obscurity.... Then he knelt there alone on the mountain, on that throne-step, and looked into the glowing west, and over the whole still earth, and into the heavens, and expanded his spirit to think on G.o.d.... As he knelt, all was so sublime and so mild,--worlds and suns came up from the east, and the little insect, with his play of colors, nestled down into his mealy flower-cup,--the evening-wind flapped its immeasurable wing, and the little naked lark rested warmly under the soft-feathered breast of the mother,--a man stood on the mountain-ridge, and a golden-chafer on the stamens; ... and the Eternal loved his whole world.

His spirit was now made up to take in a great man, and he yearned for the voice of a brother.

He staggered, without following any path, down into the village, with the pewit in its great circles, and the may-chafer in its little ones, sweeping around him. At the foot of the mountain the hybrid day grew darker,--in the starry heaven the curtain rose,--the vapor of evening, which had gone up hot, fell cold, as men do, back to the earth: one more loud lark went circling upward, as the last echo of day, over the mountain.

At last he neared Emanuel's linden. He would rather have embraced him under the great heavens than under the close ceiling of a room. Through the window he saw an uncommonly beautiful youth standing and playing on a flute. The player drew out of its heavenly gates a fugitive and floating elysium. Victor listened to him for a long time, in order to still his beating heart; at last, with tearful eyes, he went round the house, and would fain have fallen speechlessly and blindly on the necks of the youth and of Emanuel. As he pa.s.sed along before the window, the youth did not return his greeting; as he opened the house-door, a soft chime of bells began to make music. Then the youth came out immediately, and asked him, in a friendly tone, who was there; for he was blind. Victor stepped into a Holy of Holies when he entered the apartment lined with linden-leaves, which was the nest of the winged man, who at this moment was out of it, under the great night of G.o.d.

Emanuel was to return toward midnight. The room was open and clean; some leaves of fruits which had been eaten lay on the table; flowers glowed around all the windows; a telescope leaned against the wall; remains of an Oriental wardrobe bespoke the East Indian....

The voice of the beautiful youth had in his ear something inexpressibly touching, because it seemed like one he knew; it went deep into his heart, like the melody of a song that sounds up from childhood. He could rest freely with the steady gaze of love upon that face, that looked out into an eternal night; he wanted to kiss those childish lips full of melodies, and still he hesitated. But as he went out of the house again in quest of Emanuel, and when the bells began to chime again,--for they sounded whenever the door opened, to announce to the blind one every arrival,--then he could no longer restrain himself amidst the lovely music, but he touched the mouth of the blind one, as he leaned at the open window, with a kiss as soft as a breath. "Ah, angel! art thou, then, come down again from heaven?" said the blind one, confounding him with some well-known being or other.

How good was it to be out of doors! The evening-bell of the village sounded its call over the slumbering fields, and a distant soul was inclining its ear, perhaps, to catch the dying echoes of its broken tones. The evening wind, rustling through twigs full of green fruits, joined in. The evening star--the moon of our twilight--rested kindly on the road of the sun and of the moon, and sent its solace in the interval during the absence of both.--"Where mayst thou be at this moment, my Emanuel? Art thou resting, perhaps, in the sight of the evening-red,--or gazing into the starry sea?--art thou in the ecstasy we call a prayer,--or ..."

At this moment, all at once the thought flashed up in him, that, as to-night St. John's day began, his Emanuel might have expired in the enjoyment of the evening.... The more eagerly did he seek after him with his eyes under every tree, in every deeper shadow; he looked up to the hills, as if he might see him there, and to the stars, as if even there he might venture to seek him.--He went round the village, whose circular wall was a festoon of cherry-trees which silvered the green circ.u.mference with a milky-way of blossoms long since fallen, and hurried over the ruins of the houses which the children had built during the day, towards the fading windows of the abbey, which rose on the southern mountain down whose slope he had entered the village; for the blind one had told him that this mountain was Emanuel's observatory, and that he went thither every night. The green stairway, which made its successive landings of terraces and moss-banks, and on which a bal.u.s.trade of bush-work ran upward, led him to a mountain which terminated sublimely in the ether with a tall weeping-birch. With every gra.s.s-plot, as from a bath, new limbs of dark Nature lifted themselves; he went on, as if from one planet to another. Across the ascending, darkling fields streamed the night-wind, and lonesomely swept on from wood to wood, and its ruffling fingers played with the plumage of the sleeping bird and the down of the whirring night-b.u.t.terfly. Victor looked over toward the evening-red which Night had taken as a rose to wear on the bosom whereon suns repose. The sea of eternity lay in the form of night on the silver-sand of worlds and suns, and from the bottom of that sea the grains of sand glistened far up through the deep.

Around the weeping-birch swelled an unaccountable melodious murmur, which he had this very day heard on the island. At length he stood up there under the birch, and the music, like that of an harmonica which has just stolen over paradises and through hedges of flowers, was loud around him; but he saw nothing further, save a high gra.s.sy altar (the birthplace of Emanuel's letter) and a low gra.s.sy bench. From what invisible hand, he thought with awe, can these tones issue, which seem to glide off from angels, as they fly over the next world, from mingling souls, when a too great bliss breathes itself out into a sigh, and the sigh dissipates itself into distant dying sound? It must be forgiven him, if on such a day, which threw his soul into growing agitations, in this awful hour of night, under this melodious mourning-tree, on this Holy of Holies of the invisible Emanuel, he at last came to believe that _he_ had this evening taken his flight from life, and that his soul, full of love, was still floating around him in these echoes and yearnings for the first and last embrace. He lost himself more and more in the tones and in the silence round about them,--his soul grew to a dream within him, and the whole nocturnal landscape grew to a cloud made of the sleep in which this light dream hung,--the fountain of endless life, flung up by the Eternal, flew far above the earth in the immeasurable arch with the spraying silver-sparks of suns over immensity; gleaming it encircled the whole vault of night, and the reflection of the Infinite overspread the dark eternity.

O Eternal One, if we saw not thy starry heaven, how much would our heart, sunk into the mire of earth, know of thee and of immortality?--