Titan: A Romance Volume I Part 26

The old man was delighted with the sympathy of the young people, and remained with them upon the blooming and resounding eminence, which sat enthroned between a wide landscape and the richly laden mountain-ridge, running away into Elysium. Since, as with one who ascends in a balloon, the tones of earth did not reach him from so great a distance as its forms, they let him talk more than listen, as one spares old people.

He spoke soon of that in which his heart lived and breathed, but in a singular, half-theological, half-French, Wolfian, and poetic speech. One ought, of many a mystic's poetry and philosophy to give, instead of verbal, real translations, in order that it may be seen how the pure gold of truth glows under all wrappages. Spener says, in my translation: "He had formerly, before he found the right way, tormented himself in every human friendship and love. He had, when he was fervently loved, said to himself, that he could surely never so regard or love himself; and even so the beloved being could not truly so think of itself, as the loving one did, and though it were ever so perfect or so full of self-love. If every one looked upon others as upon himself, there could be no ardent love. But all love demands an object of infinite worth, and dies of every inexplicable and clearly recognized failure; it projects its objects out of all and above all, and requires a reciprocal love without limits, without any selfishness, without division, without pause, without end. Such an object is verily the divine being, but not fleeting, sinful, changeable man. Therefore must the lovesick heart sink into the Giver himself of this and of all love, into the fulness of all that is good and beautiful, into the disinterested, unlimited, universal Love, and dissolve and revive therein, blest in the alternation of contraction and expansion. Then it looks back upon the world and finds everywhere G.o.d and his reflection: the worlds are his deeds; every pious man is a word, a look, of the All-loving; for love to G.o.d is the Divine thing, and the heart yearns for him in every heart."

"But," said Albano, whose fresh, energetic life rebelled against all mystical annihilation, "how, then, does G.o.d love us?" "As a father loves his child, not because it is the best child, but because it needs him."[175] "And whence," he further inquired, "comes, then, the evil in man, and whence sorrow?" "From the Devil," said the old man, and pictured out uninterruptedly, with transfigured joy, the heaven of his heart,--how it was always surrounded with the all-beloved, all-loving One, how it never desired any good fortune or any gifts from him at all (which one did not wish even in earthly love), but only a higher and higher love towards himself, and how, while the evening mists of old age were gathering thicker and thicker around his senses, his heart felt itself, in the darkness of life, embraced more and more closely by the invisible arms. "I shall soon be with G.o.d!" said he, with a radiance of love on that countenance of his, chilled with life, and breaking in under the weight of years. One could have borne to see him die. So stands Mont Blanc before the rising moon; night veils his feet and his breast, but the light summit hangs high in the dark heaven as a star among the stars.

Liana, like a daughter, had not let her eye nor her hand go from him, and had languishingly drunk in every sound; her brother had heard him with more pleasure than Albano, but merely for the sake of remodelling more clearly and fully the mystic Hero into the mimic Mount Athos of his representation, and Rabette had contemplated him as in a church among believing by-thoughts.

He withdrew now without ceremony to take care of his animals, which he loved, as he did everything involuntary, for instance, children, as coming at first hand from G.o.d. "Everything is divine," he said, "and nothing earthly but what is immoral." He could not bear to smoke bees with brimstone, let flowers dry up with thirst in the pot-cage, or see an overdriven wounded horse, and he pa.s.sed by a butcher's stall not without shuddering limbs.

"Shall we," said friend Charles, "take in the glorious evening on the magnificent mountain road, and see thy thunder-house, and cast down every cup of sorrow into the vales below?" Through what a magic neighborhood did they now pa.s.s along the sloping ridge of the thunder-house! On the right, as it were, the occident of nature; on the left, the orient; before them Lilar, glittering in the _faerie_ of evening,--lying in the arms of the glancing Rosana,--golden grain behind silver-poplars, and overhead a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated, tumultuous creation,--and the sun-G.o.d stalking away over his evening-world, and stooping a little under the midnight to raise his golden head in the east. Albano went forth, holding Liana's holy hand.

"O how beautiful is all!" said he. "How the fluttering world-map rustles and murmurs with long streams and woods,--how the eastern mountains bask in steadfast repose,--how the groves climb the hills, with glowing stems! One could plunge down into the smoking vales and into the cold, glistening waves. Ah, Liana, how beautiful is all!" "And G.o.d is on the earth," said she. "And in thee!" said he, and thought of the word of the old man, that love seeks G.o.d, and that he dwells in the heart which we esteem.

Now came rolling toward him the great waves which the aeolian-harp dashed out in the thunder-house; and his genius flew by before him with the words, "Tell her there thy whole heart!"

Before the little tabernacle of yesterday's dreams his stormy heart was dissolved; and the sun and the earth reeled before his pa.s.sionate tears.

As he entered with her into the rosy splendor of the evening sun that filled the apartment, and into the spirit-like din of tones discoursing with one another alone, he seized Liana's hands and pressed them wildly to his breast, and sank down before her speechless and dazzled; flames and tears suffused his eyes and his cheeks,--the whirlwind of tones blew into his blazing soul,--the mild angel of innocence bowed herself, weeping and trembling, toward the burning sun-G.o.d, and a sharp pain twined itself like a pale serpent through the roses of the mild countenance,--and Albano stammered: "Liana, I love thee!"

Then the serpent turned round and clasped and covered the sweet rosy form. "O good Albano! thou art unhappy, but I am innocent!" She stepped back with dignity, and quickly drew down the white veil over her face, and said, beside herself, "Wouldst thou love the dead? This is my corpse-veil; the coming year it will lie upon this face." "That is not true," said Albano. "Caroline, answer him!" said she, and stared at the burning sun as if looking for a higher apparition. Frightful moment! as during an earthquake the sea heaves and the air rests in fearful stillness, so was his lip dumb beside the veiled one, and his whole heart was a storm. On the strings swept by a sighing world of spirits, and the last ended with a sharp scream. The beauty of the earth was distorted before him, and in the evening clouds broad fiery banners were planted; and the sun's eye shut-to in blood.

All at once Liana folded her hands as if in prayer, and smiled and blushed; then she raised the veil from her divine eyes, and the transfigured one, tinged with the rosy reflection, looked on him tenderly,--and cast her eye down,--and raised it again,--and again let it sink,--and the veil fell again before her, and she said, in a low tone, "I will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee miserable."

"I will die with thee!" said he. "What then?"--And now let a holy cloud veil the sun-G.o.d, who moves flaming through the midst of his stars!

His solitude and Liana's solution of so many wonders were suspended by the entrance of Rabette and Charles, who both seemed more touched than blessed,--she by the comforting nearness of the loved one, he by the singular situation and the subduing evening; for after certain beings a storm follows, and they must, against their will, make the steps that they take more rapid.

When Albano, with the peace-angel of his life, with the beloved one, who, in the midst of the rush of her feelings, heard, nevertheless, the voice of her female friend, walked forth again once more alone upon the rocky causeway between fragrant vales of Tempe in the glimmering world, he felt as if he had struggled through his life like an eagle through a storm-cloud, and as if the black tempest were running far away below his wings, and the whole starry heaven burned bright above his head. Liana, with maidenly n.o.bleness and firmness, gave him, before he had put a question, the answer: "I must now tell you a mystery, which I have hidden from every one, and even from my mother, because it would have disquieted her. I spoke just now of my never-to-be-forgotten Caroline.

On the day of my sacrament, which I had wished to take with her, I went back by night from my teacher to my mother, and in fact through the singular, long cavern, wherein one seems to descend, when one is in reality going upward. My maid went before with the lantern. In the romantic arbor, where a concave mirror stands, I turn round toward the full moon which was streaming in, from a dread of the wild mirror, which distorts people too horribly. Suddenly I hear a heavenly concert, such as I often heard again afterward in sicknesses,--I think of my blessed friend,--and gaze, full of longing, into the moon. Then I saw her opposite to me, beaming with innumerable rays: in her fair eyes was a tender look, but yet something dissolving; the tender mouth, almost the only living feature, resembled a red, but transparent fruit, and all her hues seemed to be nothing but light. Yet only in the blue eye and red mouth did the angel seem like Caroline. I could sketch her, if one could paint with light. I became dangerously sick; then she appeared to me oftener, and refreshed me with inexpressibly sweet tones,--they were not properly words,--whereupon I always sank into a soft sleep, as into a sweet death. Once I asked her--more with inner words--whether I should, then, soon come to her into the realm of light. She answered, I should not die just now, but somewhat later; and she named very clearly the coming year, and the very day, which I have, however, forgotten.... O dear Albano! forgive me only a few words! I soon recovered, and mourned over the slow, lingering pa.s.sage of time...."

"No," Albano interrupted her, for his feelings were striking against each other like swords, "I revere, but I hate her dangerous phantom.

Fancy and sickness are the parents of the air-born, destroying angel, who flies scorching, like a dumb heat-lightning, over all the blossoms of youth!"

She answered, with emotion, "O thou good, pure spirit! thou hast never distressed me, thou hast ever comforted, guided, made me happy and holy,--a phantom is it, Albano? It even preserves me against all phantoms of terror, against all ghostly fear, because it is always about me. Why, if it is only a phantom, does it never appear to me in my dreams?[176] Why comes it not when I will? But it comes only in weighty cases; then I consult and obey it very willingly. It has already to-day, Albano," she added, in a lower and fainter tone, "twice appeared to me on the way, when I heard the inner music, and previously in the thunder-house, when the sun went down, and has affectionately answered me."

"And what says it, heavenly one?" asked Albano, innocently. "I saw it only on the way, and asked no question," replied the childlike one, blushing; and here, all at once, her holy soul stood unconsciously without a veil before him; for she had, in the thunder-house, received from the invisible Caroline the yes to her love; because that being was her own creation, and this a suggestion of her own. Yes indeed, heavenly one! thou standest before the mirror with the virgin's veil over thy form, and when thy image softly raises its own, thou fanciest thyself still covered!

No word can express Albano's veneration for such a sanctified heart, which dreamed into such distinctness glorified beings; whose golden flowers only grew the higher over the thought of death, as earthly ones do in churchyards over the reality; which, simultaneously with his own, invisible hands had drawn into two similar dreams;[177] to which one was ashamed to give common truths for its holy errors. "Thou art from heaven," he said, inspired, and his joy became the pearl melted in the eye which quenches the thirst of the human heart; "therefore thou wouldst go back thither!" "O, I consecrate to thee, my friend," said she, smilingly weeping, and pressed his hand to her pure heart, "the whole little life which I have, every hour to the last, and I will, meanwhile, prepare thee for everything which G.o.d sends."

Before they entered the cottage of the pious father, Albano seized his friend's hand, and the sisters joined each other. The friends went forward for a time in silence; Charles looked upon Albano, and found the peace of blessedness upon his face. When the latter saw how Liana pressed her overfraught heart to her sister's, then were sincerity and joy too strong in him, and he fell without a word upon the heart of the dear brother of the eternal bride, and let him silently guess all from his tears of bliss. O, he might have guessed it, to be sure, from the bridal look of love which his sister more seldom removed from his friend, and from the heartiness wherewith she drew Rabette to her heart; just as if they two would soon be related to each other, as if her brother himself would soon speak more sweetly, since he for some time had no longer called her the little Linda; and consecrated her thereon for the heart of her brother. Not before the pious father did the enraptured look hold itself much in abeyance, which Albano, standing as if under the gate of eternity, cast into the heavens, gleaming like worlds one behind another; he was still and tender, and in his heart dwelt all hearts. O love _one_ heart purely and warmly, then thou lovest all hearts after it, and the heart in its heaven sees like the journeying sun, from the dew-drop even to the ocean, nothing but mirrors which it warms and fills.

But in Roquairol started up immediately, when he saw the heavenly bliss so near, the mutinous spirit of his past, and struck with a b.l.o.o.d.y epilepsy the limbs of the inner man: those immortal sighings after an ever-flying peace again tormented him; his transgressions and errors, and even the hours when he innocently suffered, were painfully reckoned up before him; and then he spoke, (and stirred every heart, but most of all poor Rabette's, which he pressed against his own to warm himself, as, according to the tradition, the eagle does with the dove, after which he does not tear her to pieces,)--n.o.bly he spoke then of life's wilderness, and of fate, which burns out man, like Vesuvius, into a crater, and then again sows cool meadows therein, and fills it again with fire; and of the only blessedness of this hollow life, love, and of the injury inflicted, when fate with its winds sways and rubs a flower[178] to and fro, and thereby cuts through the green skin against the earth.

But while he thus spoke, he looked on the glowing Rabette, and would fain by these warmings burst open, as it were by force, the fast-closed flower-bud of his love, and spread its leaves out under the sun. O the bewildered and yearning one was surely not yet quite happy even to-day, and he wished not so much to affect others as himself.

With what blissful presentiments did they step out again before the sphinx of night, who lay smiling before them with soft, starry glances!

Did they not go through a still, glimmering, subterranean world, light and free, without the heavy clogging earth on their feet, while in the wide Elysium the warm ether only flutters because invisible Psyches fan it with their wings? And out of the flute-dell the old man sends after them his tones as sweet arrows of love, in order that the swelling heart may blissfully bleed of their woundings. Albano and Liana came out upon a prospect where the broad eastern landscape, with its light-streaks of blooming poppy-fields, and its dark villages, ascended the soft mountains, where the moon awoke, and the splendor of her garment already swept like that of a spirit through heaven: here they remained standing and waiting for Luna. Albano held her hand. All the mountain-ridges of his life stood in a glowing dawn. "Liana," said he, "what innumerable springs are there at this moment up yonder on the worlds which hang in the heavens; but this is the fairest!" "Ah, life is lovely, and to-day it is too dear to me! Albano," she added, in a low voice, and her whole face became an exalted, tearless love, and the stars wove and embroidered its bridal dress, "if G.o.d calls me, then may he let me always appear to thee as Caroline does to me. O, if I could only attend thee thus through thy whole dear life, and console and warn thee, I would willingly wish for no other heaven."

But as he was about to express the fulness of his love, and the anger of his pain about the death-delusion, just then came his wild friend, who, like a Vesuvius, pouring out at once lava- and rain-streams over the credulous Rabette, had made both her heart and his own only fuller, not lighter; then Charles beheld the glorified beings and the blue horizon, where already the moon was flinging forth her glimmering light between the bristling mast-peaks and summits, and looked again into the splendor of holy love. Then could he no longer contain himself; his heart, full of agony, mounted to an eternal purpose, as if to G.o.d, and he embraced Albano and Rabette, and said: "Beloved man! beloved maiden!

keep my unhappy heart!"

Rabette clung around him compa.s.sionately, as a mother around her child, and gave up to him, in hot, gushing tears, her whole soul. Albano, astonished, enfolded in his arms the love-bond; Liana was drawn to the beloved hearts by the whirlpool of bliss. Unheard the flutes sounded on, unseen waved the white banners of the stars overhead. Charles spoke frantic words of love, and wild wishes of dying for joy. Albano touched trembling Liana's flower-lip, as John kissed Christ, and the heavy milky-way bent down like a magic wand toward his golden bliss. Liana sighed: O mother, how happy are thy children! The moon had already flown up into the blue, like a white angel of peace, and glorified the great embrace; but the blest ones marked it not. Like a sounding waterfall, their rich life covered them, and they knew not that the flutes had ceased, and all the hills were shining.[179]

FOOTNOTES:

[172] Museum (home of the muses) is the beautiful German name for it.--TR.

[173] _Kopf-und Ohr-hangerei._ Hanging down of head (hypocrisy) and ears.--TR.

[174] This self-resounding--as the aeolian-harp [_riesen-harfe_, giant-harp, in German.--TR.], when the weather changes, sounds without a touch--is common in sick-headache and other maladies of weakness; hence in dying; for instance, in Jacob Boehme, life, like a concert-clock, rung out its hours amidst surrounding harmonies.

[175] Some disinterested love or other must from eternity have existed. As there are eternal truths, so must there also be an eternal love.

[176] For the same reason, perhaps, that the poet does not see his, so often and distinctly beheld, creations pa.s.s in his dreams among the images of the day.

[177] For on his and her sacrament-day he had imagined her death by lightning.

[178] The winter stock-jelliflower.

[179] Jean Paul's second volume ends here.--TR.

FIFTEENTH JUBILEE.

MAN AND WOMAN.

67. CYCLE.

I have often in the theatre made the pleasant experience, that when painful scenes immediately followed the rising of the curtain, I took but a slight interest in them, while in joyful ones which, immediately after the music, came on with their own music, I took the greatest; man demands more that sorrow than that rapture should show its motive and its apology. Without hesitation, therefore, I begin a third volume[180]

with blisses of which, to be sure, the foregoing couple have been preparing more than enough.

At the moment where our story has arrived, among all the descendants of Adam who lifted a glad face to heaven, and imaged in that face a still fairer heaven, there must have been some one who had the highest heaven,--a happiest of all men. Ah yes! And to be sure, among all suffering creatures upon this _globe_, which our short race makes a _plain_, there must also have been one most unhappy; and may the poor man soon lie down to sleep under, not _on_, his rocky road! Although I could wish that Albano might not be the happiest of all,--in order that there might yet be a higher heaven above his,--still it is probable that, on the morning after that holiest night, in his present dream of the richest dream, deep in the threefold bloom of youth, of nature, and of antic.i.p.ation, he bore the broadest heaven in himself which the narrow bosom of man can span.

He looked from his thunder-house,--that little temple on whose walls still lingered the radiance of the G.o.ddess who had therein become visible to him,--out over the new-created mountains and gardens of Lilar; and it was to him as if he looked into his white and red blooming future, adorned with mountain-peaks and fruit-tree-tops, a full Paradise built out into the naked earth. He looked round in his future after any robbers of joy who might attack his triumphal chariot; he found them all visibly too weak to cope with his arms and weapons. He called up Liana's parents, and his own father, and the host of spirits which had hitherto been working in the air, and set them out on the road which lay between him and his beloved; in his muscles glowed more than sufficient power easily to dash through them to her, and take her with him into his life by main force. "Yes," said he, "I am completely happy, and need nothing more,--no fortune, only my heart and hers!" Albano, may thy evil genius not have heard this dangerous thought, so as to carry it to Nemesis! O, in this wildly entangled wood of thy life, no step, even in the blooming avenues of pleasure, is wholly safe; and amidst the very fulness of this artistic garden there awaits thee a strange, gloomy upas-tree, and breathes cold poisons into thy life! Therefore it was better as it was once, when men were still lowly and prayed to G.o.d even in their great raptures; for in the neighborhood of the Infinite One the fiery eye sinks and weeps, but only out of grat.i.tude.

Let no mean almanac measurement be applied to the fair eternity which he now lived, when he saw the beloved every evening, every morning, in her little village. As evening star she went forth before his dreams; as morning star, before his day. The interval both filled out with letters, which they themselves carried to each other. When they parted at evening, not long before they were to see each other again, and while in the north already the rose-bud twigs shot along low down in the heavens, which during men's sleep speedily grew out toward the east, in order to hang down from heaven with thousands of full-blown roses ere the sun and love came back again,--and when his friend Charles stayed with him by night, and he asked, in the course of an hour, whence the light came, whether from the morning or from the moon,--and when he sallied forth, while moon and morning still appeared together in the dew-dripping pleasure-woods,--and when the road, left only a few hours before, appeared wholly new and the absence too long, (because Cupid's wing is half a second-hand, which shows the day of the month, and half a month-hand, which points to the second, and because, in the neighborhood of the loved one, the shortest absence lasts longer than the longest when she is far away,)--and when at last he saw her again,--then was the earth a sun, from which rays proceeded: his heart stood all in light; and as a man, who on a spring morning dreams of a spring-morning, finds it still brighter around him when he awakes, so, after the blessed youthful dream of the beloved, did he open his eyes before her, and desire the fairest dream no more.

Sometimes they saw each other, when the long summer day was too long, on distant mountains, where by appointment they looked upon the harvests; sometimes Rabette came alone to Lilar to her brother, that he might hear something from Liana. When Liana had read a book, he read it after her; often he read it first and she last. Whatever of divine the fairest, purest souls can manifest to each other when they unfold themselves,--a holy heart which makes one still holier, a glowing heart which makes one still more glowing,--that they manifested to each other.

Albano was mild toward all, and the radiance of a higher beauty and youth filled his countenance. The fair realms of nature and of his childhood were both adorned by love, not it by either of them; he had mounted from the pale, light moon-car of hope upon the sounding, shining sun-car of living ecstasy. Even on the galleys of wooden sciences, as if animated by the wonder-working hand of Bacchus, masts and shrouds fluttered out into vine-stalks and cl.u.s.ters. If he went to the Froulay house, he always, because he went in full of tolerance, came back without any sacrifice of the same: the Minister, who had returned from Haarhaar with a veil of gay, blooming ideas on his face, imparted to him charming prospects of the exultation wherewith city and country would celebrate the approaching marriage-feast of the Prince and the gain of the most beautiful bride.

And had he not, in addition to all, his friend too? When one stands so close before the flame of joy, one does indeed shun men,--because they easily step between us and the pleasant warmth,--but one seeks them too; a hearty friend is our wish and joy, who shall gently lead on, without chasing away, the happy dream in which we sleep and speak. Charles played softly into his friend's dream; he would, however, have also done it from sincere love for the sister.

In fact, with so much youth, summer weather, innocence, freedom, beautiful scenery, and deep love and friendship, there may well be constructed, even on this low earth, something like that which up in heaven is called a heaven; and a celestial chart, an Elysium-atlas, which one should map out thereof, would perhaps look not far otherwise than this: in front, a long pastoral land, with scattered pleasure-castles and summer-houses; a philanthropist's grove in the middle, the Tabor mountains overhead, with herdsmen upon them, long Campanian vales; then the broad archipelago, with St. Peter's islands; over on the other side the sh.o.r.es of a new pastoral continent, all covered with Daphnean groves and gardens of Alcinous; behind that again, stretching far inward, an Arcadia; and so on.

All the philosophy and stoicism that he now had in him--for he held that which the arm out of the clouds gave him as booty gained by his own--Albano applied to the purpose of taking _from_ his ecstasy the moderation which they impart. Moderation, he said, was only for patients and pigmies; and all those anxious, evenly balanced sticklers for temperament[181] and time-keepers had, whether in the cultivation of a pleasure or of a talent, profited themselves more than the world; on the contrary, their antipodes had benefited the world more than themselves.[182]

He kept in view very good fundamental principles. Man, said he, is free and without limits,--not in respect to what he will do or enjoy, but in respect to what he will do without; he can, if he _will_, will to dispense with _everything_. In fact, he continued, one has simply the choice, either _always_ or _never_ to fear; for thy life-tent stands over a loaded mine, and, round about, the hours aim at thee naked weapons. Only one in a thousand[183] hits; and, in any case, I am sure I would sooner fall standing than bending like a coward. But, he concluded, in order to justify himself on the subject, is then steadfastness made for nothing better than for a surgeon and serving-maid, and not much rather for our muse and G.o.ddess? for it is not surely a good, merely because it helps do without something which we have lost, but it is intrinsically one, and a greater than the one whose place it supplies; even the happiest must acquire it, even without outward occasion or bestowal; yes, it is so much the better, if it is possessed earlier than applied.