Part 12

ANTHONY (_stupefied by wonder_):

"Limitless!"

THE DEVIL. "Ascend skyward forever and forever,--yet thou wilt not attain the summit. Descend below the earth for billions of billions of centuries: never wilt thou reach the bottom. For there is no summit, there is no bottom; there is no Above, no Below--nor height, nor depth as signified by the terms of human utterance. And Space itself is comprised in God, who is not a portion thereof of such or such a size,--but is Immensity itself!"

ANTHONY (_slowly_):

"Matter ..., then, ... must be a part of God?"

THE DEVIL. "Why not? Canst thou know the end of God?"

ANTHONY. "Nay: on the contrary, I prostrate, I crush myself beneath his mightiness!"

THE DEVIL. "And yet thou dost pretend to move him! Thou dost speak to him,--thou dost even adorn him with virtues,--with goodness, justice, mercy,--in lieu of recognising that all perfections are his!

"To conceive aught beyond him is to conceive God above God, the Being above the Being. For He is the only being, the only substance.

"If the Substance could be divided, it would not be the Substance, it would lose its nature: God could not exist. He is therefore indivisible as infinite;--and if he had a body, he would be composed of parts, he would not be One--he would not be infinite. Therefore he is not a Person!"

ANTHONY. "What? my prayers, my sobs, my groans, the sufferings of my flesh, the transports of my love,--have all these things gone out to a lie,--to emptiness, unavailingly--like the cry of a bird, like a whirl of dead leaves?"

(_Weeping_):

"Oh, no!--there is Some One above all things,--a great Soul, a Lord, a Father whom my heart adores and who must love me!"

THE DEVIL. "Thou dost desire that God were not God;--for did he feel love, or anger, or pity,--he would abandon his perfection for a greater or a lesser perfection. He can stoop to no sentiment, nor be contained in any form."

ANTHONY. "One day, nevertheless, I shall see him!"

THE DEVIL. "With the blessed, is it not?--when the finite shall enjoy the infinite in some restricted place, containing the Absolute!"

ANTHONY. "Matters not!--there must be a paradise for the good, as there is a hell for the wicked."

THE DEVIL. "Can the desire of thy mind create the law of the universe? Without doubt evil is indifferent to God,--forasmuch as the Earth is covered with it!

"Is it through impotence that he endures it, or through cruelty that he maintains it?

"Dost thou fancy that he is eternally readjusting the world, like an imperfect machine?--that he is forever watching the movements of all beings, from the flight of a butterfly to the thought of a man?

"If he have created the universe, his providence is superfluous. If Providence exists, then creation is defective.

"But evil and good concern only thee--even like night and day, pleasure and pain, death and birth, which are relative only to one corner of space, to a special centre, to a particular interest. Since the Infinite is permanent, the Infinite is;--and that is all."

(_The Devil's wings have been gradually expanding: now they cover all space._)

ANTHONY (_now perceives nothing: a great faintness comes upon him_):

"A hideous cold freezes me, even to the depths of my soul! This is beyond the extreme of pain! It is like a death that is deeper than death! I roll in the immensity of darkness; and the darkness itself enters within me. My consciousness bursts beneath this dilation of nothingness!"

THE DEVIL. "Yet the knowledge of things comes to thee only through the medium of thy mind. Even as a concave mirror, it deforms the objects it reflects; and thou hast no means whatever of verifying their exactitude."

"Never canst thou know the universe in all its vastness; consequently it will never be possible for thee to obtain an idea of its cause, to have a just notion of God, nor even to say that the universe is infinite,--for thou must first be able to know what the Infinite is!"

"May not Form be, perhaps, an error of thy senses,--Substance a figment of thy imagination?"

"Unless, indeed, that the world being a perpetual flux[1] of things, appearance, on the contrary, be wholly true; illusion the only reality."

"But art thou sure thou dost see?--art thou even sure thou dost live? Perhaps nothing exists!"

(_The Devil has seized Anthony, and, holding him at arms' length, glares at him with mouth yawning as though to devour him_):

"Adore me, then!--and curse the phantom thou callest God!"

(_Anthony lifts his eyes with a last effort of hope._

_The Devil abandons him._)

[1] The original text seems to me slightly obscure. The idea of the universe being a perpetual ebb and flow of shapes, is that of forms passing away to reappear like waves, is that of the Nidana-Sutris: "Individuality is only a form ... _Everything is only a flux of aggregates_, interminably uniting and disuniting," as Barth observes in his "Religions of India."--Trans.

VII

ANTHONY (_finds himself lying upon his back, at the verge of the cliff._

_The sky commences to blanch._)

"Is it the glow of dawn, or only an effect of moonlight?"

(_He tries to rise, falls back,--his teeth chattering_):

"I feel such a helplessness of weakness, as though all my bones were broken!

"Why?

"Ah! the Devil!--I remember!--he even repeated to me all that I learned from the aged Didymus respecting the opinions of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, of Melissus, of Anaxagoras,--concerning the infinite, the creation, the impossibility of knowing anything!

"And yet I believed that I could unite myself to God!"

(_Laughing bitterly_):

"Ah! madness! madness! Is the fault mine? Prayer has become intolerable to me! My heart is dry as a rock! Once, it was wont to overflow with love!...

"The sand used to smoke of mornings like the odourous dust of a censer;--at sunset flowers of fire used to bloom upon the cross; and in the middle of the night, it often seemed as though all beings and all things, lying under the same awful silence, were adoring the Lord with me. O charms of prayer, felicities of ecstasy, gifts of heaven,--what have become of you?

"I remember a voyage I made with Ammon in search of a solitary place suited for the establishment of a monastery. It was the last evening; we hastened our steps, walked side by side, murmuring hymns, without conversing. As the sun sank, the shadows of our bodies lengthened like two obelisks, continually growing taller, and moving before us. Here and there we planted crosses, made with fragments of our sticks, to mark the site of a future cell. Night was tardy in her coming; and waves of darkness overspread the earth, even while a vast rose-coloured light still glowed in heaven.

"When I was a child, I used to amuse myself by building hermitages with pebbles. My mother sitting beside me would watch me so attentively!

"Will she not have cursed me for having abandoned her?--will she not have plucked out her white hair by handfuls in the despair of her grief? And her corpse remains lying on the floor of the hut, under the roof of reeds, between the crumbling walls. Through an orifice a hyena, snuffing, thrusts his head, advances his mouth ... horror! horror!"

(_Sobbing_):

"No: Ammonaria will not have abandoned her! Where is she now,--Ammonaria?

"Perhaps at the further end of a bathroom, she removes her garments one after the other: first the mantle, then the girdle, then the first tunic, the second lighter tunic, all her necklaces,--and the vapour of cinnamon envelops her naked limbs. At last she lies down upon the tepid mosaic. Her long hair spreading below the curve of her hips, seems like a sable fleece; and the oppressiveness of the heated air causes her to pant; her waist arched, her breasts standing out ... What! my flesh rebels again! Even in the midst of grief am I tortured by concupiscence. To be subjected thus unto two tortures at once is beyond endurance! I can no longer bear myself!"

(_He leans over, and gazes into the abyss._)

"The man who should fall would be killed. Nothing easier: it were only necessary to roll over upon my left side:--only one movement--one!"

(_Then suddenly appears_--AN AGED WOMAN. _Anthony starts to his feet in affright. It seems to him that he beholds his mother arisen._

_But this woman is far older, and prodigiously thin._

_A shroud, knotted about her head, hangs down, together with her white hair, so as to cover her legs, slender as crutches. The brilliancy of her ivory-coloured teeth make her earthy skin darker still. The orbits of her eyes are full of shadow; and far back within them two flames vacillate, like the lamps of sepulchres._

_She exclaims_):

"Advance! What hinders thee?"

ANTHONY (_stammering_):

"I fear ... to commit a sin!"

SHE (_replies_):

"But King Saul killed himself! Razias, a just man, killed himself! Saint Pelagia of Antioch killed herself! Dommina of Aleppo and her two daughters--all three saints--killed themselves: and remember also how many confessors delivered themselves up to the executioner in their impatient longing for death! That they might enjoy death more speedily, the virgins of Miletus strangled themselves with their girdles. At Syracuse the philosopher Hegesias preached so eloquently upon death that men deserted the lupanars to go hang themselves in the fields. The patricians of Borne sought for death as a new form of debauch."

ANTHONY. "Aye! the love of death is strong; and many a anchorite has succumbed to it."

THE OLD WOMAN. "To do that which will make thee equal unto God--think! He created thee: thou wilt destroy his work--thou! and by thy courage,--of thy own free will! The enjoyment that Erostratus knew was not greater than this. And moreover thy body has so long mocked thy soul that it is full time thou shouldst take vengeance upon it. Thou wilt not suffer. It will soon be over. Of what art thou afraid?--a wide, black hole! Perhaps it is a void!"

(_Anthony hearkens without replying; and upon the other side appears_--

ANOTHER WOMAN--_young and marvellously beautiful. At first he takes her to be Ammonaria. But she is taller, blond as honey, very plump, with paint upon her cheeks and roses upon her head. Her long robe, weighty with spangles, gleams with metallic lustre;--her fleshy lips are sanguinolent; and her somewhat heavy eyelids are so drowned with languor that one would almost take her to be blind._

_She murmurs_):

"Nay, live! enjoy! Solomon counsels joy! Follow the guiding of thy heart and the desire of thine eyes!"

ANTHONY. "What joy is there for me? My heart is weary; my eyes are dim!"

SHE (_answers_):

"Seek the suburb of Racotis; push open a door that is painted blue;--and when thou shalt be in the atrium where a fountain jet murmurs unceasingly, a woman will present herself before thee--in peplos of white silk striped with gold; her hair is unloosed, her laugh like the clatter of crotali. She is skilful. In her caress thou wilt taste the pride of initiation and the appeasement of desire.

"Hast ever pressed to thy bosom a virgin who loved thee? Dost remember the surrenders of her modesty,--the passing away of her remorse in a sweet flow of tears?

"Thou canst even now imagine thyself walking with her--canst thou not?--in the wood by the light of the moon? At each pressure of your joined hands, a sweet shuddering passes through you both,--looking closely into each other your eyes seem to outpour into one another something like immaterial fluid;--and thy heart fills: it bursts: it is a suave whirl of eddying passion, an overflowing of intoxication...."

THE OLD WOMAN. "One need not possess joys in order to taste their bitterness! Even to view them from afar off begets loathing of them. Thou must be fatigued by the monotony of the same actions, the length of the days, the hideousness of the world, the stupidity of the sun?"

ANTHONY. "Aye, indeed!--I loathe all that he shines upon."

THE YOUNG WOMAN. "Hermit! hermit! thou wilt find diamonds among the flints, fountains beneath the sand, a delectation in all the hazards thou dost despise; and there are even upon earth places of such beauty that the sight of them would make thee desire to press the whole world against thy heart with love!"

THE OLD WOMAN. "Each evening that thou liest down upon the earth to slumber, thou dost hope that it may soon lie upon thee and cover thee."

THE YOUNG WOMAN. "Yet thou dost believe in the resurrection of the flesh--which is but the translation of life into eternity!"

(_Even as she speaks, the Old Woman becomes still more fleshless; and above her skull, from which the white hair has disappeared, a bat circles in the air._

_The Young Woman has become fatter. Her robe gleams with shifting colours; her nostrils palpitate, her eyes roll softly._)

THE FORMER (_opening her arms, exclaiming_):

"Come to me!--I am Consolation, repose, oblivion, eternal calm!"

THE OTHER.

"I am the sleep-giver, life, happiness inexhaustible!"

(_Anthony turns to fee from them. Each lays a hand on his shoulder._

_The Shroud parts, exposes the Skeleton of Death._

_The robe splits asunder, and leaves the whole body of Lust exposed:--her waist is slender; her long and undulating hair flutters in the wind._

_Anthony stands motionless between the two, considering them_):

DEATH (_says to him_):

"What matters it, whether now or at another time! Thou art mine,--like suns, nations, cities, kings, mountain-snows, and the grasses of the fields. I fly higher than the hawks of heaven. I run more swiftly than the gazelle; I overtake even Hope; I vanquished the Son of God!"

LUST. "Resist not! I am the Omnipotent! The forests re-echo with my sighs; the waters tremble with my agitations. Virtue, courage, piety, dissolve in the perfume of my mouth. Man I accompany in every step that he makes; and even from the threshold of the tomb he turns to me!"

DEATH. "I will find for thee that which thou hast vainly sought for, by the gleam of torches, upon the faces of the dead,--or among those awful sands that are formed of human remains, where thou wast wont to wander beyond the Pyramids. From time to time, the fragment of a skull rolled under thy sandal. Thou didst take up the dust: thou didst let it trickle through thy fingers; and thy thought, blending with it, sank into nothingness."

LUST. "My gulf is deeper! Marbles have inspired loves. Men rush to conjunctures that terrify. Fetters are riveted that the fettered curse. Whence the bewitchment of courtesans, the extravagance of dreams, the immensity of my sadness?"

DEATH. "Mine irony depasseth all others! There are convulsions of delight at the funerals of kings, at the extermination of a whole people; and war is made with music, with plumes, with harness of gold,--with vast display of ceremony that my due of homage may be greater!"

LUST. "My rage equals thine! I also yell; I bite! I, too, have sweats of agony, and aspects cadaverous!"

DEATH. "It is I that make thee awful! Let us intertwine!"

(_Death laughs mockingly; Lust roars. They clasp each other about the waist, and chant alternately_):

"I hasten the dissolution of matter!"

"I facilitate the dispersion of germs!"

"Thou dost destroy for my renovations!"

"Thou dost engender for my destructions!"

"Ever-active my power!"

"Fecund, my putrefaction!"

(_And their voices, whose rolling echoes fill the horizon, deepen and become so mighty that Anthony falls backward as if thunder-stricken. A shock from time to time causes him to reopen his eyes; and he perceives in the midst of the darkness a manner of monster before him._

_It is a skull, crowned with roses, dominating the torso of a woman nacreously white. Below, a shroud starred with specks of gold forms something like a tail; and the whole body undulates, after the fashion of a gigantic worm erect on end._

_The vision attenuates,--disappears._)

ANTHONY (_rising to his feet_):

"The Devil yet again, and under his two-fold aspect: the spirit of fornication, and the spirit of destruction.

"Neither affrights me! I repel happiness; and I know myself to be eternal.

"Thus death is only an illusion, a veil-masking betimes the continuity of life.

"But Substance being unique, wherefore should forms be varied?

"Somewhere there must be primordial figures, whose bodily forms are only symbols. Could I but see them, I would know the link between matter and thought; I would know in what Being consists.

"Such were the figures painted at Babylon upon the walls of the temple of Belus; and others like them covered a mosaic in the port of Carthage. I myself have sometime beheld in the sky, as it were, forms of spirits. Those who cross the desert meet with animals surpassing all conception...."

(_And opposite, upon the further side of the Nile, suddenly appears the Sphinx.[1] He stretches his paws, shakes the bandelets upon his forehead, and crouches upon his belly._

_Leaping, flying, spitting fire through her nostrils, lashing her winged sides with her dragon-tail, the green-eyed Chimera circles, barks._

_The thick curls of her head tossed back upon one side mingle with the hair of her loins; on the other side they hang down to the sand, quivering with the swinging of her body, to and fro._)

THE SPHINX (_remaining motionless, and gazing at the Chimera_):

"Hither, Chimera! rest awhile!"

THE CHIMERA. "No! never!"

THE SPHINX. "Do not run so fast, do not fly so high, do not bark so loudly!"

THE CHIMERA. "DO not call me!--call me no more; since thou must remain forever dumb."

THE SPHINX. "Cease casting thy flames in my face, and uttering thy yells in my ear: thou canst not melt my granite."

THE CHIMERA. "Thou shalt not seize me, terrible sphinx!"

THE SPHINX. "Thou art too mad to dwell with me!"

THE CHIMERA. "Thou art too heavy to follow me!"

THE SPHINX. "Yet whither goest thou, that thou shouldst run so fast?"

THE CHIMERA. "I gallop in the corridors of the Labyrinth--I hover above the mountains--I graze the waves in my flight--I yelp at the bottom of precipices--I suspend myself with my mouth from the skirts of clouds--I sweep the shores with my dragging tail; and the curves of the hills have taken their form from the shape of my shoulders! But thee I find perpetually immobile, or perhaps making strange designs with thy claws upon the sand."

THE SPHINX. "It is because I keep my secret;--I dream and calculate.

"The sea returns to its bed; the wheat bends back and forth in the wind; the caravans pass by; the dust flies; cities crumble; and yet my gaze, which naught can deviate, remains fixed, gazing through all intervening things, upon a horizon that none may reach."

THE CHIMERA. "I am light and joyous! I offer to the eyes of men dazzling perspectives with Paradise in the clouds above, and unspeakable felicity afar off. Into their souls I pour the eternal madnesses; projects of happiness, plans for the future, dreams of glory and vows of love, and all virtuous resolutions.

"I urge men to perilous voyages and great enterprises. I have chiselled with my claws the wonders of architecture. It was I who suspended the little bells above the tomb of Porsenna, and surrounded the quays of Atlantis with a wall of orichalcum.

"I seek for new perfumes, for vaster flowers, for pleasures never felt before. If I perceive in any place a man whose mind reposes in wisdom, I fall upon him, and strangle him."

THE SPHINX. "All those tormented by the desire of God, I have devoured.

"In order to climb up to my royal brow, the strongest ascend upon the flutings of my bandelets as upon the steps of a stairway. Then a great lassitude comes upon them, and they fall backward."

(_Anthony begins to tremble._

_He is no longer before his cabin, but in the desert itself, with those two monsters beside him, whose breath is hot upon his shoulders._)

THE SPHINX. "O thou Fantasy, bear me away upon thy wings that my sadness may be lightened!"

THE CHIMERA. "O thou Unknown, I am enamoured of thine eyes! Like a hyena in heat I turn about thee, soliciting those fecundations whereof the desires devour me!

"Ope thy mouth, lift thy feet--mount upon my back!"

THE SPHINX. "My feet, since they have been outstretched, can move no more. The lichen, like an eruption, has formed upon my jaws. By dint of long dreaming I have no longer aught to say."

THE CHIMERA. "Thou liest, hypocrite Sphinx! Wherefore dost thou always call me and always disown me!"

THE SPHINX. "It is thou, indomitable caprice, that dost forever pass and repass, whirling in thy course!"

THE CHIMERA. "Is the fault mine? What? Let me be!"

(_She barks._)

THE SPHINX. "Thou movest away! thou dost escape me!"

(_He growls._)

THE CHIMERA. "Essay!--Thou crushest me!"

THE SPHINX. "Nay!--impossible!"

(_And gradually sinking down he disappears in the sand; while the Chimera, ramping with tongue protruding, departs, describing circles on her way._

_The breath of her mouth has produced a fog._

_Through this mist Anthony perceives wreathings of clouds, undecided curves._

_At last he can distinguish something like the appearance of human bodies._

_And first_:--

THE ASTOMI--_approach, like bubbles of air traversed by sunlight. They cry_):

"Do not breathe too hard! The drops of rain bruise us, false notes excoriate us, darknesses blind us! Composed wholly of breezes and of perfumes, we float along, we roll along:--a little more than Dreams, yet not quite beings...."

THE NISNAS

(_have only one eye, one cheek, one hand, one leg, half a body, half a heart. They say_):

"We live quite in our halves of houses, with our halves of wives and our halves of children!"

THE BLEMMYES

(_who have no head at all_):

"Our shoulders are all the broader;--and there is no ox, rhinoceros, or elephant able to carry what we carry.

"Something dimly resembling features--as it were a vague face--imprinted upon our breasts: that is all! We think digestions; we subtleize secretions. God, in our belief, floats peacefully within the interior chyles.

"We go straight upon our way, through all mires, crossing all morasses, skirting the edges of all abysses: and we are the most laborious, the most happy, the most virtuous of all peoples!"

THE PYGMIES:

"We, good little men, swarm upon the world like vermin upon the hump of a dromedary.

"We are burned, drowned, crushed; and we always reappear, more vivacious and countless than before--terrible by reason of our numbers!"

THE SCIAPODS:

"Fettered to the earth by our hair, long as lianas, we vegetate beneath the shelter of our feet, broad as parasols; and the light comes to us through the thickness of our heels. No annoyances for us, no work! The head as low as possible--That is the secret of happiness."

(_Their lifted thighs,--resembling the trunks of trees,--multiply._

_And a forest appears. Great apes clamber through it on all fours:--these are men with the heads of dogs._)

THE CYNOCEPHALI:

"We leap from branch to branch in search of eggs to suck; and we pluck the little fledglings alive; then we put their nests upon our heads in lieu of caps.

"We tear off the teats of cows; and we put out the eyes of lynxes: we let fall our dung from the heights of the trees--we parade our turpitude in the full light of the sun.