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Twilight In Italy
By
D. H. Lawrence
Contents
The
Crucifix Across the Mountains
=
The
imperial road to Italy goes from Munich across the Tyrol, through Innsbruck=
and
Bozen to Verona, over the mountains. Here the great processions passed as t=
he
emperors went South, or came home again from rosy Italy to their own German=
y.
And how much has that old imperial vanity clun=
g to
the German soul? Did not the German kings inherit the empire of bygone Rome=
? It
was not a very real empire, perhaps, but the sound was high and splendid.
Maybe a certain Grössenwahn is inherent in
the German nature. If only nations would realize that they have certain nat=
ural
characteristics, if only they could understand and agree to each other's
particular nature, how much simpler it would all be.
The imperial procession no longer crosses the
mountains, going South. That is almost forgotten, the road has almost passed
out of mind. But still it is there, and its signs are standing.
The crucifixes are there, not mere attributes =
of
the road, yet still having something to do with it. The imperial procession=
s,
blessed by the Pope and accompanied by the great bishops, must have planted=
the
holy idol like a new plant among the mountains, there where it multiplied a=
nd grew
according to the soil, and the race that received it.
As one goes among the Bavarian uplands and
foothills, soon one realizes here is another land, a strange religion. It i=
s a
strange country, remote, out of contact. Perhaps it belongs to the forgotte=
n,
imperial processions.
Coming along the clear, open roads that lead to
the mountains, one scarcely notices the crucifixes and the shrines. Perhaps
one's interest is dead. The crucifix itself is nothing, a factory-made piec=
e of
sentimentalism. The soul ignores it.
But gradually, one after another looming shado=
wily
under their hoods, the crucifixes seem to create a new atmosphere over the
whole of the countryside, a darkness, a weight in the air that is so
unnaturally bright and rare with the reflection from the snows above, a
darkness hovering just over the earth. So rare and unearthly the light is, =
from
the mountains, full of strange radiance. Then every now and again recurs the
crucifix, at the turning of an open, grassy road, holding a shadow and a
mystery under its pointed hood.
I was startled into consciousness one evening,
going alone over a marshy place at the foot of the mountains, when the sky =
was
pale and unearthly, invisible, and the hills were nearly black. At a meetin=
g of
the tracks was a crucifix, and between the feet of the Christ a handful of
withered poppies. It was the poppies I saw, then the Christ.
It was an old shrine, the wood-sculpture of a
Bavarian peasant. The Christ was a peasant of the foot of the Alps. He had
broad cheekbones and sturdy limbs. His plain, rudimentary face stared fixed=
ly
at the hills, his neck was stiffened, as if in resistance to the fact of th=
e nails
and the cross, which he could not escape. It was a man nailed down in spiri=
t,
but set stubbornly against the bondage and the disgrace. He was a man of mi=
ddle
age, plain, crude, with some of the meanness of the peasant, but also with a
kind of dogged nobility that does not yield its soul to the circumstance.
Plain, almost blank in his soul, the middle-aged peasant of the crucifix
resisted unmoving the misery of his position. He did not yield. His soul was
set, his will was fixed. He was himself, let his circumstances be what they
would, his life fixed down.
Across the marsh was a tiny square of
orange-coloured light, from the farm-house with the low, spreading roof. I
remembered how the man and his wife and the children worked on till dark,
silent and intent, carrying the hay in their arms out of the streaming
thunder-rain into the shed, working silent in the soaking rain.
The body bent forward towards the earth, closi=
ng
round on itself; the arms clasped full of hay, clasped round the hay that
presses soft and close to the breast and the body, that pricks heat into the
arms and the skin of the breast, and fills the lungs with the sleepy scent =
of
dried herbs: the rain that falls heavily and wets the shoulders, so that th=
e shirt
clings to the hot, firm skin and the rain comes with heavy, pleasant coldne=
ss
on the active flesh, running in a trickle down towards the loins, secretly;
this is the peasant, this hot welter of physical sensation. And it is all
intoxicating. It is intoxicating almost like a soporific, like a sensuous d=
rug,
to gather the burden to one's body in the rain, to stumble across the living
grass to the shed, to relieve one's arms of the weight, to throw down the h=
ay
on to the heap, to feel light and free in the dry shed, then to return again
into the chill, hard rain, to stoop again under the rain, and rise to return
again with the burden.
It is this, this endless heat and rousedness of
physical sensation which keeps the body full and potent, and flushes the mi=
nd
with a blood heat, a blood sleep. And this sleep, this heat of physical
experience, becomes at length a bondage, at last a crucifixion. It is the l=
ife
and the fulfilment of the peasant, this flow of sensuous experience. But at
last it drives him almost mad, because he cannot escape.
For overhead there is always the strange radia=
nce
of the mountains, there is the mystery of the icy river rushing through its
pink shoals into the darkness of the pine-woods, there is always the faint =
tang
of ice on the air, and the rush of hoarse-sounding water.
And the ice and the upper radiance of snow are
brilliant with timeless immunity from the flux and the warmth of life. Over=
head
they transcend all life, all the soft, moist fire of the blood. So that a m=
an
must needs live under the radiance of his own negation.
There is a strange, clear beauty of form about=
the
men of the Bavarian highlands, about both men and women. They are large and
clear and handsome in form, with blue eyes very keen, the pupil small,
tightened, the iris keen, like sharp light shining on blue ice. Their large=
, full-moulded
limbs and erect bodies are distinct, separate, as if they were perfectly
chiselled out of the stuff of life, static, cut off. Where they are everyth=
ing
is set back, as in a clear frosty air.
Their beauty is almost this, this strange,
clean-cut isolation, as if each one of them would isolate himself still fur=
ther
and for ever from the rest of his fellows.
Yet they are convivial, they are almost the on=
ly
race with the souls of artists. Still they act the mystery plays with
instinctive fullness of interpretation, they sing strangely in the mountain
fields, they love make-belief and mummery, their processions and religious
festivals are profoundly impressive, solemn, and rapt.
It is a race that moves on the poles of mystic
sensual delight. Every gesture is a gesture from the blood, every expressio=
n is
a symbolic utterance.
For learning there is sensuous experience, for
thought there is myth and drama and dancing and singing. Everything is of t=
he
blood, of the senses. There is no mind. The mind is a suffusion of physical
heat, it is not separated, it is kept submerged.
At the same time, always, overhead, there is t=
he
eternal, negative radiance of the snows. Beneath is life, the hot jet of the
blood playing elaborately. But above is the radiance of changeless not-bein=
g.
And life passes away into this changeless radiance. Summer and the prolific=
blue-and-white
flowering of the earth goes by, with the labour and the ecstasy of man,
disappears, and is gone into brilliance that hovers overhead, the radiant c=
old
which waits to receive back again all that which has passed for the moment =
into
being.
The issue is too much revealed. It leaves the
peasant no choice. The fate gleams transcendent above him, the brightness of
eternal, unthinkable not-being. And this our life, this admixture of labour=
and
of warm experience in the flesh, all the time it is steaming up to the chan=
geless
brilliance above, the light of the everlasting snows. This is the eternal
issue.
Whether it is singing or dancing or play-actin=
g or
physical transport of love, or vengeance or cruelty, or whether it is work =
or
sorrow or religion, the issue is always the same at last, into the radiant =
negation
of eternity. Hence the beauty and completeness, the finality of the highland
peasant. His figure, his limbs, his face, his motion, it is all formed in
beauty, and it is all completed. There is no flux nor hope nor becoming, all
is, once and for all. The issue is eternal, timeless, and changeless. All b=
eing
and all passing away is part of the issue, which is eternal and changeless.
Therefore there is no becoming and no passing away. Everything is, now and =
for
ever. Hence the strange beauty and finality and isolation of the Bavarian
peasant.
It is plain in the crucifixes. Here is the ess=
ence
rendered in sculpture of wood. The face is blank and stiff, almost
expressionless. One realizes with a start how unchanging and conventionaliz=
ed
is the face of the living man and woman of these parts, handsome, but
motionless as pure form. There is also an underlying meanness, secretive,
cruel. It is all part of the beauty, the pure, plastic beauty. The body als=
o of
the Christus is stiff and conventionalized, yet curiously beautiful in prop=
ortion,
and in the static tension which makes it unified into one clear thing. Ther=
e is
no movement, no possible movement. The being is fixed, finally. The whole b=
ody
is locked in one knowledge, beautiful, complete. It is one with the nails. =
Not
that it is languishing or dead. It is stubborn, knowing its own undeniable
being, sure of the absolute reality of the sensuous experience. Though he is
nailed down upon an irrevocable fate, yet, within that fate he has the power
and the delight of all sensuous experience. So he accepts the fate and the
mystic delight of the senses with one will, he is complete and final. His s=
ensuous
experience is supreme, a consummation of life and death at once.
It is the same at all times, whether it is mov=
ing
with the scythe on the hill-slopes, or hewing the timber, or steering the r=
aft
down the river which is all effervescent with ice; whether it is drinking in
the Gasthaus, or making love, or playing some mummer's part, or hating stea=
dily
and cruelly, or whether it is kneeling in spellbound subjection in the
incense-filled church, or walking in the strange, dark, subject-procession =
to
bless the fields, or cutting the young birch-trees for the feast of
Frohenleichnam, it is always the same, the dark, powerful mystic, sensuous
experience is the whole of him, he is mindless and bound within the
absoluteness of the issue, the unchangeability of the great icy not-being w=
hich
holds good for ever, and is supreme.
Passing further away, towards Austria, travell=
ing
up the Isar, till the stream becomes smaller and whiter and the air is cold=
er,
the full glamour of the northern hills, which are so marvellously luminous =
and gleaming
with flowers, wanes and gives way to a darkness, a sense of ominousness. Up
there I saw another little Christ, who seemed the very soul of the place. T=
he
road went beside the river, that was seething with snowy ice-bubbles, under=
the
rocks and the high, wolf-like pine-trees, between the pinkish shoals. The a=
ir
was cold and hard and high, everything was cold and separate. And in a litt=
le
glass case beside the road sat a small, hewn Christ, the head resting on the
hand; and he meditates, half-wearily, doggedly, the eyebrows lifted in stra=
nge abstraction,
the elbow resting on the knee. Detached, he sits and dreams and broods, wea=
ring
his little golden crown of thorns, and his little cloak of red flannel that
some peasant woman has stitched for him.
No doubt he still sits there, the small,
blank-faced Christ in the cloak of red flannel, dreaming, brooding, endurin=
g,
persisting. There is a wistfulness about him, as if he knew that the whole =
of
things was too much for him. There was no solution, either, in death. Death=
did
not give the answer to the soul's anxiety. That which is, is. It does not c=
ease
to be when it is cut. Death cannot create nor destroy. What is, is.
The little brooding Christ knows this. What is=
he
brooding, then? His static patience and endurance is wistful. What is it th=
at
he secretly yearns for, amid all the placidity of fate? 'To be, or not to b=
e,'
this may be the question, but is it not a question for death to answer. It =
is not
a question of living or not-living. It is a question of being--to be or not=
to
be. To persist or not to persist, that is not the question; neither is it to
endure or not to endure. The issue, is it eternal not-being? If not, what,
then, is being? For overhead the eternal radiance of the snow gleams unfail=
ing,
it receives the efflorescence of all life and is unchanged, the issue is br=
ight
and immortal, the snowy not-being. What, then, is being?
As one draws nearer to the turning-point of the
Alps, towards the culmination and the southern slope, the influence of the
educated world is felt once more. Bavaria is remote in spirit, as yet
unattached. Its crucifixes are old and grey and abstract, small like the ke=
rnel
of the truth. Further into Austria they become new, they are painted white,=
they
are larger, more obtrusive. They are the expressions of a later, newer phas=
e,
more introspective and self-conscious. But still they are genuine expressio=
ns
of the people's soul.
Often one can distinguish the work of a partic=
ular
artist here and there in a district. In the Zemm valley, in the heart of the
Tyrol, behind Innsbruck, there are five or six crucifixes by one sculptor. =
He
is no longer a peasant working out an idea, conveying a dogma. He is an art=
ist,
trained and conscious, probably working in Vienna. He is consciously trying=
to
convey a feeling, he is no longer striving awkwardly to render a truth, a
religious fact.
The chief of his crucifixes stands deep in the
Klamm, in the dank gorge where it is always half-night. The road runs under=
the
rock and the trees, half-way up the one side of the pass. Below, the stream
rushes ceaselessly, embroiled among great stones, making an endless loud no=
ise.
The rock face opposite rises high overhead, with the sky far up. So that on=
e is
walking in a half-night, an underworld. And just below the path, where the
pack-horses go climbing to the remote, infolded villages, in the cold gloom=
of
the pass hangs the large, pale Christ. He is larger than life-size. He has
fallen forward, just dead, and the weight of the full-grown, mature body ha=
ngs
on the nails of the hands. So the dead, heavy body drops forward, sags, as =
if
it would tear away and fall under its own weight.
It is the end. The face is barren with a dead
expression of weariness, and brutalized with pain and bitterness. The rather
ugly, passionate mouth is set for ever in the disillusionment of death. Dea=
th
is the complete disillusionment, set like a seal over the whole body and be=
ing,
over the suffering and weariness and the bodily passion.
The pass is gloomy and damp, the water roars
unceasingly, till it is almost like a constant pain. The driver of the
pack-horses, as he comes up the narrow path in the side of the gorge, cring=
es
his sturdy cheerfulness as if to obliterate himself, drawing near to the la=
rge,
pale Christ, and he takes his hat off as he passes, though he does not look=
up,
but keeps his face averted from the crucifix. He hurries by in the gloom,
climbing the steep path after his horses, and the large white Christ hangs
extended above.
The driver of the pack-horses is afraid. The f=
ear
is always there in him, in spite of his sturdy, healthy robustness. His sou=
l is
not sturdy. It is blenched and whitened with fear. The mountains are dark
overhead, the water roars in the gloom below. His heart is ground between t=
he mill-stones
of dread. When he passes the extended body of the dead Christ he takes off =
his
hat to the Lord of Death. Christ is the Deathly One, He is Death incarnate.=
And the driver of the pack-horses acknowledges
this deathly Christ as supreme Lord. The mountain peasant seems grounded up=
on
fear, the fear of death, of physical death. Beyond this he knows nothing. H=
is
supreme sensation is in physical pain, and in its culmination. His great
climax, his consummation, is death. Therefore he worships it, bows down bef=
ore it,
and is fascinated by it all the while. It is his fulfilment, death, and his
approach to fulfilment is through physical pain.
And so these monuments to physical death are f=
ound
everywhere in the valleys. By the same hand that carved the big Christ, a
little further on, at the end of a bridge, was another crucifix, a small on=
e.
This Christ had a fair beard, and was thin, and his body was hanging almost=
lightly,
whereas the other Christ was large and dark and handsome. But in this, as w=
ell
as in the other, was the same neutral triumph of death, complete, negative
death, so complete as to be abstract, beyond cynicism in its completeness of
leaving off.
Everywhere is the same obsession with the fact=
of
physical pain, accident, and sudden death. Wherever a misfortune has befall=
en a
man, there is nailed up a little memorial of the event, in propitiation of =
the
God of hurt and death. A man is standing up to his waist in water, drowning=
in
full stream, his arms in the air. The little painting in its wooden frame is
nailed to the tree, the spot is sacred to the accident. Again, another litt=
le
crude picture fastened to a rock: a tree, falling on a man's leg, smashes it
like a stalk, while the blood flies up. Always there is the strange ejacula=
tion
of anguish and fear, perpetuated in the little paintings nailed up in the p=
lace
of the disaster.
This is the worship, then, the worship of death
and the approaches to death, physical violence, and pain. There is something
crude and sinister about it, almost like depravity, a form of reverting,
turning back along the course of blood by which we have come.
Turning the ridge on the great road to the sou=
th,
the imperial road to Rome, a decisive change takes place. The Christs have =
been
taking on various different characters, all of them more or less realistica=
lly conveyed.
One Christus is very elegant, combed and brushed and foppish on his cross, =
as
Gabriele D'Annunzio's son posing as a martyred saint. The martyrdom of this
Christ is according to the most polite convention. The elegance is very
important, and very Austrian. One might almost imagine the young man had ta=
ken
up this striking and original position to create a delightful sensation amo=
ng
the ladies. It is quite in the Viennese spirit. There is something brave and
keen in it, too. The individual pride of body triumphs over every difficult=
y in
the situation. The pride and satisfaction in the clean, elegant form, the p=
erfectly
trimmed hair, the exquisite bearing, are more important than the fact of de=
ath
or pain. This may be foolish, it is at the same time admirable.
But the tendency of the crucifix, as it nears =
the
ridge to the south, is to become weak and sentimental. The carved Christs t=
urn
up their faces and roll back their eyes very piteously, in the approved Gui=
do
Reni fashion. They are overdoing the pathetic turn. They are looking to hea=
ven
and thinking about themselves, in self-commiseration. Others again are
beautiful as elegies. It is dead Hyacinth lifted and extended to view, in a=
ll
his beautiful, dead youth. The young, male body droops forward on the cross,
like a dead flower. It looks as if its only true nature were to be dead. How
lovely is death, how poignant, real, satisfying! It is the true elegiac spi=
rit.
Then there are the ordinary, factory-made Chri=
sts,
which are not very significant. They are as null as the Christs we see
represented in England, just vulgar nothingness. But these figures have gas=
hes
of red, a red paint of blood, which is sensational.
Beyond the Brenner, I have only seen vulgar or
sensational crucifixes. There are great gashes on the breast and the knees =
of
the Christ-figure, and the scarlet flows out and trickles down, till the
crucified body has become a ghastly striped thing of red and white, just a
sickly thing of striped red.
They paint the rocks at the corners of the tra=
cks,
among the mountains; a blue and white ring for the road to Ginzling, a red
smear for the way to St Jakob. So one follows the blue and white ring, or t=
he
three stripes of blue and white, or the red smear, as the case may be. And =
the red
on the rocks, the dabs of red paint, are of just the same colour as the red
upon the crucifixes; so that the red upon the crucifixes is paint, and the
signs on the rocks are sensational, like blood.
I remember the little brooding Christ of the I=
sar,
in his little cloak of red flannel and his crown of gilded thorns, and he
remains real and dear to me, among all this violence of representation.
'Couvre-toi de gloire, Tartarin--couvre-toi de
flanelle.' Why should it please me so that his cloak is of red flannel?
In a valley near St Jakob, just over the ridge=
, a
long way from the railway, there is a very big, important shrine by the
roadside. It is a chapel built in the baroque manner, florid pink and cream
outside, with opulent small arches. And inside is the most startling
sensational Christus I have ever seen. He is a big, powerful man, seated af=
ter
the crucifixion, perhaps after the resurrection, sitting by the grave. He s=
its
sideways, as if the extremity were over, finished, the agitation done with,
only the result of the experience remaining. There is some blood on his
powerful, naked, defeated body, that sits rather hulked. But it is the face
which is so terrifying. It is slightly turned over the hulked, crucified
shoulder, to look. And the look of this face, of which the body has been
killed, is beyond all expectation horrible. The eyes look at one, yet have =
no
seeing in them, they seem to see only their own blood. For they are bloodsh=
ot
till the whites are scarlet, the iris is purpled. These red, bloody eyes wi=
th
their stained pupils, glancing awfully at all who enter the shrine, looking=
as
if to see through the blood of the late brutal death, are terrible. The nak=
ed, strong
body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weig=
ht
of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sini=
ster
and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The
criminal look of misery and hatred on the fixed, violated face and in the
bloodshot eyes is almost impossible. He is conquered, beaten, broken, his b=
ody
is a mass of torture, an unthinkable shame. Yet his will remains obstinate =
and
ugly, integral with utter hatred.
It is a great shock to find this figure sittin=
g in
a handsome, baroque, pink-washed shrine in one of those Alpine valleys whic=
h to
our thinking are all flowers and romance, like the picture in the Tate Gall=
ery.
'Spring in the Austrian Tyrol' is to our minds a vision of pristine lovelin=
ess.
It contains also this Christ of the heavy body defiled by torture and death,
the strong, virile life overcome by physical violence, the eyes still looki=
ng
back bloodshot in consummate hate and misery.
The shrine was well kept and evidently much us=
ed.
It was hung with ex-voto limbs and with many gifts. It was a centre of wors=
hip,
of a sort of almost obscene worship. Afterwards the black pine-trees and the
river of that valley seemed unclean, as if an unclean spirit lived there. T=
he very
flowers seemed unnatural, and the white gleam on the mountain-tops was a
glisten of supreme, cynical horror.
After this, in the populous valleys, all the
crucifixes were more or less tainted and vulgar. Only high up, where the
crucifix becomes smaller and smaller, is there left any of the old beauty a=
nd
religion. Higher and higher, the monument becomes smaller and smaller, till=
in
the snows it stands out like a post, or a thick arrow stuck barb upwards. T=
he
crucifix itself is a small thing under the pointed hood, the barb of the ar=
row.
The snow blows under the tiny shed, upon the little, exposed Christ. All ro=
und
is the solid whiteness of snow, the awful curves and concaves of pure white=
ness
of the mountain top, the hollow whiteness between the peaks, where the path
crosses the high, extreme ridge of the pass. And here stands the last cruci=
fix,
half buried, small and tufted with snow. The guides tramp slowly, heavily p=
ast,
not observing the presence of the symbol, making no salute. Further down, e=
very
mountain peasant lifted his hat. But the guide tramps by without concern. H=
is
is a professional importance now.
On a small mountain track on the Jaufen, not f=
ar
from Meran, was a fallen Christus. I was hurrying downhill to escape from an
icy wind which almost took away my consciousness, and I was looking up at t=
he gleaming,
unchanging snow-peaks all round. They seemed like blades immortal in the sk=
y.
So I almost ran into a very old Martertafel. It leaned on the cold, stony
hillside surrounded by the white peaks in the upper air.
The wooden hood was silver-grey with age, and
covered, on the top, with a thicket of lichen, which stuck up in hoary tuft=
s.
But on the rock at the foot of the post was the fallen Christ, armless, who=
had
tumbled down and lay in an unnatural posture, the naked, ancient wooden scu=
lpture
of the body on the naked, living rock. It was one of the old uncouth Christs
hewn out of bare wood, having the long, wedge-shaped limbs and thin flat le=
gs
that are significant of the true spirit, the desire to convey a religious
truth, not a sensational experience.
The arms of the fallen Christ had broken off at
the shoulders, and they hung on their nails, as ex-voto limbs hang in the
shrines. But these arms dangled from the palms, one at each end of the cros=
s,
the muscles, carved sparely in the old wood, looking all wrong, upside down.
And the icy wind blew them backwards and forwards, so that they gave a pain=
ful impression,
there in the stark, sterile place of rock and cold. Yet I dared not touch t=
he
fallen body of the Christ, that lay on its back in so grotesque a posture at
the foot of the post. I wondered who would come and take the broken thing a=
way,
and for what purpose.
<=
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style=3D'font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-fa=
reast-font-family:
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span
style=3D'font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;line-height:115%;mso-fa=
reast-font-family:
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=
The
Holy Spirit is a Dove, or an Eagle. In the Old Testament it was an Eagle; in
the New Testament it is a Dove.
And there are, standing over the Christian wor=
ld,
the Churches of the Dove and the Churches of the Eagle. There are, moreover,
the Churches which do not belong to the Holy Spirit at all, but which are b=
uilt
to pure fancy and logic; such as the Wren Churches in London.
The Churches of the Dove are shy and hidden: t=
hey
nestle among trees, and their bells sound in the mellowness of Sunday; or t=
hey
are gathered into a silence of their own in the very midst of the town, so =
that
one passes them by without observing them; they are as if invisible, offeri=
ng
no resistance to the storming of the traffic.
But the Churches of the Eagle stand high, with
their heads to the skies, as if they challenged the world below. They are t=
he
Churches of the Spirit of David, and their bells ring passionately,
imperiously, falling on the subservient world below.
The Church of San Francesco was a Church of the
Dove. I passed it several times in the dark, silent little square, without
knowing it was a church. Its pink walls were blind, windowless, unnoticeabl=
e,
it gave no sign, unless one caught sight of the tan curtain hanging in the
door, and the slit of darkness beneath. Yet it was the chief church of the
village.
But the Church of San Tommaso perched over the
village. Coming down the cobbled, submerged street, many a time I looked up
between the houses and saw the thin old church standing above in the light,=
as
if it perched on the house-roofs. Its thin grey neck was held up stiffly, b=
eyond
was a vision of dark foliage, and the high hillside.
I saw it often, and yet for a long time it nev=
er
occurred to me that it actually existed. It was like a vision, a thing one =
does
not expect to come close to. It was there standing away upon the house-tops,
against a glamour of foliaged hillside. I was submerged in the village, on =
the uneven,
cobbled street, between old high walls and cavernous shops and the houses w=
ith
flights of steps.
For a long time I knew how the day went, by the
imperious clangour of midday and evening bells striking down upon the houses
and the edge of the lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bel=
ls
rang. Till at last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the
ringing of the Church of San Tommaso. The church became a living connexion =
with
me.
So I set out to find it, I wanted to go to it.=
It was
very near. I could see it from the piazza by the lake. And the village itse=
lf
had only a few hundreds of inhabitants. The church must be within a stone's
throw.
Yet I could not find it. I went out of the back
door of the house, into the narrow gully of the back street. Women glanced =
down
at me from the top of the flights of steps, old men stood, half-turning,
half-crouching under the dark shadow of the walls, to stare. It was as if t=
he
strange creatures of the under-shadow were looking at me. I was of another
element.
The Italian people are called 'Children of the
Sun'. They might better be called 'Children of the Shadow'. Their souls are
dark and nocturnal. If they are to be easy, they must be able to hide, to be
hidden in lairs and caves of darkness. Going through these tiny chaotic
backways of the village was like venturing through the labyrinth made by
furtive creatures, who watched from out of another element. And I was pale,=
and
clear, and evanescent, like the light, and they were dark, and close, and
constant, like the shadow.
So I was quite baffled by the tortuous, tiny, =
deep
passages of the village. I could not find my way. I hurried towards the bro=
ken
end of a street, where the sunshine and the olive trees looked like a mirag=
e before
me. And there above me I saw the thin, stiff neck of old San Tommaso, grey =
and
pale in the sun. Yet I could not get up to the church, I found myself again=
on
the piazza.
Another day, however, I found a broken stairca=
se,
where weeds grew in the gaps the steps had made in falling, and maidenhair =
hung
on the darker side of the wall. I went up unwillingly, because the Italians=
used
this old staircase as a privy, as they will any deep side-passage.
But I ran up the broken stairway, and came out
suddenly, as by a miracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in the =
tremendous
sunshine.
It was another world, the world of the eagle, =
the
world of fierce abstraction. It was all clear, overwhelming sunshine, a
platform hung in the light. Just below were the confused, tiled roofs of the
village, and beyond them the pale blue water, down below; and opposite,
opposite my face and breast, the clear, luminous snow of the mountain across
the lake, level with me apparently, though really much above.
I was in the skies now, looking down from my
square terrace of cobbled pavement, that was worn like the threshold of the
ancient church. Round the terrace ran a low, broad wall, the coping of the
upper heaven where I had climbed.
There was a blood-red sail like a butterfly
breathing down on the blue water, whilst the earth on the near side gave of=
f a
green-silver smoke of olive trees, coming up and around the earth-coloured
roofs.
It always remains to me that San Tommaso and i=
ts
terrace hang suspended above the village, like the lowest step of heaven, of
Jacob's ladder. Behind, the land rises in a high sweep. But the terrace of =
San
Tommaso is let down from heaven, and does not touch the earth.
I went into the church. It was very dark, and
impregnated with centuries of incense. It affected me like the lair of some
enormous creature. My senses were roused, they sprang awake in the hot, spi=
ced
darkness. My skin was expectant, as if it expected some contact, some embra=
ce,
as if it were aware of the contiguity of the physical world, the physical c=
ontact
with the darkness and the heavy, suggestive substance of the enclosure. It =
was
a thick, fierce darkness of the senses. But my soul shrank.
I went out again. The pavemented threshold was
clear as a jewel, the marvellous clarity of sunshine that becomes blue in t=
he
height seemed to distil me into itself.
Across, the heavy mountain crouched along the =
side
of the lake, the upper half brilliantly white, belonging to the sky, the lo=
wer
half dark and grim. So, then, that is where heaven and earth are divided. F=
rom behind
me, on the left, the headland swept down out of a great, pale-grey, arid
height, through a rush of russet and crimson, to the olive smoke and the wa=
ter
of the level earth. And between, like a blade of the sky cleaving the earth=
asunder,
went the pale-blue lake, cleaving mountain from mountain with the triumph of
the sky.
Then I noticed that a big, blue-checked cloth =
was
spread on the parapet before me, over the parapet of heaven. I wondered why=
it
hung there.
Turning round, on the other side of the terrac= e, under a caper-bush that hung like a blood-stain from the grey wall above he= r, stood a little grey woman whose fingers were busy. Like the grey church, she made me feel as if I were not in existence. I was wandering by the parapet = of heaven, looking down. But she stood back against the solid wall, under the caper-bu= sh, unobserved and unobserving. She was like a fragment of earth, she was a liv= ing stone of the terrace, sun-bleached. She took no notice of me, who was hesitating looking down at the earth beneath. She stood back under the sun-bleached solid wall, like a stone rolled down and stayed in a crevice.<= o:p>
Her head was tied in a dark-red kerchief, but
pieces of hair, like dirty snow, quite short, stuck out over her ears. And =
she
was spinning. I wondered so much, that I could not cross towards her. She w=
as
grey, and her apron, and her dress, and her kerchief, and her hands and her
face were all sun-bleached and sun-stained, greyey, bluey, browny, like sto=
nes
and half-coloured leaves, sunny in their colourlessness. In my black coat, I
felt myself wrong, false, an outsider.
She was spinning, spontaneously, like a little
wind. Under her arm she held a distaff of dark, ripe wood, just a straight
stick with a clutch at the end, like a grasp of brown fingers full of a flu=
ff
of blackish, rusty fleece, held up near her shoulder. And her fingers were
plucking spontaneously at the strands of wool drawn down from it. And hangi=
ng near
her feet, spinning round upon a black thread, spinning busily, like a thing=
in
a gay wind, was her shuttle, her bobbin wound fat with the coarse, blackish
worsted she was making.
All the time, like motion without thought, her
fingers teased out the fleece, drawing it down to a fairly uniform thicknes=
s:
brown, old, natural fingers that worked as in a sleep, the thumb having a l=
ong
grey nail; and from moment to moment there was a quick, downward rub, betwe=
en thumb
and forefinger, of the thread that hung in front of her apron, the heavy bo=
bbin
spun more briskly, and she felt again at the fleece as she drew it down, and
she gave a twist to the thread that issued, and the bobbin spun swiftly.
Her eyes were clear as the sky, blue, empyrean,
transcendent. They were dear, but they had no looking in them. Her face was=
like
a sun-worn stone.
'You are spinning,' I said to her.
Her eyes glanced over me, making no effort of
attention.
'Yes,' she said.
She saw merely a man's figure, a stranger stan=
ding
near. I was a bit of the outside, negligible. She remained as she was, clear
and sustained like an old stone upon the hillside. She stood short and stur=
dy,
looking for the most part straight in front, unseeing, but glancing from ti=
me
to time, with a little, unconscious attention, at the thread. She was sligh=
tly
more animated than the sunshine and the stone and the motionless caper-bush
above her. Still her fingers went along the strand of fleece near her breas=
t.
'That is an old way of spinning,' I said.
'What?'
She looked up at me with eyes clear and
transcendent as the heavens. But she was slightly roused. There was the sli=
ght
motion of the eagle in her turning to look at me, a faint gleam of rapt lig=
ht
in her eyes. It was my unaccustomed Italian.
'That is an old way of spinning,' I repeated.<= o:p>
'Yes--an old way,' she repeated, as if to say =
the
words so that they should be natural to her. And I became to her merely a
transient circumstance, a man, part of the surroundings. We divided the gif=
t of
speech, that was all.
She glanced at me again, with her wonderful,
unchanging eyes, that were like the visible heavens, unthinking, or like two
flowers that are open in pure clear unconsciousness. To her I was a piece of
the environment. That was all. Her world was clear and absolute, without
consciousness of self. She was not self-conscious, because she was not aware
that there was anything in the universe except her universe. In her univers=
e I was
a stranger, a foreign signore. That I had a world of my own, other than her
own, was not conceived by her. She did not care.
So we conceive the stars. We are told that they
are other worlds. But the stars are the clustered and single gleaming light=
s in
the night-sky of our world. When I come home at night, there are the stars.
When I cease to exist as the microcosm, when I begin to think of the cosmos=
, then
the stars are other worlds. Then the macrocosm absorbs me. But the macrocos=
m is
not me. It is something which I, the microcosm, am not.
So that there is something which is unknown to=
me
and which nevertheless exists. I am finite, and my understanding has limits.
The universe is bigger than I shall ever see, in mind or spirit. There is t=
hat
which is not me.
If I say 'The planet Mars is inhabited,' I do = not know what I mean by 'inhabited', with reference to the planet Mars. I can o= nly mean that that world is not my world. I can only know there is that which is not me. I am the microcosm, but the macrocosm is that also which I am not.<= o:p>
The old woman on the terrace in the sun did not
know this. She was herself the core and centre to the world, the sun, and t=
he
single firmament. She knew that I was an inhabitant of lands which she had =
never
seen. But what of that! There were parts of her own body which she had never
seen, which physiologically she could never see. They were none the less her
own because she had never seen them. The lands she had not seen were corpor=
ate
parts of her own living body, the knowledge she had not attained was only t=
he
hidden knowledge of her own self. She was the substance of the knowledge,
whether she had the knowledge in her mind or not. There was nothing which w=
as
not herself, ultimately. Even the man, the male, was part of herself. He was
the mobile, separate part, but he was none the less herself because he was
sometimes severed from her. If every apple in the world were cut in two, the
apple would not be changed. The reality is the apple, which is just the sam=
e in
the half-apple as in the whole.
And she, the old spinning-woman, was the apple,
eternal, unchangeable, whole even in her partiality. It was this which gave=
the
wonderful clear unconsciousness to her eyes. How could she be conscious of
herself when all was herself?
She was talking to me of a sheep that had died,
but I could not understand because of her dialect. It never occurred to her
that I could not understand. She only thought me different, stupid. And she
talked on. The ewes had lived under the house, and a part was divided off f=
or the
he-goat, because the other people brought their she-goats to be covered by =
the
he-goat. But how the ewe came to die I could not make out.
Her fingers worked away all the time in a litt=
le,
half-fretful movement, yet spontaneous as butterflies leaping here and ther=
e.
She chattered rapidly on in her Italian that I could not understand, looking
meanwhile into my face, because the story roused her somewhat. Yet not a
feature moved. Her eyes remained candid and open and unconscious as the ski=
es. Only
a sharp will in them now and then seemed to gleam at me, as if to dominate =
me.
Her shuttle had caught in a dead chicory plant,
and spun no more. She did not notice. I stooped and broke off the twigs. Th=
ere
was a glint of blue on them yet. Seeing what I was doing, she merely withdr=
ew a
few inches from the plant. Her bobbin hung free.
She went on with her tale, looking at me wonde=
rfully.
She seemed like the Creation, like the beginning of the world, the first
morning. Her eyes were like the first morning of the world, so ageless.
Her thread broke. She seemed to take no notice,
but mechanically picked up the shuttle, wound up a length of worsted, conne=
cted
the ends from her wool strand, set the bobbin spinning again, and went on
talking, in her half-intimate, half-unconscious fashion, as if she were tal=
king
to her own world in me.
So she stood in the sunshine on the little
platform, old and yet like the morning, erect and solitary, sun-coloured,
sun-discoloured, whilst I at her elbow, like a piece of night and moonshine,
stood smiling into her eyes, afraid lest she should deny me existence.
Which she did. She had stopped talking, did not
look at me any more, but went on with her spinning, the brown shuttle twist=
ing
gaily. So she stood, belonging to the sunshine and the weather, taking no m=
ore
notice of me than of the dark-stained caper-bush which hung from the wall a=
bove
her head, whilst I, waiting at her side, was like the moon in the daytime s=
ky,
overshone, obliterated, in spite of my black clothes.
'How long has it taken you to do that much?' I
asked.
She waited a minute, glanced at her bobbin.
'This much? I don't know. A day or two.'
'But you do it quickly.'
She looked at me, as if suspiciously and
derisively. Then, quite suddenly, she started forward and went across the
terrace to the great blue-and-white checked cloth that was drying on the wa=
ll.
I hesitated. She had cut off her consciousness from me. So I turned and ran
away, taking the steps two at a time, to get away from her. In a moment I w=
as between
the walls, climbing upwards, hidden.
The schoolmistress had told me I should find
snowdrops behind San Tommaso. If she had not asserted such confident knowle=
dge
I should have doubted her translation of perce-neige. She meant Christmas r=
oses
all the while.
However, I went looking for snowdrops. The wal=
ls
broke down suddenly, and I was out in a grassy olive orchard, following a t=
rack
beside pieces of fallen overgrown masonry. So I came to skirt the brink of a
steep little gorge, at the bottom of which a stream was rushing down its st=
eep slant
to the lake. Here I stood to look for my snowdrops. The grassy, rocky bank =
went
down steep from my feet. I heard water tittle-tattling away in deep shadow
below. There were pale flecks in the dimness, but these, I knew, were
primroses. So I scrambled down.
Looking up, out of the heavy shadow that lay in
the cleft, I could see, right in the sky, grey rocks shining transcendent in
the pure empyrean. 'Are they so far up?' I thought. I did not dare to say, =
'Am
I so far down?' But I was uneasy. Nevertheless it was a lovely place, in the
cold shadow, complete; when one forgot the shining rocks far above, it was =
a complete,
shadowless world of shadow. Primroses were everywhere in nests of pale bloom
upon the dark, steep face of the cleft, and tongues of fern hanging out, and
here and there under the rods and twigs of bushes were tufts of wrecked Chr=
istmas
roses, nearly over, but still, in the coldest corners, the lovely buds like
handfuls of snow. There had been such crowded sumptuous tufts of Christmas
roses everywhere in the stream-gullies, during the shadow of winter, that t=
hese
few remaining flowers were hardly noticeable.
I gathered instead the primroses, that smelled=
of
earth and of the weather. There were no snowdrops. I had found the day befo=
re a
bank of crocuses, pale, fragile, lilac-coloured flowers with dark veins, pr=
icking
up keenly like myriad little lilac-coloured flames among the grass, under t=
he
olive trees. And I wanted very much to find the snowdrops hanging in the gl=
oom.
But there were not any.
I gathered a handful of primroses, then I clim=
bed
suddenly, quickly out of the deep watercourse, anxious to get back to the
sunshine before the evening fell. Up above I saw the olive trees in the sun=
ny
golden grass, and sunlit grey rocks immensely high up. I was afraid lest the
evening would fall whilst I was groping about like an otter in the damp and=
the
darkness, that the day of sunshine would be over.
Soon I was up in the sunshine again, on the tu=
rf
under the olive trees, reassured. It was the upper world of glowing light, =
and
I was safe again.
All the olives were gathered, and the mills we=
re
going night and day, making a great, acrid scent of olive oil in preparatio=
n,
by the lake. The little stream rattled down. A mule driver 'Hued!' to his m=
ules
on the Strada Vecchia. High up, on the Strada Nuova, the beautiful, new, mi=
litary
high-road, which winds with beautiful curves up the mountain-side, crossing=
the
same stream several times in clear-leaping bridges, travelling cut out of s=
heer
slope high above the lake, winding beautifully and gracefully forward to the
Austrian frontier, where it ends: high up on the lovely swinging road, in t=
he
strong evening sunshine, I saw a bullock wagon moving like a vision, though=
the
clanking of the wagon and the crack of the bullock whip responded close in =
my
ears.
Everything was clear and sun-coloured up there, clear-grey rocks partaking of the sky, tawny grass and scrub, browny-green spires of cypresses, and then the mist of grey-green olives fuming down to = the lake-side. There was no shadow, only clear sun-substance built up to the sky, a bullock wagon moving slowly in the high sunlight, along the uppermost terrace of the military road. It sat in the warm stillness of the transcendent afternoon.<= o:p>
The four o'clock steamer was creeping down the
lake from the Austrian end, creeping under the cliffs. Far away, the Verona
side, beyond the Island, lay fused in dim gold. The mountain opposite was so
still, that my heart seemed to fade in its beating as if it too would be st=
ill.
All was perfectly still, pure substance. The little steamer on the floor of=
the
world below, the mules down the road cast no shadow. They too were pure
sun-substance travelling on the surface of the sun-made world.
A cricket hopped near me. Then I remembered th=
at
it was Saturday afternoon, when a strange suspension comes over the world. =
And
then, just below me, I saw two monks walking in their garden between the na=
ked,
bony vines, walking in their wintry garden of bony vines and olive trees, t=
heir
brown cassocks passing between the brown vine-stocks, their heads bare to t=
he
sunshine, sometimes a glint of light as their feet strode from under their
skirts.
It was so still, everything so perfectly
suspended, that I felt them talking. They marched with the peculiar march of
monks, a long, loping stride, their heads together, their skirts swaying
slowly, two brown monks with hidden hands, sliding under the bony vines and
beside the cabbages, their heads always together in hidden converse. It was=
as
if I were attending with my dark soul to their inaudible undertone. All the=
time
I sat still in silence, I was one with them, a partaker, though I could hea=
r no
sound of their voices. I went with the long stride of their skirted feet, t=
hat
slid springless and noiseless from end to end of the garden, and back again.
Their hands were kept down at their sides, hidden in the long sleeves, and =
the
skirts of their robes. They did not touch each other, nor gesticulate as th=
ey
walked. There was no motion save the long, furtive stride and the heads lea=
ning
together. Yet there was an eagerness in their conversation. Almost like sha=
dow-creatures
ventured out of their cold, obscure element, they went backwards and forwar=
ds
in their wintry garden, thinking nobody could see them.
Across, above them, was the faint, rousing daz=
zle
of snow. They never looked up. But the dazzle of snow began to glow as they
walked, the wonderful, faint, ethereal flush of the long range of snow in t=
he heavens,
at evening, began to kindle. Another world was coming to pass, the cold, ra=
re
night. It was dawning in exquisite, icy rose upon the long mountain-summit
opposite. The monks walked backwards and forwards, talking, in the first
undershadow.
And I noticed that up above the snow, frail in=
the
bluish sky, a frail moon had put forth, like a thin, scalloped film of ice
floated out on the slow current of the coming night. And a bell sounded.
And still the monks were pacing backwards and
forwards, backwards and forwards, with a strange, neutral regularity.
The shadows were coming across everything, bec=
ause
of the mountains in the west. Already the olive wood where I sat was
extinguished. This was the world of the monks, the rim of pallor between ni=
ght
and day. Here they paced, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, in
the neutral, shadowless light of shadow.
Neither the flare of day nor the completeness =
of
night reached them, they paced the narrow path of the twilight, treading in=
the
neutrality of the law. Neither the blood nor the spirit spoke in them, only=
the
law, the abstraction of the average. The infinite is positive and negative.=
But
the average is only neutral. And the monks trod backward and forward down t=
he
line of neutrality.
Meanwhile, on the length of mountain-ridge, the
snow grew rosy-incandescent, like heaven breaking into blossom. After all,
eternal not-being and eternal being are the same. In the rosy snow that sho=
ne
in heaven over a darkened earth was the ecstasy of consummation. Night and =
day
are one, light and dark are one, both the same in the origin and in the iss=
ue,
both the same in the moment, of ecstasy, light fused in darkness and darkne=
ss
fused in light, as in the rosy snow above the twilight.
But in the monks it was not ecstasy, in them it
was neutrality, the under earth. Transcendent, above the shadowed, twilit e=
arth
was the rosy snow of ecstasy. But spreading far over us, down below, was th=
e neutrality
of the twilight, of the monks. The flesh neutralizing the spirit, the spirit
neutralizing the flesh, the law of the average asserted, this was the monks=
as
they paced backward and forward.
The moon climbed higher, away from the snowy,
fading ridge, she became gradually herself. Between the roots of the olive =
tree
was a rosy-tipped daisy just going to sleep. I gathered it and put it among=
the
frail, moony little bunch of primroses, so that its sleep should warm the r=
est.
Also I put in some little periwinkles, that were very blue, reminding me of=
the
eyes of the old woman.
The day was gone, the twilight was gone, and t=
he
snow was invisible as I came down to the side of the lake. Only the moon, w=
hite
and shining, was in the sky, like a woman glorying in her own loveliness as=
she
loiters superbly to the gaze of all the world, looking sometimes through th=
e fringe
of dark olive leaves, sometimes looking at her own superb, quivering body,
wholly naked in the water of the lake.
My little old woman was gone. She, all
day-sunshine, would have none of the moon. Always she must live like a bird,
looking down on all the world at once, so that it lay all subsidiary to
herself, herself the wakeful consciousness hovering over the world like a h=
awk,
like a sleep of wakefulness. And, like a bird, she went to sleep as the sha=
dows
came.
She did not know the yielding up of the senses=
and
the possession of the unknown, through the senses, which happens under a su=
perb
moon. The all-glorious sun knows none of these yieldings up. He takes his w=
ay.
And the daisies at once go to sleep. And the soul of the old spinning-woman=
also
closed up at sunset, the rest was a sleep, a cessation.
It is all so strange and varied: the dark-skin=
ned
Italians ecstatic in the night and the moon, the blue-eyed old woman ecstat=
ic
in the busy sunshine, the monks in the garden below, who are supposed to un=
ite
both, passing only in the neutrality of the average. Where, then, is the me=
eting-point:
where in mankind is the ecstasy of light and dark together, the supreme
transcendence of the afterglow, day hovering in the embrace of the coming n=
ight
like two angels embracing in the heavens, like Eurydice in the arms of Orph=
eus,
or Persephone embraced by Pluto?
Where is the supreme ecstasy in mankind, which
makes day a delight and night a delight, purpose an ecstasy and a concourse=
in
ecstasy, and single abandon of the single body and soul also an ecstasy und=
er
the moon? Where is the transcendent knowledge in our hearts, uniting sun an=
d darkness,
day and night, spirit and senses? Why do we not know that the two in
consummation are one; that each is only part; partial and alone for ever; b=
ut
that the two in consummation are perfect, beyond the range of loneliness or
solitude?
=
The
padrone came just as we were drinking coffee after dinner. It was two o'clo=
ck,
because the steamer going down the lake to Desenzano had bustled through the
sunshine, and the rocking of the water still made lights that danced up and
down upon the wall among the shadows by the piano.
The signore was very apologetic. I found him
bowing in the hall, cap in one hand, a slip of paper in the other, protesti=
ng
eagerly, in broken French, against disturbing me.
He is a little, shrivelled man, with close-cro=
pped
grey hair on his skull, and a protruding jaw, which, with his gesticulation=
s,
always makes me think of an ancient, aristocratic monkey. The signore is a =
gentleman,
and the last, shrivelled representative of his race. His only outstanding
quality, according to the villagers, is his avarice.
'Mais--mais, monsieur--je crains que--que--que=
je
vous dérange--'
He spreads wide his hands and bows, looking up=
at
me with implicit brown eyes, so ageless in his wrinkled, monkey's face, like
onyx. He loves to speak French, because then he feels grand. He has a queer,
naïve, ancient passion to be grand. As the remains of an impoverished
family, he is not much better than a well-to-do peasant. But the old spirit=
is eager
and pathetic in him.
He loves to speak French to me. He holds his c=
hin
and waits, in his anxiety for the phrase to come. Then it stammers forth, a
little rush, ending in Italian. But his pride is all on edge: we must conti=
nue in
French.
The hall is cold, yet he will not come into the
large room. This is not a courtesy visit. He is not here in his quality of
gentleman. He is only an anxious villager.
'Voyez, monsieur--cet--cet--qu'est-ce
que--qu'est-ce que veut dire cet--cela?'
He shows me the paper. It is an old scrap of
print, the picture of an American patent door-spring, with directions: 'Fas=
ten
the spring either end up. Wind it up. Never unwind.'
It is laconic and American. The signore watche=
s me
anxiously, waiting, holding his chin. He is afraid he ought to understand my
English. I stutter off into French, confounded by the laconic phrases of th=
e directions.
Nevertheless, I make it clear what the paper says.
He cannot believe me. It must say something el=
se
as well. He has not done anything contrary to these directions. He is most
distressed.
'Mais, monsieur, la porte--la porte--elle ferme
pas--elle s'ouvre--'
He skipped to the door and showed me the whole
tragic mystery. The door, it is shut--ecco! He releases the catch, and
pouf!--she flies open. She flies open. It is quite final.
The brown, expressionless, ageless eyes, that
remind me of a monkey's, or of onyx, wait for me. I feel the responsibility
devolve upon me. I am anxious.
'Allow me,' I said, 'to come and look at the
door.'
I feel uncomfortably like Sherlock Holmes. The
padrone protests--non, monsieur, non, cela vous dérange--that he only
wanted me to translate the words, he does not want to disturb me. Neverthel=
ess,
we go. I feel I have the honour of mechanical England in my hands.
The Casa di Paoli is quite a splendid place. I=
t is
large, pink and cream, rising up to a square tower in the centre, throwing =
off
a painted loggia at either extreme of the façade. It stands a little=
way
back from the road, just above the lake, and grass grows on the bay of cobb=
led pavement
in front. When at night the moon shines full on this pale façade, the
theatre is far outdone in staginess.
The hall is spacious and beautiful, with great
glass doors at either end, through which shine the courtyards where bamboos
fray the sunlight and geraniums glare red. The floor is of soft red tiles,
oiled and polished like glass, the walls are washed grey-white, the ceiling=
is painted
with pink roses and birds. This is half-way between the outer world and the
interior world, it partakes of both.
The other rooms are dark and ugly. There is no
mistake about their being interior. They are like furnished vaults. The
red-tiled, polished floor in the drawing-room seems cold and clammy, the
carved, cold furniture stands in its tomb, the air has been darkened and
starved to death, it is perished.
Outside, the sunshine runs like birds singing.=
Up
above, the grey rocks build the sun-substance in heaven, San Tommaso guards=
the
terrace. But inside here is the immemorial shadow.
Again I had to think of the Italian soul, how =
it
is dark, cleaving to the eternal night. It seems to have become so, at the
Renaissance, after the Renaissance.
In the Middle Ages Christian Europe seems to h=
ave
been striving, out of a strong, primitive, animal nature, towards the
self-abnegation and the abstraction of Christ. This brought about by itself=
a
great sense of completeness. The two halves were joined by the effort towar=
ds
the one as yet unrealized. There was a triumphant joy in the Whole.
But the movement all the time was in one
direction, towards the elimination of the flesh. Man wanted more and more to
become purely free and abstract. Pure freedom was in pure abstraction. The =
Word
was absolute. When man became as the Word, a pure law, then he was free.
But when this conclusion was reached, the move=
ment
broke. Already Botticelli painted Aphrodite, queen of the senses, supreme a=
long
with Mary, Queen of Heaven. And Michelangelo suddenly turned back on the wh=
ole
Christian movement, back to the flesh. The flesh was supreme and god-like, =
in
the oneness of the flesh, in the oneness of our physical being, we are one =
with
God, with the Father. God the Father created man in the flesh, in His own
image. Michelangelo swung right back to the old Mosaic position. Christ did=
not
exist. To Michelangelo there was no salvation in the spirit. There was God =
the
Father, the Begetter, the Author of all flesh. And there was the inexorable=
law
of the flesh, the Last Judgement, the fall of the immortal flesh into Hell.=
This has been the Italian position ever since.=
The
mind, that is the Light; the senses, they are the Darkness. Aphrodite, the
queen of the senses, she, born of the sea-foam, is the luminousness of the
gleaming senses, the phosphorescence of the sea, the senses become a consci=
ous aim
unto themselves; she is the gleaming darkness, she is the luminous night, s=
he
is goddess of destruction, her white, cold fire consumes and does not creat=
e.
This is the soul of the Italian since the
Renaissance. In the sunshine he basks asleep, gathering up a vintage into h=
is
veins which in the night-time he will distil into ecstatic sensual delight,=
the
intense, white-cold ecstasy of darkness and moonlight, the raucous, cat-lik=
e, destructive
enjoyment, the senses conscious and crying out in their consciousness in the
pangs of the enjoyment, which has consumed the southern nation, perhaps all=
the
Latin races, since the Renaissance.
It is a lapse back, back to the original posit=
ion,
the Mosaic position, of the divinity of the flesh, and the absoluteness of =
its
laws. But also there is the Aphrodite-worship. The flesh, the senses, are n=
ow self-conscious.
They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation. They seek the maxim=
um
of sensation. They seek the reduction of the flesh, the flesh reacting upon
itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, a phosphorescent transfiguration in ecstas=
y.
The mind, all the time, subserves the senses. =
As
in a cat, there is subtlety and beauty and the dignity of the darkness. But=
the
fire is cold, as in the eyes of a cat, it is a green fire. It is fluid, ele=
ctric.
At its maximum it is the white ecstasy of phosphorescence, in the darkness,
always amid the darkness, as under the black fur of a cat. Like the feline
fire, it is destructive, always consuming and reducing to the ecstasy of
sensation, which is the end in itself.
There is the I, always the I. And the mind is
submerged, overcome. But the senses are superbly arrogant. The senses are t=
he
absolute, the god-like. For I can never have another man's senses. These are
me, my senses absolutely me. And all that is can only come to me through my=
senses.
So that all is me, and is administered unto me. The rest, that is not me, is
nothing, it is something which is nothing. So the Italian, through centurie=
s,
has avoided our Northern purposive industry, because it has seemed to him a
form of nothingness.
It is the spirit of the tiger. The tiger is the
supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute. This is the
&=
nbsp;
Tiger, tiger burning bright, In the forests of=
the
night
of Blake. It does indeed burn within the darkn=
ess.
But the essential fate, of the tiger is cold and white, a white ecstasy. It=
is
seen in the white eyes of the blazing cat. This is the supremacy of the fle=
sh,
which devours all, and becomes transfigured into a magnificent brindled fla=
me,
a burning bush indeed.
This is one way of transfiguration into the
eternal flame, the transfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh. Like the t=
iger
in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until this fuel blazes=
up in
me to the consummate fire of the Infinite. In the ecstacy I am Infinite, I
become again the great Whole, I am a flame of the One White Flame which is =
the
Infinite, the Eternal, the Originator, the Creator, the Everlasting God. In=
the
sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become
again the eternal Fire, I am infinite.
This is the way of the tiger; the tiger is
supreme. His head is flattened as if there were some great weight on the ha=
rd
skull, pressing, pressing, pressing the mind into a stone, pressing it down=
under
the blood, to serve the blood. It is the subjugate instrument of the blood.=
The
will lies above the loins, as it were at the base of the spinal column, the=
re
is the living will, the living mind of the tiger, there in the slender loin=
s.
That is the node, there in the spinal cord.
So the Italian, so the soldier. This is the sp=
irit
of the soldier. He, too, walks with his consciousness concentrated at the b=
ase
of the spine, his mind subjugated, submerged. The will of the soldier is the
will of the great cats, the will to ecstasy in destruction, in absorbing li=
fe into
his own life, always his own life supreme, till the ecstasy burst into the
white, eternal flame, the Infinite, the Flame of the Infinite. Then he is s=
atisfied,
he has been consummated in the Infinite.
This is the true soldier, this is the immortal
climax of the senses. This is the acme of the flesh, the one superb tiger w=
ho
has devoured all living flesh, and now paces backwards and forwards in the =
cage
of its own infinite, glaring with blind, fierce, absorbed eyes at that whic=
h is
nothingness to it.
The eyes of the tiger cannot see, except with =
the
light from within itself, by the light of its own desire. Its own white, co=
ld
light is so fierce that the other warm light of day is outshone, it is not,=
it
does not exist. So the white eyes of the tiger gleam to a point of concentr=
ated
vision, upon that which does not exist. Hence its terrifying sightlessness.=
The
something which I know I am is hollow space to its vision, offers no resist=
ance
to the tiger's looking. It can only see of me that which it knows I am, a
scent, a resistance, a voluptuous solid, a struggling warm violence that it
holds overcome, a running of hot blood between its Jaws, a delicious pang of
live flesh in the mouth. This it sees. The rest is not.
And what is the rest, that which is-not the ti=
ger,
that which the tiger is-not? What is this?
What is that which parted ways with the terrif=
ic
eagle-like angel of the senses at the Renaissance? The Italians said, 'We a=
re
one in the Father: we will go back.' The Northern races said, 'We are one in
Christ: we will go on.'
What is the consummation in Christ? Man knows
satisfaction when he surpasses all conditions and becomes, to himself, cons=
ummate
in the Infinite, when he reaches a state of infinity. In the supreme ecstas=
y of
the flesh, the Dionysic ecstasy, he reaches this state. But how does it com=
e to
pass in Christ?
It is not the mystic ecstasy. The mystic ecsta=
sy
is a special sensual ecstasy, it is the senses satisfying themselves with a
self-created object. It is self-projection into the self, the sensuous self
satisfied in a projected self.
&=
nbsp;
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.=
&=
nbsp;
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for <=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> theirs is the kin=
gdom
of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven is this Infinite into wh=
ich
we may be consummated, then, if we are poor in spirit or persecuted for
righteousness' sake.
&=
nbsp;
Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other=
also.
&=
nbsp;
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that <=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> hate you, and pra=
y for
them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
&=
nbsp;
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is <=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> perfect.
To be perfect, to be one with God, to be infin=
ite
and eternal, what shall we do? We must turn the other cheek, and love our
enemies.
Christ is the lamb which the eagle swoops down
upon, the dove taken by the hawk, the deer which the tiger devours.
What then, if a man come to me with a sword, to
kill me, and I do not resist him, but suffer his sword and the death from h=
is
sword, what am I? Am I greater than he, am I stronger than he? Do I know a
consummation in the Infinite, I, the prey, beyond the tiger who devours me?=
By
my non-resistance I have robbed him of his consummation. For a tiger knows =
no
consummation unless he kill a violated and struggling prey. There is no
consummation merely for the butcher, nor for a hyena. I can rob the tiger of
his ecstasy, his consummation, his very my non-resistance. In my non-resist=
ance
the tiger is infinitely destroyed.
But I, what am I? 'Be ye therefore perfect.' Wherein am I perfect in this submission? Is there an affirmation, behind my negation, other than the tiger's affirmation of his own glorious infinity?<= o:p>
What is the Oneness to which I subscribe, I who
offer no resistance in the flesh?
Have I only the negative ecstasy of being
devoured, of becoming thus part of the Lord, the Great Moloch, the superb a=
nd
terrible God? I have this also, this subject ecstasy of consummation. But is
there nothing else?
The Word of the tiger is: my senses are suprem=
ely
Me, and my senses are God in me. But Christ said: God is in the others, who=
are
not-me. In all the multitude of the others is God, and this is the great Go=
d,
greater than the God which is Me. God is that which is Not-Me.
And this is the Christian truth, a truth
complementary to the pagan affirmation: 'God is that which is Me.'
God is that which is Not-Me. In realizing the
Not-Me I am consummated, I become infinite. In turning the other cheek I su=
bmit
to God who is greater than I am, other than I am, who is in that which is n=
ot
me. This is the supreme consummation. To achieve this consummation I love m=
y neighbour
as myself. My neighbour is all that is not me. And if I love all this, have=
I
not become one with the Whole, is not my consummation complete, am I not one
with God, have I not achieved the Infinite?
After the Renaissance the Northern races conti=
nued
forward to put into practice this religious belief in the God which is Not-=
Me.
Even the idea of the saving of the soul was really negative: it was a quest=
ion
of escaping damnation. The Puritans made the last great attack on the God w=
ho
is Me. When they beheaded Charles the First, the king by Divine Right, they
destroyed, symbolically, for ever, the supremacy of the Me who am the image=
of
God, the Me of the flesh, of the senses, Me, the tiger burning bright, me t=
he
king, the Lord, the aristocrat, me who am divine because I am the body of G=
od.
After the Puritans, we have been gathering data
for the God who is not-me. When Pope said 'Know then thyself, presume not G=
od
to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man,' he was stating the propositio=
n: A
man is right, he is consummated, when he is seeking to know Man, the great =
abstract;
and the method of knowledge is by the analysis, which is the destruction, of
the Self. The proposition up to that time was, a man is the epitome of the =
universe.
He has only to express himself, to fulfil his desires, to satisfy his supre=
me
senses.
Now the change has come to pass. The individual
man is a limited being, finite in himself. Yet he is capable of apprehending
that which is not himself. 'The proper study of mankind is Man.' This is
another way of saying, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' Which me=
ans,
a man is consummated in his knowledge of that which is not himself, the abs=
tract
Man. Therefore the consummation lies in seeking that other, in knowing that
other. Whereas the Stuart proposition was: 'A man is consummated in express=
ing
his own Self.'
The new spirit developed into the empirical and
ideal systems of philosophy. Everything that is, is consciousness. And in e=
very
man's consciousness, Man is great and illimitable, whilst the individual is=
small
and fragmentary. Therefore the individual must sink himself in the great wh=
ole
of Mankind.
This is the spirituality of Shelley, the
perfectibility of man. This is the way in which we fulfil the commandment, =
'Be
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' T=
his
is Saint Paul's, 'Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am
known.'
When a man knows everything and understands
everything, then he will be perfect, and life will be blessed. He is capabl=
e of
knowing everything and understanding everything. Hence he is justified in h=
is
hope of infinite freedom and blessedness.
The great inspiration of the new religion was =
the
inspiration of freedom. When I have submerged or distilled away my concrete
body and my limited desires, when I am like the skylark dissolved in the sky
yet filling heaven and earth with song, then I am perfect, consummated in t=
he
Infinite. When I am all that is not-me, then I have perfect liberty, I know=
no
limitation. Only I must eliminate the Self.
It was this religious belief which expressed
itself in science. Science was the analysis of the outer self, the elementa=
ry
substance of the self, the outer world. And the machine is the great
reconstructed selfless power. Hence the active worship to which we were giv=
en
at the end of the last century, the worship of mechanized force.
Still we continue to worship that which is not=
-me,
the Selfless world, though we would fain bring in the Self to help us. We a=
re
shouting the Shakespearean advice to warriors: 'Then simulate the action of=
the
tiger.' We are trying to become again the tiger, the supreme, imperial, war=
like
Self. At the same time our ideal is the selfless world of equity.
We continue to give service to the Selfless Go=
d,
we worship the great selfless oneness in the spirit, oneness in service of =
the
great humanity, that which is Not-Me. This selfless God is He who works for=
all
alike, without consideration. And His image is the machine which dominates =
and
cows us, we cower before it, we run to serve it. For it works for all human=
ity
alike.
At the same time, we want to be warlike tigers.
That is the horror: the confusing of the two ends. We warlike tigers fit
ourselves out with machinery, and our blazing tiger wrath is emitted throug=
h a
machine. It is a horrible thing to see machines hauled about by tigers, at =
the
mercy of tigers, forced to express the tiger. It is a still more horrible t=
hing
to see tigers caught up and entangled and torn in machinery. It is horrible=
, a
chaos beyond chaos, an unthinkable hell.
The tiger is not wrong, the machine is not wro=
ng,
but we, liars, lip-servers, duplicate fools, we are unforgivably wrong. We =
say:
'I will be a tiger because I love mankind; out of love for other people, ou=
t of
selfless service to that which is not me, I will even become a tiger.' Whic=
h is
absurd. A tiger devours because it is consummated in devouring, it achieves=
its
absolute self in devouring. It does not devour because its unselfish consci=
ence
bids it do so, for the sake of the other deer and doves, or the other tiger=
s.
Having arrived at the one extreme of mechanical
selflessness, we immediately embrace the other extreme of the transcendent
Self. But we try to be both at once. We do not cease to be the one before we
become the other. We do not even play the roles in turn. We want to be the =
tiger
and the deer both in one. Which is just ghastly nothingness. We try to say,
'The tiger is the lamb and the lamb is the tiger.' Which is nil, nihil, nou=
ght.
The padrone took me into a small room almost
contained in the thickness of the wall. There the Signora's dark eyes glared
with surprise and agitation, seeing me intrude. She is younger than the
Signore, a mere village tradesman's daughter, and, alas, childless.
It was quite true, the door stood open. Madame=
put
down the screw-driver and drew herself erect. Her eyes were a flame of
excitement. This question of a door-spring that made the door fly open when=
it
should make it close roused a vivid spark in her soul. It was she who was w=
restling
with the angel of mechanism.
She was about forty years old, and flame-like =
and
fierily sad. I think she did not know she was sad. But her heart was eaten =
by
some impotence in her life.
She subdued her flame of life to the little
padrone. He was strange and static, scarcely human, ageless, like a monkey.=
She
supported him with her flame, supported his static, ancient, beautiful form,
kept it intact. But she did not believe in him.
Now, the Signora Gemma held her husband togeth=
er
whilst he undid the screw that fixed the spring. If they had been alone, she
would have done it, pretending to be under his direction. But since I was
there, he did it himself; a grey, shaky, highly-bred little gentleman, stan=
ding
on a chair with a long screw-driver, whilst his wife stood behind him, her =
hands
half-raised to catch him if he should fall. Yet he was strangely absolute, =
with
a strange, intact force in his breeding.
They had merely adjusted the strong spring to =
the
shut door, and stretched it slightly in fastening it to the door-jamb, so t=
hat
it drew together the moment the latch was released, and the door flew open.=
We soon made it right. There was a moment of
anxiety, the screw was fixed. And the door swung to. They were delighted. T=
he
Signora Gemma, who roused in me an electric kind of melancholy, clasped her
hands together in ecstasy as the door swiftly shut itself.
'Ecco!' she cried, in her vibrating, almost
warlike woman's voice: 'Ecco!'
Her eyes were aflame as they looked at the doo=
r.
She ran forward to try it herself. She opened the door expectantly, eagerly.
Pouf!--it shut with a bang.
'Ecco!' she cried, her voice quivering like
bronze, overwrought but triumphant.
I must try also. I opened the door. Pouf! It s=
hut
with a bang. We all exclaimed with joy.
Then the Signor di Paoli turned to me, with a
gracious, bland, formal grin. He turned his back slightly on the woman, and
stood holding his chin, his strange horse-mouth grinning almost pompously at
me. It was an affair of gentlemen. His wife disappeared as if dismissed. Th=
en
the padrone broke into cordial motion. We must drink.
He would show me the estate. I had already seen
the house. We went out by the glass doors on the left, into the domestic
courtyard.
It was lower than the gardens round it, and the
sunshine came through the trellised arches on to the flagstones, where the
grass grew fine and green in the cracks, and all was deserted and spacious =
and
still. There were one or two orange-tubs in the light.
Then I heard a noise, and there in the corner,
among all the pink geraniums and the sunshine, the Signora Gemma sat laughi=
ng
with a baby. It was a fair, bonny thing of eighteen months. The Signora was=
concentrated
upon the child as he sat, stolid and handsome, in his little white cap, per=
ched
on a bench picking at the pink geraniums.
She laughed, bent forward her dark face out of=
the
shadow, swift into a glitter of sunshine near the sunny baby, laughing again
excitedly, making mother-noises. The child took no notice of her. She caught
him swiftly into the shadow, and they were obscured; her dark head was agai=
nst
the baby's wool jacket, she was kissing his neck, avidly, under the creeper
leaves. The pink geraniums still frilled joyously in the sunshine.
I had forgotten the padrone. Suddenly I turned=
to
him inquiringly.
'The Signora's nephew,' he explained, briefly,
curtly, in a small voice. It was as if he were ashamed, or too deeply
chagrined.
The woman had seen us watching, so she came ac=
ross
the sunshine with the child, laughing, talking to the baby, not coming out =
of
her own world to us, not acknowledging us, except formally.
The Signor Pietro, queer old horse, began to l=
augh
and neigh at the child, with strange, rancorous envy. The child twisted its
face to cry. The Signora caught it away, dancing back a few yards from her =
old
husband.
'I am a stranger,' I said to her across the
distance. 'He is afraid of a stranger.'
'No, no,' she cried back, her eyes flaring up.=
'It
is the man. He always cries at the men.'
She advanced again, laughing and roused, with =
the
child in her arms. Her husband stood as if overcast, obliterated. She and I=
and
the baby, in the sunshine, laughed a moment. Then I heard the neighing, for=
ced
laugh of the old man. He would not be left out. He seemed to force himself =
forward.
He was bitter, acrid with chagrin and obliteration, struggling as if to ass=
ert
his own existence. He was nullified.
The woman also was uncomfortable. I could see = she wanted to go away with the child, to enjoy him alone, with palpitating, pai= ned enjoyment. It was her brother's boy. And the old padrone was as if nullifie= d by her ecstasy over the baby. He held his chin, gloomy, fretful, unimportant.<= o:p>
He was annulled. I was startled when I realized
it. It was as though his reality were not attested till he had a child. It =
was
as if his raison d'être had been to have a son. And he had no childre=
n.
Therefore he had no raison d'être. He was nothing, a shadow that vani=
shes
into nothing. And he was ashamed, consumed by his own nothingness.
I was startled. This, then, is the secret of
Italy's attraction for us, this phallic worship. To the Italian the phallus=
is
the symbol of individual creative immortality, to each man his own Godhead.=
The
child is but the evidence of the Godhead.
And this is why the Italian is attractive, sup=
ple,
and beautiful, because he worships the Godhead in the flesh. We envy him, we
feel pale and insignificant beside him. Yet at the same time we feel superi=
or
to him, as if he were a child and we adult.
Wherein are we superior? Only because we went
beyond the phallus in the search of the Godhead, the creative origin. And we
found the physical forces and the secrets of science.
We have exalted Man far above the man who is in
each one of us. Our aim is a perfect humanity, a perfect and equable human
consciousness, selfless. And we obtain it in the subjection, reduction,
analysis, and destruction of the Self. So on we go, active in science and
mechanics, and social reform.
But we have exhausted ourselves in the process=
. We
have found great treasures, and we are now impotent to use them. So we have
said: 'What good are these treasures, they are vulgar nothings.' We have sa=
id:
'Let us go back from this adventuring, let us enjoy our own flesh, like the=
Italian.'
But our habit of life, our very constitution, prevents our being quite like=
the
Italian. The phallus will never serve us as a Godhead, because we do not
believe in it: no Northern race does. Therefore, either we set ourselves to
serve our children, calling them 'the future', or else we turn perverse and
destructive, give ourselves joy in the destruction of the flesh.
The children are not the future. The living tr=
uth
is the future. Time and people do not make the future. Retrogression is not=
the
future. Fifty million children growing up purposeless, with no purpose save=
the
attainment of their own individual desires, these are not the future, they =
are
only a disintegration of the past. The future is in living, growing truth, =
in
advancing fulfilment.
But it is no good. Whatever we do, it is within
the greater will towards self-reduction and a perfect society, analysis on =
the
one hand, and mechanical construction on the other. This will dominates us =
as a
whole, and until the whole breaks down, the will must persist. So that now,=
continuing
in the old, splendid will for a perfect selfless humanity, we have become
inhuman and unable to help ourselves, we are but attributes of the great
mechanized society we have created on our way to perfection. And this great
mechanized society, being selfless, is pitiless. It works on mechanically a=
nd
destroys us, it is our master and our God.
It is past the time to leave off, to cease
entirely from what we are doing, and from what we have been doing for hundr=
eds
of years. It is past the time to cease seeking one Infinite, ignoring, stri=
ving
to eliminate the other. The Infinite is twofold, the Father and the Son, the
Dark and the Light, the Senses and the Mind, the Soul and the Spirit, the s=
elf
and the not-self, the Eagle and the Dove, the Tiger and the Lamb. The
consummation of man is twofold, in the Self and in Selflessness. By great
retrogression back to the source of darkness in me, the Self, deep in the
senses, I arrive at the Original, Creative Infinite. By projection forth fr=
om
myself, by the elimination of my absolute sensual self, I arrive at the
Ultimate Infinite, Oneness in the Spirit. They are two Infinites, twofold
approach to God. And man must know both.
But he must never confuse them. They are etern=
ally
separate. The lion shall never lie down with the lamb. The lion eternally s=
hall
devour the lamb, the lamb eternally shall be devoured. Man knows the great =
consummation
in the flesh, the sensual ecstasy, and that is eternal. Also the spiritual
ecstasy of unanimity, that is eternal. But the two are separate and never t=
o be
confused. To neutralize the one with the other is unthinkable, an abominati=
on.
Confusion is horror and nothingness.
The two Infinites, negative and positive, they=
are
always related, but they are never identical. They are always opposite, but
there exists a relation between them. This is the Holy Ghost of the Christi=
an
Trinity. And it is this, the relation which is established between the two =
Infinites,
the two natures of God, which we have transgressed, forgotten, sinned again=
st.
The Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son. I may know the Son and de=
ny
the Father, or know the Father and deny the Son. But that which I may never
deny, and which I have denied, is the Holy Ghost which relates the dual
Infinites into One Whole, which relates and keeps distinct the dual natures=
of
God. To say that the two are one, this is the inadmissible lie. The two are
related, by the intervention of the Third, into a Oneness.
There are two ways, there is not only One. The=
re
are two opposite ways to consummation. But that which relates them, like the
base of the triangle, this is the constant, the Absolute, this makes the
Ultimate Whole. And in the Holy Spirit I know the Two Ways, the Two Infinit=
es, the
Two Consummations. And knowing the Two, I admit the Whole. But excluding On=
e, I
exclude the Whole. And confusing the two, I make nullity nihil.
'Mais,' said the Signore, starting from his sc=
ene
of ignominy, where his wife played with another man's child, 'mais--voulez-=
vous
vous promener dans mes petites terres?'
It came out fluently, he was so much roused in
self-defence and self-assertion.
We walked under the pergola of bony vine-stock=
s,
secure in the sunshine within the walls, only the long mountain, parallel w=
ith
us, looking in.
I said how I liked the big vine-garden, I asked
when it ended. The pride of the padrone came back with a click. He pointed =
me
to the terrace, to the great shut lemon-houses above. They were all his.
But--he shrugged his Italian shoulders--it was nothing, just a little garde=
n,
vous savez, monsieur. I protested it was beautiful, that I loved it, and th=
at
it seemed to me very large indeed. He admitted that today, perhaps, it was
beautiful.
'Perchè--parce que--il fait un tempo--c=
osì--très
bell'--très beau, ecco!'
He alighted on the word beau hurriedly, like a
bird coming to ground with a little bounce.
The terraces of the garden are held up to the =
sun,
the sun falls full upon them, they are like a vessel slanted up, to catch t=
he
superb, heavy light. Within the walls we are remote, perfect, moving in hea=
vy
spring sunshine, under the bony avenue of vines. The padrone makes little e=
xclamatory
noises that mean nothing, and teaches me the names of vegetables. The land =
is
rich and black.
Opposite us, looking down on our security, is =
the
long, arched mountain of snow. We climbed one flight of steps, and we could=
see
the little villages on the opposite side of the lake. We climbed again, and
could see the water rippling.
We came to a great stone building that I had
thought was a storehouse, for open-air storage, because the walls are open
halfway up, showing the darkness inside and the corner pillar very white and
square and distinct in front of it.
Entering carelessly into the dimness, I starte=
d,
for at my feet was a great floor of water, clear and green in its obscurity,
going down between the walls, a reservoir in the gloom. The Signore laughed=
at
my surprise. It was for irrigating the land, he said. It stank, slightly, w=
ith
a raw smell; otherwise, I said, what a wonderful bath it would make. The old
Signore gave his little neighing laugh at the idea.
Then we climbed into a great loft of leaves, r=
uddy
brown, stored in a great bank under the roof, seeming to give off a little =
red
heat, as they gave off the lovely perfume of the hills. We passed through, =
and stood
at the foot of the lemon-house. The big, blind building rose high in the
sunshine before us.
All summer long, upon the mountain slopes stee=
p by
the lake, stands the rows of naked pillars rising out of the green foliage =
like
ruins of temples: white, square pillars of masonry, standing forlorn in the=
ir colonnades
and squares, rising up the mountain-sides here and there, as if they remain=
ed
from some great race that had once worshipped here. And still, in the winte=
r,
some are seen, standing away in lonely places where the sun streams full, g=
rey
rows of pillars rising out of a broken wall, tier above tier, naked to the =
sky,
forsaken.
They are the lemon plantations, and the pillars
are to support the heavy branches of the trees, but finally to act as
scaffolding of the great wooden houses that stand blind and ugly, covering =
the
lemon trees in the winter.
In November, when cold winds came down and snow
had fallen on the mountains, from out of the storehouses the men were carry=
ing
timber, and we heard the clang of falling planks. Then, as we walked along =
the military
road on the mountain-side, we saw below, on the top of the lemon gardens, l=
ong,
thin poles laid from pillar to pillar, and we heard the two men talking and
singing as they walked across perilously, placing the poles. In their clumsy
zoccoli they strode easily across, though they had twenty or thirty feet to
fall if they slipped. But the mountain-side, rising steeply, seemed near, a=
nd
above their heads the rocks glowed high into the sky, so that the sense of
elevation must have been taken away. At any rate, they went easily from
pillar-summit to pillar-summit, with a great cave of space below. Then again
was the rattle and clang of planks being laid in order, ringing from the mo=
untain-side
over the blue lake, till a platform of timber, old and brown, projected from
the mountain-side, a floor when seen from above, a hanging roof when seen f=
rom
below. And we, on the road above, saw the men sitting easily on this flimsy
hanging platform, hammering the planks. And all day long the sound of hamme=
ring
echoed among the rocks and olive woods, and came, a faint, quick concussion=
, to
the men on the boats far out. When the roofs were on they put in the fronts,
blocked in between the white pillars withhold, dark wood, in roughly made
panels. And here and there, at irregular intervals, was a panel of glass, p=
ane overlapping
pane in the long strip of narrow window. So that now these enormous, unsigh=
tly
buildings bulge out on the mountain-sides, rising in two or three receding
tiers, blind, dark, sordid-looking places.
In the morning I often lie in bed and watch the
sunrise. The lake lies dim and milky, the mountains are dark blue at the ba=
ck,
while over them the sky gushes and glistens with light. At a certain place =
on
the mountain ridge the light burns gold, seems to fuse a little groove on t=
he
hill's rim. It fuses and fuses at this point, till of a sudden it comes, the
intense, molten, living light. The mountains melt suddenly, the light steps
down, there is a glitter, a spangle, a clutch of spangles, a great unbearab=
le
sun-track flashing across the milky lake, and the light falls on my face. T=
hen,
looking aside, I hear the little slotting noise which tells me they are ope=
ning
the lemon gardens, a long panel here and there, a long slot of darkness at
irregular intervals between the brown wood and the glass stripes.
'Voulez-vous'--the Signore bows me in with
outstretched hand--'voulez-vous entrer, monsieur?'
I went into the lemon-house, where the poor th=
rees
seem to mope in the darkness. It is an immense, dark, cold place. Tall lemon
trees, heavy with half-visible fruit, crowd together, and rise in the gloom.
They look like ghosts in the darkness of the underworld, stately, and as if=
in
life, but only grand shadows of themselves. And lurking here and there, I s=
ee
one of the pillars, But he, too, seems a shadow, not one of the dazzling wh=
ite
fellows I knew. Here we are trees, men, pillars, the dark earth, the sad bl=
ack
paths, shut in in this enormous box. It is true, there are long strips of
window and slots of space, so that the front is striped, and an occasional =
beam
of light fingers the leaves of an enclosed tree and the sickly round lemons.
But it is nevertheless very gloomy.
'But it is much colder in here than outside,' I
said.
'Yes,' replied the Signore, 'now. But at night=
--I
think--'
I almost wished it were night to try. I wanted=
to
imagine the trees cosy. They seemed now in the underworld. Between the lemon
trees, beside the path, were little orange trees, and dozens of oranges han=
ging
like hot coals in the twilight. When I warm my hands at them the Signore br=
eaks
me off one twig after another, till I have a bunch of burning oranges among
dark leaves, a heavy bouquet. Looking down the Hades of the lemon-house, the
many ruddy-clustered oranges beside the path remind me of the lights of a
village along the lake at night, while the pale lemons above are the stars.
There is a subtle, exquisite scent of lemon flowers. Then I notice a citron=
. He
hangs heavy and bloated upon so small a tree, that he seems a dark green
enormity. There is a great host of lemons overhead, half-visible, a swarm of
ruddy oranges by the paths, and here and there a fat citron. It is almost l=
ike
being under the sea.
At the corners of the path were round little
patches of ash and stumps of charred wood, where fires had been kindled ins=
ide
the house on cold nights. For during the second and third weeks in January =
the
snow came down so low on the mountains that, after climbing for an hour, I
found myself in a snow lane, and saw olive orchards on lawns of snow.
The padrone says that all lemons and sweet ora=
nges
are grafted on a bitter-orange stock. The plants raised from seed, lemon and
sweet orange, fell prey to disease, so the cultivators found it safe only t=
o raise
the native bitter orange, and then graft upon it.
And the maestra--she is the schoolmistress, who
wears black gloves while she teaches us Italian--says that the lemon was
brought by St Francis of Assisi, who came to the Garda here and founded a
church and a monastery. Certainly the church of San Francesco is very old a=
nd
dilapidated, and its cloisters have some beautiful and original carvings of
leaves and fruit upon the pillars, which seem to connect San Francesco with=
the
lemon. I imagine him wandering here with a lemon in his pocket. Perhaps he =
made
lemonade in the hot summer. But Bacchus had been before him in the drink tr=
ade.
Looking at his lemons, the Signore sighed. I t=
hink
he hates them. They are leaving him in the lurch. They are sold retail at a
halfpenny each all the year round. 'But that is as dear, or dearer, than in
England,' I say. 'Ah, but,' says the maestra, 'that is because your lemons =
are outdoor
fruit from Sicily. Però--one of our lemons is as good as two from
elsewhere.'
It is true these lemons have an exquisite
fragrance and perfume, but whether their force as lemons is double that of =
an
ordinary fruit is a question. Oranges are sold at fourpence halfpenny the
kilo--it comes about five for twopence, small ones. The citrons are sold al=
so
by weight in Salò for the making of that liqueur known as 'Cedro'. O=
ne
citron fetches sometimes a shilling or more, but then the demand is necessa=
rily
small. So that it is evident, from these figures, the Lago di Garda cannot
afford to grow its lemons much longer. The gardens are already many of them=
in
ruins, and still more 'Da Vendere'.
We went out of the shadow of the lemon-house o=
n to
the roof of the section below us. When we came to the brink of the roof I s=
at
down. The padrone stood behind me, a shabby, shaky little figure on his roo=
f in
the sky, a little figure of dilapidation, dilapidated as the lemon-houses
themselves.
We were always level with the mountain-snow
opposite. A film of pure blue was on the hills to the right and the left. T=
here
had been a wind, but it was still now. The water breathed an iridescent dus=
t on
the far shore, where the villages were groups of specks.
On the low level of the world, on the lake, an
orange-sailed boat leaned slim to the dark-blue water, which had flecks of
foam. A woman went down-hill quickly, with two goats and a sheep. Among the
olives a man was whistling.
'Voyez,' said the padrone, with distant, perfe=
ct
melancholy. 'There was once a lemon garden also there--you see the short
pillars, cut off to make a pergola for the vine. Once there were twice as m=
any
lemons as now. Now we must have vine instead. From that piece of land I had=
two
hundred lire a year, in lemons. From the vine I have only eighty.'
'But wine is a valuable crop,' I said.
'Ah--così-così! For a man who gr=
ows
much. For me--poco, poco--peu.'
Suddenly his face broke into a smile of profou=
nd
melancholy, almost a grin, like a gargoyle. It was the real Italian melanch=
oly,
very deep, static.
'Vous voyez, monsieur--the lemon, it is all the
year, all the year. But the vine--one crop--?'
He lifts his shoulders and spreads his hands w=
ith
that gesture of finality and fatality, while his face takes the blank, agel=
ess
look of misery, like a monkey's. There is no hope. There is the present. Ei=
ther
that is enough, the present, or there is nothing.
I sat and looked at the lake. It was beautiful=
as
paradise, as the first creation. On the shores were the ruined lemon-pillars
standing out in melancholy, the clumsy, enclosed lemon-houses seemed
ramshackle, bulging among vine stocks and olive trees. The villages, too,
clustered upon their churches, seemed to belong to the past. They seemed to=
be lingering
in bygone centuries.
'But it is very beautiful,' I protested. 'In
England--'
'Ah, in England,' exclaimed the padrone, the s=
ame
ageless, monkey-like grin of fatality, tempered by cunning, coming on his f=
ace,
'in England you have the wealth--les richesses--you have the mineral coal a=
nd
the machines, vous savez. Here we have the sun--'
He lifted his withered hand to the sky, to the
wonderful source of that blue day, and he smiled, in histrionic triumph. But
his triumph was only histrionic. The machines were more to his soul than the
sun. He did not know these mechanisms, their great, human-contrived, inhuman
power, and he wanted to know them. As for the sun, that is common property,=
and
no man is distinguished by it. He wanted machines, machine production, mone=
y,
and human power. He wanted to know the joy of man who has got the earth in =
his
grip, bound it up with railways, burrowed it with iron fingers, subdued it.=
He
wanted this last triumph of the ego, this last reduction. He wanted to go w=
here
the English have gone, beyond the Self, into the great inhuman Not Self, to
create the great unliving creators, the machines, out of the active forces =
of
nature that existed before flesh.
But he is too old. It remains for the young
Italian to embrace his mistress, the machine.
I sat on the roof of the lemon-house, with the
lake below and the snowy mountain opposite, and looked at the ruins on the =
old,
olive-fuming shores, at all the peace of the ancient world still covered in
sunshine, and the past seemed to me so lovely that one must look towards it=
, backwards,
only backwards, where there is peace and beauty and no more dissonance.
I thought of England, the great mass of London,
and the black, fuming, laborious Midlands and north-country. It seemed
horrible. And yet, it was better than the padrone, this old, monkey-like
cunning of fatality. It is better to go forward into error than to stay fix=
ed
inextricably in the past.
Yet what should become of the world? There was
London and the industrial counties spreading like a blackness over all the
world, horrible, in the end destructive. And the Garda was so lovely under =
the
sky of sunshine, it was intolerable. For away, beyond, beyond all the snowy
Alps, with the iridescence of eternal ice above them, was this England, bla=
ck
and foul and dry, with her soul worn down, almost worn away. And England wa=
s conquering
the world with her machines and her horrible destruction of natural life. S=
he
was conquering the whole world.
And yet, was she not herself finished in this
work? She had had enough. She had conquered the natural life to the end: she
was replete with the conquest of the outer world, satisfied with the
destruction of the Self. She would cease, she would turn round; or else exp=
ire.
If she still lived, she would begin to build h=
er
knowledge into a great structure of truth. There it lay, vast masses of
rough-hewn knowledge, vast masses of machines and appliances, vast masses of
ideas and methods, and nothing done with it, only teeming swarms of
disintegrated human beings seething and perishing rapidly away amongst it, =
till
it seems as if a world will be left covered with huge ruins, and scored by =
strange
devices of industry, and quite dead, the people disappeared, swallowed up in
the last efforts towards a perfect, selfless society.
=
During
carnival a company is playing in the theatre. On Christmas Day the padrone =
came
in with the key of his box, and would we care to see the drama? The theatre=
was
small, a mere nothing, in fact; a mere affair of peasants, you understand; =
and
the Signor Di Paoli spread his hands and put his head on one side, parrot-w=
ise;
but we might find a little diversion--un peu de divertiment. With this he
handed me the key.
I made suitable acknowledgements, and was real=
ly
impressed. To be handed the key of a box at the theatre, so simply and
pleasantly, in the large sitting-room looking over the grey lake of Christm=
as
Day; it seemed to me a very graceful event. The key had a chain and a little
shield of bronze, on which was beaten out a large figure 8.
So the next day we went to see I Spettri,
expecting some good, crude melodrama. The theatre is an old church. Since t=
hat
triumph of the deaf and dumb, the cinematograph, has come to give us the
nervous excitement of speed--grimace agitation, and speed, as of flying ato=
ms,
chaos--many an old church in Italy has taken a new lease of life.
This cast-off church made a good theatre. I
realized how cleverly it had been constructed for the dramatic presentation=
of
religious ceremonies. The east end is round, the walls are windowless, soun=
d is
well distributed. Now everything is theatrical, except the stone floor and =
two
pillars at the back of the auditorium, and the slightly ecclesiastical seats
below.
There are two tiers of little boxes in the
theatre, some forty in all, with fringe and red velvet, and lined with dark=
red
paper, quite like real boxes in a real theatre. And the padrone's is one of=
the
best. It just holds three people.
We paid our threepence entrance fee in the sto=
ne
hall and went upstairs. I opened the door of Number 8, and we were shut in =
our
little cabin, looking down on the world. Then I found the barber, Luigi, bo=
wing
profusely in a box opposite. It was necessary to make bows all round: ah, t=
he
chemist, on the upper tier, near the barber; how-do-you-do to the padrona of
the hotel, who is our good friend, and who sits, wearing a little beaver
shoulder-cape, a few boxes off; very cold salutation to the stout village
magistrate with the long brown beard, who leans forward in the box facing t=
he
stage, while a grouping of faces look out from behind him; a warm smile to =
the
family of the Signora Gemma, across next to the stage. Then we are settled.=
I cannot tell why I hate the village magistrat=
e.
He looks like a family portrait by a Flemish artist, he himself weighing do=
wn
the front of the picture with his portliness and his long brown beard, whil=
st
the faces of his family are arranged in two groups for the background. I th=
ink
he is angry at our intrusion. He is very republican and self-important. But=
we
eclipse him easily, with the aid of a large black velvet hat, and black fur=
s,
and our Sunday clothes.
Downstairs the villagers are crowding, drifting
like a heavy current. The women are seated, by church instinct, all togethe=
r on
the left, with perhaps an odd man at the end of a row, beside his wife. On =
the
right, sprawling in the benches, are several groups of bersaglieri, in grey=
uniforms
and slanting cock's-feather hats; then peasants, fishermen, and an odd coup=
le
or so of brazen girls taking their places on the men's side.
At the back, lounging against the pillars or
standing very dark and sombre, are the more reckless spirits of the village.
Their black felt hats are pulled down, their cloaks are thrown over their
mouths, they stand very dark and isolated in their moments of stillness, th=
ey
shout and wave to each other when anything occurs.
The men are clean, their clothes are all clean
washed. The rags of the poorest porter are always well washed. But it is Su=
nday
tomorrow, and they are shaved only on a Sunday. So that they have a week's
black growth on their chins. But they have dark, soft eyes, unconscious and=
vulnerable.
They move and balance with loose, heedless motion upon their clattering
zoccoli, they lounge with wonderful ease against the wall at the back, or
against the two pillars, unconscious of the patches on their clothes or of
their bare throats, that are knotted perhaps with a scarlet rag. Loose and
abandoned, they lounge and talk, or they watch with wistful absorption the =
play
that is going on.
They are strangely isolated in their own
atmosphere, and as if revealed. It is as if their vulnerable being was expo=
sed
and they have not the wit to cover it. There is a pathos of physical
sensibility and mental inadequacy. Their mind is not sufficiently alert to =
run
with their quick, warm senses.
The men keep together, as if to support each
other, the women also are together; in a hard, strong herd. It is as if the
power, the hardness, the triumph, even in this Italian village, were with t=
he
women in their relentless, vindictive unity.
That which drives men and women together, the
indomitable necessity, is like a bondage upon the people. They submit as un=
der
compulsion, under constraint. They come together mostly in anger and in vio=
lence
of destructive passion. There is no comradeship between men and women, none=
whatsoever,
but rather a condition of battle, reserve, hostility.
On Sundays the uncomfortable, excited, unwilli=
ng
youth walks for an hour with his sweetheart, at a little distance from her,=
on
the public highway in the afternoon. This is a concession to the necessity =
for marriage.
There is no real courting, no happiness of being together, only the roused
excitement which is based on a fundamental hostility. There is very little
flirting, and what there is is of the subtle, cruel kind, like a sex duel. =
On
the whole, the men and women avoid each other, almost shun each other. Husb=
and
and wife are brought together in a child, which they both worship. But in e=
ach
of them there is only the great reverence for the infant, and the reverence=
for
fatherhood or motherhood, as the case may be; there is no spiritual love.
In marriage, husband and wife wage the subtle,
satisfying war of sex upon each other. It gives a profound satisfaction, a
profound intimacy. But it destroys all joy, all unanimity in action.
On Sunday afternoons the uncomfortable youth w=
alks
by the side of his maiden for an hour in the public highway. Then he escape=
s;
as from a bondage he goes back to his men companions. On Sunday afternoons =
and evenings
the married woman, accompanied by a friend or by a child--she dare not go
alone, afraid of the strange, terrible sex-war between her and the drunken
man--is seen leading home the wine-drunken, liberated husband. Sometimes sh=
e is
beaten when she gets home. It is part of the process. But there is no synth=
etic
love between men and women, there is only passion, and passion is fundament=
al
hatred, the act of love is a fight.
The child, the outcome, is divine. Here the un= ion, the oneness, is manifest. Though spirit strove with spirit, in mortal confl= ict, during the sex-passion, yet the flesh united with flesh in oneness. The pha= llus is still divine. But the spirit, the mind of man, this has become nothing.<= o:p>
So the women triumph. They sit down below in t=
he
theatre, their perfectly dressed hair gleaming, their backs very straight,
their heads carried tensely. They are not very noticeable. They seem held i=
n reserve.
They are just as tense and stiff as the men are slack and abandoned. Some
strange will holds the women taut. They seem like weapons, dangerous. There=
is
nothing charming nor winning about them; at the best a full, prolific
maternity, at the worst a yellow poisonous bitterness of the flesh that is =
like
a narcotic. But they are too strong for the men. The male spirit, which wou=
ld
subdue the immediate flesh to some conscious or social purpose, is overthro=
wn.
The woman in her maternity is the law-giver, the supreme authority. The
authority of the man, in work, in public affairs, is something trivial in
comparison. The pathetic ignominy of the village male is complete on Sunday
afternoon, on his great day of liberation, when he is accompanied home, dru=
nk
but sinister, by the erect, unswerving, slightly cowed woman. His drunken t=
errorizing
is only pitiable, she is so obviously the more constant power.
And this is why the men must go away to Americ=
a.
It is not the money. It is the profound desire to rehabilitate themselves, =
to
recover some dignity as men, as producers, as workers, as creators from the
spirit, not only from the flesh. It is a profound desire to get away from w=
omen
altogether, the terrible subjugation to sex, the phallic worship.
The company of actors in the little theatre was
from a small town away on the plain, beyond Brescia. The curtain rose,
everybody was still, with that profound, naïve attention which children
give. And after a few minutes I realized that I Spettri was Ibsen's Ghosts.=
The
peasants and fishermen of the Garda, even the rows of ungovernable children,
sat absorbed in watching as the Norwegian drama unfolded itself.
The actors are peasants. The leader is the son=
of
a peasant proprietor. He is qualified as a chemist, but is unsettled, vagra=
nt,
prefers play-acting. The Signer Pietro di Paoli shrugs his shoulders and ap=
ologizes
for their vulgar accent. It is all the same to me. I am trying to get mysel=
f to
rights with the play, which I have just lately seen in Munich, perfectly
produced and detestable.
It was such a change from the hard, ethical, s=
lightly
mechanized characters in the German play, which was as perfect an
interpretation as I can imagine, to the rather pathetic notion of the Itali=
an
peasants, that I had to wait to adjust myself.
The mother was a pleasant, comfortable woman
harassed by something, she did not quite know what. The pastor was a
ginger-haired caricature imitated from the northern stage, quite a lay figu=
re.
The peasants never laughed, they watched solemnly and absorbedly like child=
ren.
The servant was just a slim, pert, forward hussy, much too flagrant. And th=
en
the son, the actor-manager: he was a dark, ruddy man, broad and thick-set, =
evidently
of peasant origin, but with some education now; he was the important figure,
the play was his.
And he was strangely disturbing. Dark, ruddy, =
and
powerful, he could not be the blighted son of 'Ghosts', the hectic, unsound,
northern issue of a diseased father. His flashy Italian passion for his
half-sister was real enough to make one uncomfortable: something he wanted =
and
would have in spite of his own soul, something which fundamentally he did n=
ot
want.
It was this contradiction within the man that =
made
the play so interesting. A robust, vigorous man of thirty-eight, flaunting =
and florid
as a rather successful Italian can be, there was yet a secret sickness which
oppressed him. But it was no taint in the blood, it was rather a kind of
debility in the soul. That which he wanted and would have, the sensual
excitement, in his soul he did not want it, no, not at all. And yet he must=
act
from his physical desires, his physical will.
His true being, his real self, was impotent. In
his soul he was dependent, forlorn. He was childish and dependent on the
mother. To hear him say, 'Grazia, mamma!' would have tormented the mother-s=
oul
in any woman living. Such a child crying in the night! And for what?
For he was hot-blooded, healthy, almost in his
prime, and free as a man can be in his circumstances. He had his own way, he
admitted no thwarting. He governed his circumstances pretty much, coming to=
our
village with his little company, playing the plays he chose himself. And ye=
t,
that which he would have he did not vitally want, it was only a sort of
inflamed obstinacy that made him so insistent, in the masculine way. He was=
not
going to be governed by women, he was not going to be dictated to in the le=
ast
by any one. And this because he was beaten by his own flesh.
His real man's soul, the soul that goes forth =
and
builds up a new world out of the void, was ineffectual. It could only rever=
t to
the senses. His divinity was the phallic divinity. The other male divinity,
which is the spirit that fulfils in the world the new germ of an idea, this=
was
denied and obscured in him, unused. And it was this spirit which cried out
helplessly in him through the insistent, inflammable flesh. Even this
play-acting was a form of physical gratification for him, it had in it neit=
her
real mind nor spirit.
It was so different from Ibsen, and so much mo=
re
moving. Ibsen is exciting, nervously sensational. But this was really movin=
g, a
real crying in the night. One loved the Italian nation, and wanted to help =
it with
all one's soul. But when one sees the perfect Ibsen, how one hates the
Norwegian and Swedish nations! They are detestable.
They seem to be fingering with the mind the se=
cret
places and sources of the blood, impertinent, irreverent, nasty. There is a
certain intolerable nastiness about the real Ibsen: the same thing is in St=
rindberg
and in most of the Norwegian and Swedish writings. It is with them a sort of
phallic worship also, but now the worship is mental and perverted: the phal=
lus
is the real fetish, but it is the source of uncleanliness and corruption and
death, it is the Moloch, worshipped in obscenity.
Which is unbearable. The phallus is a symbol of
creative divinity. But it represents only part of creative divinity. The
Italian has made it represent the whole. Which is now his misery, for he ha=
s to
destroy his symbol in himself.
Which is why the Italian men have the enthusia=
sm
for war, unashamed. Partly it is the true phallic worship, for the phallic
principle is to absorb and dominate all life. But also it is a desire to ex=
pose
themselves to death, to know death, that death may destroy in them this too
strong dominion of the blood, may once more liberate the spirit of outgoing=
, of
uniting, of making order out of chaos, in the outer world, as the flesh mak=
es a
new order from chaos in begetting a new life, set them free to know and ser=
ve a
greater idea.
The peasants below sat and listened intently, =
like
children who hear and do not understand, yet who are spellbound. The childr=
en
themselves sit spellbound on the benches till the play is over. They do not
fidget or lose interest. They watch with wide, absorbed eyes at the mystery,
held in thrall by the sound of emotion.
But the villagers do not really care for Ibsen.
They let it go. On the feast of Epiphany, as a special treat, was given a
poetic drama by D'Annunzio, La Fiaccola sotto il Moggio--The Light under the
Bushel.
It is a foolish romantic play of no real
significance. There are several murders and a good deal of artificial horro=
r.
But it is all a very nice and romantic piece of make-believe, like a charad=
e.
So the audience loved it. After the performanc=
e of
Ghosts I saw the barber, and he had the curious grey clayey look of an Ital=
ian
who is cold and depressed. The sterile cold inertia, which the so-called pa=
ssionate
nations know so well, had settled on him, and he went obliterating himself =
in
the street, as if he were cold, dead.
But after the D'Annunzio play he was like a man
who has drunk sweet wine and is warm.
'Ah, bellissimo, bellissimo!' he said, in tone=
s of
intoxicated reverence, when he saw me.
'Better than I Spettri?' I said.
He half-raised his hands, as if to imply the
fatuity of the question.
'Ah, but--' he said, 'it was D'Annunzio. The
other....'
'That was Ibsen--a great Norwegian,' I said,
'famous all over the world.'
'But you know--D'Annunzio is a poet--oh, beautiful, beautiful!' There was no going beyond this 'bello--bellissimo'.<= o:p>
It was the language which did it. It was the
Italian passion for rhetoric, for the speech which appeals to the senses and
makes no demand on the mind. When an Englishman listens to a speech he want=
s at
least to imagine that he understands thoroughly and impersonally what is me=
ant.
But an Italian only cares about the emotion. It is the movement, the physic=
al
effect of the language upon the blood which gives him supreme satisfaction.=
His
mind is scarcely engaged at all. He is like a child, hearing and feeling
without understanding. It is the sensuous gratification he asks for. Which =
is
why D'Annunzio is a god in Italy. He can control the current of the blood w=
ith
his words, and although much of what he says is bosh, yet his hearer is
satisfied, fulfilled.
Carnival ends on the 5th of February, so each
Thursday there is a Serata d' Onore of one of the actors. The first, and the
only one for which prices were raised--to a fourpence entrance fee instead =
of threepence--was
for the leading lady. The play was The Wife of the Doctor, a modern piece,
sufficiently uninteresting; the farce that followed made me laugh.
Since it was her Evening of Honour, Adelaida w=
as
the person to see. She is very popular, though she is no longer young. In f=
act,
she is the mother of the young pert person of Ghosts.
Nevertheless, Adelaida, stout and blonde and s=
oft
and pathetic, is the real heroine of the theatre, the prima. She is very go=
od
at sobbing; and afterwards the men exclaim involuntarily, out of their stro=
ng
emotion, 'bella, bella!' The women say nothing. They sit stiffly and danger=
ously
as ever. But, no doubt, they quite agree this is the true picture of ill-us=
ed,
tear-stained woman, the bearer of many wrongs. Therefore they take unto
themselves the homage of the men's 'bella, bella!' that follows the sobs: i=
t is
due recognition of their hard wrongs: 'the woman pays.' Nevertheless, they
despise in their souls the plump, soft Adelaida.
Dear Adelaida, she is irreproachable. In every
age, in every clime, she is dear, at any rate to the masculine soul, this s=
oft,
tear-blenched, blonde, ill-used thing. She must be ill-used and unfortunate.
Dear Gretchen, dear Desdemona, dear Iphigenia, dear Dame aux Camélia=
s,
dear Lucy of Lammermoor, dear Mary Magdalene, dear, pathetic, unfortunate s=
oul,
in all ages and lands, how we love you. In the theatre she blossoms forth, =
she
is the lily of the stage. Young and inexperienced as I am, I have broken my
heart over her several times. I could write a sonnet-sequence to her, yes, =
the
fair, pale, tear-stained thing, white-robed, with her hair down her back; I
could call her by a hundred names, in a hundred languages, Melisande,
Elizabeth, Juliet, Butterfly, Phèdre, Minnehaha, etc. Each new time I
hear her voice, with its faint clang of tears, my heart grows big and hot, =
and
my bones melt. I detest her, but it is no good. My heart begins to swell li=
ke a
bud under the plangent rain.
The last time I saw her was here, on the Garda=
, at
Salò. She was the chalked, thin-armed daughter of Rigoletto. I detes=
ted her,
her voice had a chalky squeak in it. And yet, by the end, my heart was over=
ripe
in my breast, ready to burst with loving affection. I was ready to walk on =
to the
stage, to wipe out the odious, miscreant lover, and to offer her all myself,
saying, 'I can see it is real love you want, and you shall have it: I will =
give
it to you.'
Of course I know the secret of the Gretchen ma=
gic;
it is all in the 'Save me, Mr Hercules!' phrase. Her shyness, her timidity,=
her
trustfulness, her tears foster my own strength and grandeur. I am the posit=
ive
half of the universe. But so I am, if it comes to that, just as positive as=
the
other half.
Adelaida is plump, and her voice has just that
moist, plangent strength which gives one a real voluptuous thrill. The mome=
nt
she comes on the stage and looks round--a bit scared--she is she, Electra,
Isolde, Sieglinde, Marguèrite. She wears a dress of black voile, like
the lady who weeps at the trial in the police-court. This is her modern
uniform. Her antique garment is of trailing white, with a blonde pigtail an=
d a flower.
Realistically, it is black voile and a handkerchief.
Adelaida always has a handkerchief. And still I
cannot resist it. I say, 'There's the hanky!' Nevertheless, in two minutes =
it
has worked its way with me. She squeezes it in her poor, plump hand as the
tears begin to rise; Fate, or man, is inexorable, so cruel. There is a sob,=
a
cry; she presses the fist and the hanky to her eyes, one eye, then the othe=
r.
She weeps real tears, tears shaken from the depths of her soft, vulnerable,=
victimized
female self. I cannot stand it. There I sit in the padrone's little red box=
and
stifle my emotion, whilst I repeat in my heart: 'What a shame, child, what a
shame!' She is twice my age, but what is age in such circumstances? 'Your p=
oor
little hanky, it's sopping. There, then, don't cry. It'll be all right. I'll
see you're all right. All men are not beasts, you know.' So I cover her
protectively in my arms, and soon I shall be kissing her, for comfort, in t=
he
heat and prowess of my compassion, kissing her soft, plump cheek and neck
closely, bringing my comfort nearer and nearer.
It is a pleasant and exciting role for me to p=
lay.
Robert Burns did the part to perfection:
&=
nbsp;
O wert thou in the cauld blast On yonder lea, on=
yonder
lea.
How many times does one recite that to all the
Ophelias and Gretchens in the world:
&=
nbsp;
Thy bield should be my bosom.
How one admires one's bosom in that capacity!
Looking down at one's shirt-front, one is filled with strength and pride.
Why are the women so bad at playing this part =
in
real life, this Ophelia-Gretchen role? Why are they so unwilling to go mad =
and
die for our sakes? They do it regularly on the stage.
But perhaps, after all, we write the plays. Wh=
at a
villain I am, what a black-browed, passionate, ruthless, masculine villain =
I am
to the leading lady on the stage; and, on the other hand, dear heart, what =
a hero,
what a fount of chivalrous generosity and faith! I am anything but a dull a=
nd
law-abiding citizen. I am a Galahad, full of purity and spirituality, I am =
the
Lancelot of valour and lust; I fold my hands, or I cock my hat in one side,=
as
the case may be: I am myself. Only, I am not a respectable citizen, not tha=
t,
in this hour of my glory and my escape.
Dear Heaven, how Adelaida wept, her voice plas=
hing
like violin music, at my ruthless, masculine cruelty. Dear heart, how she
sighed to rest on my sheltering bosom! And how I enjoyed my dual nature! Ho=
w I admired
myself!
Adelaida chose La Moglie del Dottore for her
Evening of Honour. During the following week came a little storm of coloured
bills: 'Great Evening of Honour of Enrico Persevalli.'
This is the leader, the actor-manager. What sh=
ould
he choose for his great occasion, this broad, thick-set, ruddy descendant of
the peasant proprietors of the plain? No one knew. The title of the play wa=
s not
revealed.
So we were staying at home, it was cold and we=
t.
But the maestra came inflammably on that Thursday evening, and were we not
going to the theatre, to see Amleto?
Poor maestra, she is yellow and bitter-skinned,
near fifty, but her dark eyes are still corrosively inflammable. She was
engaged to a lieutenant in the cavalry, who got drowned when she was
twenty-one. Since then she has hung on the tree unripe, growing yellow and
bitter-skinned, never developing.
'Amleto!' I say. 'Non lo conosco.'
A certain fear comes into her eyes. She is
schoolmistress, and has a mortal dread of being wrong.
'Si,' she cries, wavering, appealing, 'una dra=
mma
inglese.'
'English!' I repeated.
'Yes, an English drama.'
'How do you write it?'
Anxiously, she gets a pencil from her reticule,
and, with black-gloved scrupulousness, writes Amleto.
'Hamlet!' I exclaim wonderingly.
'Ecco, Amleto!' cries the maestra, her eyes af=
lame
with thankful justification.
Then I knew that Signore Enrico Persevalli was
looking to me for an audience. His Evening of Honour would be a bitter occa=
sion
to him if the English were not there to see his performance.
I hurried to get ready, I ran through the rain=
. I
knew he would take it badly that it rained on his Evening of Honour. He cou=
nted
himself a man who had fate against him.
'Sono un disgraziato, io.'
I was late. The First Act was nearly over. The
play was not yet alive, neither in the bosoms of the actors nor in the
audience. I closed the door of the box softly, and came forward. The rolling
Italian eyes of Hamlet glanced up at me. There came a new impulse over the
Court of Denmark.
Enrico looked a sad fool in his melancholy bla=
ck.
The doublet sat close, making him stout and vulgar, the knee-breeches seeme=
d to
exaggerate the commonness of his thick, rather short, strutting legs. And he
carried a long black rag, as a cloak, for histrionic purposes. And he had on
his face a portentous grimace of melancholy and philosophic importance. His=
was
the caricature of Hamlet's melancholy self-absorption.
I stooped to arrange my footstool and compose =
my
countenance. I was trying not to grin. For the first time, attired in
philosophic melancholy of black silk, Enrico looked a boor and a fool. His =
close-cropped,
rather animal head was common above the effeminate doublet, his sturdy,
ordinary figure looked absurd in a melancholic droop.
All the actors alike were out of their element.
Their Majesties of Denmark were touching. The Queen, burly little peasant
woman, was ill at ease in her pink satin. Enrico had had no mercy. He knew =
she
loved to be the scolding servant or housekeeper, with her head tied up in a=
handkerchief,
shrill and vulgar. Yet here she was pranked out in an expanse of satin, la
Regina. Regina, indeed!
She obediently did her best to be important.
Indeed, she rather fancied herself; she looked sideways at the audience,
self-consciously, quite ready to be accepted as an imposing and noble perso=
n,
if they would esteem her such. Her voice sounded hoarse and common, but whe=
ther
it was the pink satin in contrast, or a cold, I do not know. She was almost=
childishly
afraid to move. Before she began a speech she looked down and kicked her sk=
irt
viciously, so that she was sure it was under control. Then she let go. She =
was
a burly, downright little body of sixty, one rather expected her to box Ham=
let
on the ears.
Only she liked being a queen when she sat on t=
he
throne. There she perched with great satisfaction, her train splendidly
displayed down the steps. She was as proud as a child, and she looked like
Queen Victoria of the Jubilee period.
The King, her noble consort, also had new hono=
urs
thrust upon him, as well as new garments. His body was real enough but it h=
ad nothing
at all to do with his clothes. They established a separate identity by them=
selves.
But wherever he went, they went with him, to the confusion of everybody.
He was a thin, rather frail-looking peasant,
pathetic, and very gentle. There was something pure and fine about him, he =
was
so exceedingly gentle and by natural breeding courteous. But he did not feel
kingly, he acted the part with beautiful, simple resignation.
Enrico Persevalli had overshot himself in every
direction, but worst of all in his own. He had become a hulking fellow,
crawling about with his head ducked between his shoulders, pecking and poki=
ng,
creeping about after other people, sniffing at them, setting traps for them,
absorbed by his own self-important self-consciousness. His legs, in their b=
lack
knee-breeches, had a crawling, slinking look; he always carried the black r=
ag
of a cloak, something for him to twist about as he twisted in his own soul,
overwhelmed by a sort of inverted perversity.
I had always felt an aversion from Hamlet: a
creeping, unclean thing he seems, on the stage, whether he is Forbes Robert=
son
or anybody else. His nasty poking and sniffing at his mother, his setting t=
raps
for the King, his conceited perversion with Ophelia make him always
intolerable. The character is repulsive in its conception, based on
self-dislike and a spirit of disintegration.
There is, I think, this strain of cold dislike=
, or
self-dislike, through much of the Renaissance art, and through all the later
Shakespeare. In Shakespeare it is a kind of corruption in the flesh and a
conscious revolt from this. A sense of corruption in the flesh makes Hamlet=
frenzied,
for he will never admit that it is his own flesh. Leonardo da Vinci is the
same, but Leonardo loves the corruption maliciously. Michelangelo rejects a=
ny
feeling of corruption, he stands by the flesh, the flesh only. It is the
corresponding reaction, but in the opposite direction. But that is all four
hundred years ago. Enrico Persevalli has just reached the position. He is
Hamlet, and evidently he has great satisfaction in the part. He is the mode=
rn
Italian, suspicious, isolated, self-nauseated, labouring in a sense of phys=
ical
corruption. But he will not admit it is in himself. He creeps about in
self-conceit, transforming his own self-loathing. With what satisfaction di=
d he
reveal corruption--corruption in his neighbours he gloated in--letting his =
mother
know he had discovered her incest, her uncleanness, gloated in torturing the
incestuous King. Of all the unclean ones, Hamlet was the uncleanest. But he
accused only the others.
Except in the 'great' speeches, and there Enri=
co
was betrayed, Hamlet suffered the extremity of physical self-loathing, loat=
hing
of his own flesh. The play is the statement of the most significant philoso=
phic
position of the Renaissance. Hamlet is far more even than Orestes, his prot=
otype,
a mental creature, anti-physical, anti-sensual. The whole drama is the trag=
edy
of the convulsed reaction of the mind from the flesh, of the spirit from the
self, the reaction from the great aristocratic to the great democratic
principle.
An ordinary instinctive man, in Hamlet's posit=
ion,
would either have set about murdering his uncle, by reflex action, or else
would have gone right away. There would have been no need for Hamlet to mur=
der
his mother. It would have been sufficient blood-vengeance if he had killed =
his
uncle. But that is the statement according to the aristocratic principle.
Orestes was in the same position, but the same
position two thousand years earlier, with two thousand years of experience
wanting. So that the question was not so intricate in him as in Hamlet, he =
was
not nearly so conscious. The whole Greek life was based on the idea of the =
supremacy
of the self, and the self was always male. Orestes was his father's child, =
he
would be the same whatever mother he had. The mother was but the vehicle, t=
he
soil in which the paternal seed was planted. When Clytemnestra murdered
Agamemnon, it was as if a common individual murdered God, to the Greek.
But Agamemnon, King and Lord, was not infallib=
le.
He was fallible. He had sacrificed Iphigenia for the sake of glory in war, =
for
the fulfilment of the superb idea of self, but on the other hand he had mad=
e cruel
dissension for the sake of the concubines captured in war. The paternal fle=
sh
was fallible, ungodlike. It lusted after meaner pursuits than glory, war, a=
nd
slaying, it was not faithful to the highest idea of the self. Orestes was
driven mad by the furies of his mother, because of the justice that they
represented. Nevertheless he was in the end exculpated. The third play of t=
he
trilogy is almost foolish, with its prating gods. But it means that, accord=
ing
to the Greek conviction, Orestes was right and Clytemnestra entirely wrong.=
But
for all that, the infallible King, the infallible male Self, is dead in
Orestes, killed by the furies of Clytemnestra. He gains his peace of mind a=
fter
the revulsion from his own physical fallibility, but he will never be an un=
questioned
lord, as Agamemnon was. Orestes is left at peace, neutralized. He is the
beginning of non-aristocratic Christianity.
Hamlet's father, the King, is, like Agamemnon,=
a
warrior-king. But, unlike Agamemnon, he is blameless with regard to Gertrud=
e.
Yet Gertrude, like Clytemnestra, is the potential murderer of her husband, =
as
Lady Macbeth is murderess, as the daughters of Lear. The women murder the s=
upreme
male, the ideal Self, the King and Father.
This is the tragic position Shakespeare must d=
well
upon. The woman rejects, repudiates the ideal Self which the male represent=
s to
her. The supreme representative, King and Father, is murdered by the Wife a=
nd
the Daughters.
What is the reason? Hamlet goes mad in a revul=
sion
of rage and nausea. Yet the women-murderers only represent some ultimate
judgement in his own soul. At the bottom of his own soul Hamlet has decided
that the Self in its supremacy, Father and King, must die. It is a suicidal
decision for his involuntary soul to have arrived at. Yet it is inevitable.=
The
great religious, philosophic tide, which has been swelling all through the
Middle Ages, had brought him there.
The question, to be or not to be, which Hamlet
puts himself, does not mean, to live or not to live. It is not the simple h=
uman
being who puts himself the question, it is the supreme I, King and Father. =
To
be or not to be King, Father, in the Self supreme? And the decision is, not=
to
be.
It is the inevitable philosophic conclusion of=
all
the Renaissance. The deepest impulse in man, the religious impulse, is the
desire to be immortal, or infinite, consummated. And this impulse is satisf=
ied
in fulfilment of an idea, a steady progression. In this progression man is =
satisfied,
he seems to have reached his goal, this infinity, this immortality, this
eternal being, with every step nearer which he takes.
And so, according to his idea of fulfilment, m=
an
establishes the whole order of life. If my fulfilment is the fulfilment and
establishment of the unknown divine Self which I am, then I shall proceed in
the realizing of the greatest idea of the self, the highest conception of t=
he
I, my order of life will be kingly, imperial, aristocratic. The body politic
also will culminate in this divinity of the flesh, this body imbued with gl=
ory,
invested with divine power and might, the King, the Emperor. In the body
politic also I shall desire a king, an emperor, a tyrant, glorious, mighty,=
in
whom I see myself consummated and fulfilled. This is inevitable!
But during the Middle Ages, struggling within =
this
pagan, original transport, the transport of the Ego, was a small
dissatisfaction, a small contrary desire. Amid the pomp of kings and popes =
was
the Child Jesus and the Madonna. Jesus the King gradually dwindled down. Th=
ere
was Jesus the Child, helpless, at the mercy of all the world. And there was=
Jesus
crucified.
The old transport, the old fulfilment of the E=
go,
the Davidian ecstasy, the assuming of all power and glory unto the self, the
becoming infinite through the absorption of all into the Ego, this gradually
became unsatisfactory. This was not the infinite, this was not immortality.=
This
was eternal death, this was damnation.
The monk rose up with his opposite ecstasy, the
Christian ecstasy. There was a death to die: the flesh, the self, must die,=
so
that the spirit should rise again immortal, eternal, infinite. I am dead un=
to
myself, but I live in the Infinite. The finite Me is no more, only the
Infinite, the Eternal, is.
At the Renaissance this great half-truth overc= ame the other great half-truth. The Christian Infinite, reached by a process of abnegation, a process of being absorbed, dissolved, diffused into the great= Not-Self, supplanted the old pagan Infinite, wherein the self like a root threw out branches and radicles which embraced the whole universe, became the Whole.<= o:p>
There is only one Infinite, the world now crie=
d,
there is the great Christian Infinite of renunciation and consummation in t=
he
not-self. The other, that old pride, is damnation. The sin of sins is Pride=
, it
is the way to total damnation. Whereas the pagans based their life on pride=
.
And according to this new Infinite, reached
through renunciation and dissolving into the Others, the Neighbour, man must
build up his actual form of life. With Savonarola and Martin Luther the liv=
ing
Church actually transformed itself, for the Roman Church was still pagan. H=
enry
VIII simply said: 'There is no Church, there is only the State.' But with
Shakespeare the transformation had reached the State also. The King, the
Father, the representative of the Consummate Self, the maximum of all life,=
the
symbol of the consummate being, the becoming Supreme, Godlike, Infinite, he
must perish and pass away. This Infinite was not infinite, this consummation
was not consummated, all this was fallible, false. It was rotten, corrupt. =
It
must go. But Shakespeare was also the thing itself. Hence his horror, his
frenzy, his self-loathing.
The King, the Emperor is killed in the soul of
man, the old order of life is over, the old tree is dead at the root. So sa=
id
Shakespeare. It was finally enacted in Cromwell. Charles I took up the old
position of kingship by divine right. Like Hamlet's father, he was blameles=
s otherwise.
But as representative of the old form of life, which mankind now hated with
frenzy, he must be cut down, removed. It was a symbolic act.
The world, our world of Europe, had now really
turned, swung round to a new goal, a new idea, the Infinite reached through=
the
omission of Self. God is all that which is Not-Me. I am consummate when my
Self, the resistant solid, is reduced and diffused into all that which is
Not-Me: my neighbour, my enemy, the great Otherness. Then I am perfect.
And from this belief the world began gradually=
to
form a new State, a new body politic, in which the Self should be removed.
There should be no king, no lords, no aristocrats. The world continued in i=
ts
religious belief, beyond the French Revolution, beyond the great movement o=
f Shelley
and Godwin. There should be no Self. That which was supreme was that which =
was
Not-Me, the other. The governing factor in the State was the idea of the go=
od
of others; that is, the Common Good. And the vital governing idea in the St=
ate
has been this idea since Cromwell.
Before Cromwell the idea was 'For the King',
because every man saw himself consummated in the King. After Cromwell the i=
dea
was 'For the good of my neighbour', or 'For the good of the people', or 'For
the good of the whole'. This has been our ruling idea, by which we have mor=
e or
less lived.
Now this has failed. Now we say that the Chris=
tian
Infinite is not infinite. We are tempted, like Nietzsche, to return back to=
the
old pagan Infinite, to say that is supreme. Or we are inclined, like the En=
glish
and the Pragmatist, to say, 'There is no Infinite, there is no Absolute. The
only Absolute is expediency, the only reality is sensation and momentarines=
s.'
But we may say this, even act on it, à la Sanine. But we never belie=
ve
it.
What is really Absolute is the mystic Reason w=
hich
connects both Infinites, the Holy Ghost that relates both natures of God. I=
f we
now wish to make a living State, we must build it up to the idea of the Hol=
y Spirit,
the supreme Relationship. We must say, the pagan Infinite is infinite, the
Christian Infinite is infinite: these are our two Consummations, in both of
these we are consummated. But that which relates them alone is absolute.
This Absolute of the Holy Ghost we may call Tr=
uth
or Justice or Right. These are partial names, indefinite and unsatisfactory
unless there be kept the knowledge of the two Infinites, pagan and Christia=
n,
which they go between. When both are there, they are like a superb bridge, =
on
which one can stand and know the whole world, my world, the two halves of t=
he
universe.
'Essere, o non essere, è qui il punto.'=
To be or not to be was the question for Hamlet=
to
settle. It is no longer our question, at least, not in the same sense. When=
it
is a question of death, the fashionable young suicide declares that his sel=
f-destruction
is the final proof of his own incontrovertible being. And as for not-being =
in
our public life, we have achieved it as much as ever we want to, as much as=
is
necessary. Whilst in private life there is a swing back to paltry selfishne=
ss
as a creed. And in the war there is the position of neutralization and
nothingness. It is a question of knowing how to be, and how not to be, for =
we
must fulfil both. Enrico Persevalli was detestable with his 'Essere, o non
essere'. He whispered it in a hoarse whisper as if it were some melodramatic
murder he was about to commit. As a matter of fact, he knows quite well, an=
d has
known all his life, that his pagan Infinite, his transport of the flesh and=
the
supremacy of the male in fatherhood, is all unsatisfactory. All his life he=
has
really cringed before the northern Infinite of the Not-Self, although he has
continued in the Italian habit of Self. But it is mere habit, sham.
How can he know anything about being and not-b=
eing
when he is only a maudlin compromise between them, and all he wants is to b=
e a
maudlin compromise? He is neither one nor the other. He has neither being n=
or riot-being.
He is as equivocal as the monks. He was detestable, mouthing Hamlet's since=
re
words. He has still to let go, to know what not-being is, before he can be.
Till he has gone through the Christian negation of himself, and has known t=
he
Christian consummation, he is a mere amorphous heap.
For the soliloquies of Hamlet are as deep as t=
he
soul of man can go, in one direction, and as sincere as the Holy Spirit its=
elf
in their essence. But thank heaven, the bog into which Hamlet struggled is
almost surpassed.
It is a strange thing, if a man covers his fac=
e,
and speaks with his eyes blinded, how significant and poignant he becomes. =
The
ghost of this Hamlet was very simple. He was wrapped down to the knees in a
great white cloth, and over his face was an open-work woollen shawl. But th=
e naïve
blind helplessness and verity of his voice was strangely convincing. He see=
med
the most real thing in the play. From the knees downward he was Laertes,
because he had on Laertes' white trousers and patent leather slippers. Yet =
he
was strangely real, a voice out of the dark.
The Ghost is really one of the play's failures=
, it
is so trivial and unspiritual and vulgar. And it was spoilt for me from the
first. When I was a child I went to the twopenny travelling theatre to see
Hamlet. The Ghost had on a helmet and a breastplate. I sat in pale transpor=
t.
''Amblet, 'Amblet, I am thy father's ghost.'
Then came a voice from the dark, silent audien=
ce,
like a cynical knife to my fond soul:
'Why tha arena, I can tell thy voice.'
The peasants loved Ophelia: she was in white w=
ith
her hair down her back. Poor thing, she was pathetic, demented. And no wond=
er,
after Hamlet's 'O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!' What then of=
her
young breasts and her womb? Hamlet with her was a very disagreeable sight. =
The
peasants loved her. There was a hoarse roar, half of indignation, half of
roused passion, at the end of her scene.
The graveyard scene, too, was a great success,=
but
I could not bear Hamlet. And the grave-digger in Italian was a mere buffoon.
The whole scene was farcical to me because of the Italian, 'Questo cranio, =
Signore--'And
Enrico, dainty fellow, took the skull in a corner of his black cloak. As an
Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It was unclean. But he looked a f=
ool,
hulking himself in his lugubriousness. He was as self-important as D'Annunz=
io.
The close fell flat. The peasants had applauded
the whole graveyard scene wildly. But at the end of all they got up and cro=
wded
to the doors, as if to hurry away: this in spite of Enrico's final feat: he=
fell
backwards, smack down three steps of the throne platform, on to the stage. =
But
planks and braced muscle will bounce, and Signer Amleto bounced quite high
again.
It was the end of Amleto, and I was glad. But =
I loved
the theatre, I loved to look down on the peasants, who were so absorbed. At=
the
end of the scenes the men pushed back their black hats, and rubbed their ha=
ir across
their brows with a pleased, excited movement. And the women stirred in their
seats.
Just one man was with his wife and child, and =
he
was of the same race as my old woman at San Tommaso. He was fair, thin, and
clear, abstract, of the mountains. He seemed to have gathered his wife and
child together into another, finer atmosphere, like the air of the mountain=
s,
and to guard them in it. This is the real Joseph, father of the child. He h=
as a
fierce, abstract look, wild and untamed as a hawk, but like a hawk at its o=
wn
nest, fierce with love. He goes out and buys a tiny bottle of lemonade for =
a penny,
and the mother and child sip it in tiny sips, whilst he bends over, like a =
hawk
arching its wings.
It is the fierce spirit of the Ego come out of=
the
primal infinite, but detached, isolated, an aristocrat. He is not an Italia=
n,
dark-blooded. He is fair, keen as steel, with the blood of the mountaineer =
in
him. He is like my old spinning woman. It is curious how, with his wife and=
child,
he makes a little separate world down there in the theatre, like a hawk's n=
est,
high and arid under the gleaming sky.
The Bersaglieri sit close together in groups, =
so
that there is a strange, corporal connexion between them. They have
close-cropped, dark, slightly bestial heads, and thick shoulders, and thick
brown hands on each other's shoulders. When an act is over they pick up the=
ir
cherished hats and fling on their cloaks and go into the hall. They are rat=
her rich,
the Bersaglieri.
They are like young, half-wild oxen, such stro=
ng,
sturdy, dark lads, thickly built and with strange hard heads, like young ma=
le
caryatides. They keep close together, as if there were some physical instin=
ct connecting
them. And they are quite womanless. There is a curious inter-absorption amo=
ng
themselves, a sort of physical trance that holds them all, and puts their m=
inds
to sleep. There is a strange, hypnotic unanimity among them as they put on
their plumed hats and go out together, always very close, as if their bodies
must touch. Then they feel safe and content in this heavy, physical trance.
They are in love with one another, the young men love the young men. They
shrink from the world beyond, from the outsiders, from all who are not
Bersaglieri of their barracks.
One man is a sort of leader. He is very straig=
ht
and solid, solid like a wall, with a dark, unblemished will. His cock-feath=
ers
slither in a profuse, heavy stream from his black oil-cloth hat, almost to =
his shoulder.
He swings round. His feathers slip into a cascade. Then he goes out to the
hall, his feather tossing and falling richly. He must be well off. The
Bersaglieri buy their own black cock's-plumes, and some pay twenty or thirty
francs for the bunch, so the maestra said. The poor ones have only poor,
scraggy plumes.
There is something very primitive about these =
men.
They remind me really of Agamemnon's soldiers clustered oil the seashore, m=
en,
all men, a living, vigorous, physical host of men. But there is a pressure =
on
these Italian soldiers, as if they were men caryatides, with a great weight=
on their
heads, making their brain hard, asleep, stunned. They all look is if their =
real
brain were stunned, as if there were another centre of physical consciousne=
ss
from which they lived.
Separate from them all is Pietro, the young man
who lounges on the wharf to carry things from the steamer. He starts up from
sleep like a wild-cat as somebody claps him on the shoulder. It is the star=
t of
a man who has many enemies. He is almost an outlaw. Will he ever find himse=
lf in
prison? He is the gamin of the village, well detested.
He is twenty-four years old, thin, dark, hands=
ome,
with a cat-like lightness and grace, and a certain repulsive, gamin evil in=
his
face. Where everybody is so clean and tidy, he is almost ragged. His week's=
beard
shows very black in his slightly hollow cheeks. He hates the man who has wa=
ked
him by clapping him on the shoulder.
Pietro is already married, yet he behaves as i=
f he
were not. He has been carrying on with a loose woman, the wife of the
citron-coloured barber, the Siciliano. Then he seats himself on the women's
side of the theatre, behind a young person from Bogliaco, who also has no
reputation, and makes her talk to him. He leans forward, resting his arms on
the seat before him, stretching his slender, cat-like, flexible loins. The =
padrona
of the hotel hates him--'ein frecher Kerl,' she says with contempt, and she
looks away. Her eyes hate to see him.
In the village there is the clerical party, wh=
ich
is the majority; there is the anti-clerical party, and there are the
ne'er-do-wells. The clerical people are dark and pious and cold; there is a
curious stone-cold, ponderous darkness over them, moral and gloomy. Then th=
e anti-clerical
party, with the Syndaco at the head, is bourgeois and respectable as far as=
the
middle-aged people are concerned, banal, respectable, shut off as by a wall
from the clerical people. The young anti-clericals are the young bloods of =
the
place, the men who gather every night in the more expensive and
less-respectable cafe. These young men are all free-thinkers, great dancers,
singers, players of the guitar. They are immoral and slightly cynical. Their
leader is the young shopkeeper, who has lived in Vienna, who is a bit of a
bounder, with a veneer of sneering irony on an original good nature. He is
well-to-do, and gives dances to which only the looser women go, with these
reckless young men. He also gets up parties of pleasure, and is chiefly res=
ponsible
for the coming of the players to the theatre this carnival. These young men=
are
disliked, but they belong to the important class, they are well-to-do, and =
they
have the life of the village in their hands. The clerical peasants are
priest-ridden and good, because they are poor and afraid and superstitious.
There is, lastly, a sprinkling of loose women, one who keeps the inn where =
the
soldiers drink. These women are a definite set. They know what they are, th=
ey
pretend nothing else. They are not prostitutes, but just loose women. They =
keep
to their own clique, among men and women, never wanting to compromise anybo=
dy
else.
And beyond all these there are the Franciscan
friars in their brown robes, so shy, so silent, so obliterated, as they sta=
nd
back in the shop, waiting to buy the bread for the monastery, waiting obscu=
re
and neutral, till no one shall be in the shop wanting to be served. The vil=
lage
women speak to them in a curious neutral, official, slightly contemptuous
voice. They answer neutral and humble, though distinctly.
At the theatre, now the play is over, the peas=
ants
in their black hats and cloaks crowd the hall. Only Pietro, the wharf-loung=
er,
has no cloak, and a bit of a cap on the side of his head instead of a black
felt hat. His clothes are thin and loose on his thin, vigorous, cat-like bo=
dy,
and he is cold, but he takes no notice. His hands are always in his pockets=
, his
shoulders slightly raised.
The few women slip away home. In the little
theatre bar the well-to-do young atheists are having another drink. Not that
they spend much. A tumbler of wine or a glass of vermouth costs a penny. And
the wine is horrible new stuff. Yet the little baker, Agostino, sits on a b=
ench
with his pale baby on his knee, putting the wine to its lips. And the baby =
drinks,
like a blind fledgeling.
Upstairs, the quality has paid its visits and
shaken hands: the Syndaco and the well-to-do half-Austrian owners of the
woodyard, the Bertolini, have ostentatiously shown their mutual friendship;=
our
padrone, the Signer Pietro Di Paoli, has visited his relatives the Graziani=
in
the box next the stage and has spent two intervals with us in our box; mean=
while,
his two peasants standing down below, pathetic, thin contadini of the old
school, like worn stones, have looked up at us as if we are the angels in
heaven, with a reverential, devotional eye, they themselves far away below,
standing in the bay at the back, below all.
The chemist and the grocer and the schoolmistr=
ess
pay calls. They have all sat self-consciously posed in the front of their
boxes, like framed photographs of themselves. The second grocer and the bak=
er
visit each other. The barber looks in on the carpenter, then drops downstai=
rs
among the crowd. Class distinctions are cut very fine. As we pass with the =
padrona
of the hotel, who is a Bavarian, we stop to speak to our own padroni, the Di
Paoli. They have a warm handshake and effusive polite conversation for us; =
for
Maria Samuelli, a distant bow. We realize our mistake.
The barber--not the Siciliano, but flashy litt= le Luigi with the big tie-ring and the curls--knows all about the theatre. He = says that Enrico Persevalli has for his mistress Carina, the servant in Ghosts: = that the thin, gentle, old-looking king in Hamlet is the husband of Adelaida, and Carina is their daughter: that the old, sharp, fat little body of a queen is Adelaida's mother: that they all like Enrico Persevalli, because he is a ve= ry clever man: but that the 'Comic', Il Brillante, Francesco, is unsatisfied.<= o:p>
In three performances in Epiphany week, the
company took two hundred and sixty-five francs, which was phenomenal. The
manager, Enrico Persevalli, and Adelaida pay twenty-four francs for every
performance, or every evening on which a performance is given, as rent for =
the
theatre, including light. The company is completely satisfied with its
reception on the Lago di Garda.
So it is all over. The Bersaglieri go running =
all
the way home, because it is already past half past ten. The night is very d=
ark.
About four miles up the lake the searchlights of the Austrian border are
swinging, looking for smugglers. Otherwise the darkness is complete.
=
In the
autumn the little rosy cyclamens blossom in the shade of this west side of =
the
lake. They are very cold and fragrant, and their scent seems to belong to
Greece, to the Bacchae. They are real flowers of the past. They seem to be
blossoming in the landscape of Phaedra and Helen. They bend down, they brood
like little chill fires. They are little living myths that I cannot underst=
and.
After the cyclamens the Christmas roses are in
bud. It is at this season that the cacchi are ripe on the trees in the gard=
en,
whole naked trees full of lustrous, orange-yellow, paradisal fruit, gleaming
against the wintry blue sky. The monthly roses still blossom frail and pink,
there are still crimson and yellow roses. But the vines are bare and the le=
mon-houses
shut. And then, mid-winter, the lowest buds of the Christmas roses appear u=
nder
the hedges and rocks and by the streams. They are very lovely, these first
large, cold, pure buds, like violets, like magnolias, but cold, lit up with=
the
light from the snow.
The days go by, through the brief silence of
winter, when the sunshine is so still and pure, like iced wine, and the dead
leaves gleam brown, and water sounds hoarse in the ravines. It is so still =
and
transcendent, the cypress trees poise like flames of forgotten darkness, th=
at
should have been blown out at the end of the summer. For as we have candles=
to light
the darkness of night, so the cypresses are candles to keep the darkness af=
lame
in the full sunshine.
Meanwhile, the Christmas roses become many. Th=
ey
rise from their budded, intact humbleness near the ground, they rise up, th=
ey
throw up their crystal, they become handsome, they are heaps of confident,
mysterious whiteness in the shadow of a rocky stream. It is almost uncanny =
to
see them. They are the flowers of darkness, white and wonderful beyond beli=
ef.
Then their radiance becomes soiled and brown, = they thaw, break, and scatter and vanish away. Already the primroses are coming = out, and the almond is in bud. The winter is passing away. On the mountains the = fierce snow gleams apricot gold as evening approaches, golden, apricot, but so bri= ght that it is almost frightening. What can be so fiercely gleaming when all is shadowy? It is something inhuman and unmitigated between heaven and earth.<= o:p>
The heavens are strange and proud all the wint=
er,
their progress goes on without reference to the dim earth. The dawns come w=
hite
and translucent, the lake is a moonstone in the dark hills, then across the=
lake
there stretches a vein of fire, then a whole, orange, flashing track over t=
he
whiteness. There is the exquisite silent passage of the day, and then at
evening the afterglow, a huge incandescence of rose, hanging above and
gleaming, as if it were the presence of a host of angels in rapture. It gle=
ams
like a rapturous chorus, then passes away, and the stars appear, large and =
flashing.
Meanwhile, the primroses are dawning on the
ground, their light is growing stronger, spreading over the banks and under=
the
bushes. Between the olive roots the violets are out, large, white, grave
violets, and less serious blue ones. And looking down the bill, among the g=
rey
smoke of olive leaves, pink puffs of smoke are rising up. It is the almond =
and the
apricot trees, it is the Spring.
Soon the primroses are strong on the ground. T=
here
is a bank of small, frail crocuses shooting the lavender into this spring. =
And
then the tussocks and tussocks of primroses are fully out, there is full
morning everywhere on the banks and roadsides and stream-sides, and around =
the olive
roots, a morning of primroses underfoot, with an invisible threading of man=
y violets,
and then the lovely blue clusters of hepatica, really like pieces of blue s=
ky
showing through a clarity of primrose. The few birds are piping thinly and
shyly, the streams sing again, there is a strange flowering shrub full of
incense, overturned flowers of crimson and gold, like Bohemian glass. Betwe=
en
the olive roots new grass is coming, day is leaping all clear and coloured =
from
the earth, it is full Spring, full first rapture.
Does it pass away, or does it only lose its
pristine quality? It deepens and intensifies, like experience. The days see=
m to
be darker and richer, there is a sense of power in the strong air. On the b=
anks
by the lake the orchids are out, many, many pale bee-orchids standing clear
from the short grass over the lake. And in the hollows are the grape hyacin=
ths,
purple as noon, with the heavy, sensual fragrance of noon. They are many-br=
easted,
and full of milk, and ripe, and sun-darkened, like many-breasted Diana.
We could not bear to live down in the village =
any
more, now that the days opened large and spacious and the evenings drew out=
in
sunshine. We could not bear the indoors, when above us the mountains shone =
in
clear air. It was time to go up, to climb with the sun.
So after Easter we went to San Gaudenzio. It w=
as
three miles away, up the winding mule-track that climbed higher and higher
along the lake. Leaving the last house of the village, the path wound on the
steep, cliff-like side of the lake, curving into the hollow where the lands=
lip had
tumbled the rocks in chaos, then out again on to the bluff of a headland th=
at
hung over the lake.
Thus we came to the tall barred gate of San
Gaudenzio, on which was the usual little fire-insurance tablet, and then the
advertisements for beer, 'Birra, Verona', which is becoming a more and more
popular drink.
Through the gate, inside the high wall, is the
little Garden of Eden, a property of three or four acres fairly level upon a
headland over the lake. The high wall girds it on the land side, and makes =
it
perfectly secluded. On the lake-side it is bounded by the sudden drops of t=
he land,
in sharp banks and terraces, overgrown with ilex and with laurel bushes, do=
wn
to the brink of the cliff, so that the thicket of the first declivities see=
ms
to safeguard the property.
The pink farm-house stands almost in the centr=
e of
the little territory, among the olive trees. It is a solid, six-roomed plac=
e,
about fifty years old, having been rebuilt by Paolo's uncle. Here we came to
live for a time with the Fiori, Maria and Paolo, and their three children, =
Giovanni
and Marco and Felicina.
Paolo had inherited, or partly inherited, San
Gaudenzio, which had been in his family for generations. He was a peasant of
fifty-three, very grey and wrinkled and worn-looking, but at the same time
robust, with full strong limbs and a powerful chest. His face was old, but =
his
body was solid and powerful. His eyes were blue like upper ice, beautiful. =
He had
been a fair-haired man, now he was almost white.
He, was strangely like the pictures of peasant=
s in
the northern Italian pictures, with the same curious nobility, the same
aristocratic, eternal look of motionlessness, something statuesque. His head
was hard and fine, the bone finely constructed, though the skin of his face=
was
loose and furrowed with work. His temples had that fine, hard clarity which=
is seen
in Mantegna, an almost jewel-like quality.
We all loved Paolo, he was so finished in his
being, detached, with an almost classic simplicity and gentleness, an etern=
al
kind of sureness. There was also something concluded and unalterable about =
him,
something inaccessible.
Maria Fiori was different. She was from the pl=
ain,
like Enrico Persevalli and the Bersaglier from the Venetian district. She
reminded me again of oxen, broad-boned and massive in physique, dark-skinne=
d, slow
in her soul. But, like the oxen of the plain, she knew her work, she knew t=
he
other people engaged in the work. Her intelligence was attentive and purpos=
ive.
She had been a housekeeper, a servant, in Venice and Verona, before her
marriage. She had got the hang of this world of commerce and activity, she
wanted to master it. But she was weighted down by her heavy animal blood.
Paolo and she were the opposite sides of the
universe, the light and the dark. Yet they lived together now without frict=
ion,
detached, each subordinated in their common relationship. With regard to Ma=
ria,
Paolo omitted himself; Maria omitted herself with regard to Paolo. Their so=
uls were
silent and detached, completely apart, and silent, quite silent. They shared
the physical relationship of marriage as if it were something beyond them, a
third thing.
They had suffered very much in the earlier sta=
ges
of their connexion. Now the storm had gone by, leaving them, as it were, sp=
ent.
They were both by nature passionate, vehement. But the lines of their passi=
on
were opposite. Hers was the primitive, crude, violent flux of the blood, em=
otional
and undiscriminating, but wanting to mix and mingle. His was the hard, clea=
r,
invulnerable passion of the bones, finely tempered and unchangeable. She was
the flint and he the steel. But in continual striking together they only
destroyed each other. The fire was a third thing, belonging to neither of t=
hem.
She was still heavy and full of desire. She was
much younger than he.
'How long did you know your Signora before you
were married?' she asked me.
'Six weeks,' I said.
'Il Paolo e me, venti giorni, tre settimane,' =
she
cried vehemently. Three weeks they had known each other when they married. =
She
still triumphed in the fact. So did Paolo. But it was past, strangely and r=
ather
terribly past.
What did they want when they came together, Pa=
olo
and she? He was a man over thirty, she was a woman of twenty-three. They we=
re
both violent in desire and of strong will. They came together at once, like=
two
wrestlers almost matched in strength. Their meetings must have been splendi=
d.
Giovanni, the eldest child, was a tall lad of sixteen, with soft brown hair=
and
grey eyes, and a clarity of brow, and the same calm simplicity of bearing w=
hich
made Paolo so complete; but the son had at the same time a certain brownnes=
s of
skin, a heaviness of blood, which he had from his mother. Paolo was so clear
and translucent.
In Giovanni the fusion of the parents was perf=
ect,
he was a perfect spark from the flint and steel. There was in Paolo a subtle
intelligence in feeling, a delicate appreciation of the other person. But t=
he
mind was unintelligent, he could not grasp a new order. Maria Fiori was muc=
h sharper
and more adaptable to the ways of the world. Paolo had an almost glass-like
quality, fine and clear and perfectly tempered; but he was also finished and
brittle. Maria was much coarser, more vulgar, but also she was more human, =
more
fertile, with crude potentiality. His passion was too fixed in its motion, =
hers
too loose and overwhelming.
But Giovanni was beautiful, gentle, and courtly
like Paolo, but warm, like Maria, ready to flush like a girl with anger or
confusion. He stood straight and tall, and seemed to look into the far dist=
ance
with his clear grey eyes. Yet also he could look at one and touch one with =
his look,
he could meet one. Paolo's blue eyes were like the eyes of the old spinning=
-woman,
clear and blue and belonging to the mountains, their vision seemed to end in
space, abstract. They reminded me of the eyes of the eagle, which looks into
the sun, and which teaches its young to do the same, although they are
unwilling.
Marco, the second son, was thirteen years old.=
He
was his mother's favourite, Giovanni loved his father best. But Marco was h=
is
mother's son, with the same brown-gold and red complexion, like a pomegrana=
te, and
coarse black hair, and brown eyes like pebble, like agate, like an animal's
eyes. He had the same broad, bovine figure, though he was only a boy. But t=
here
was some discrepancy in him. He was not unified, he had no identity.
He was strong and full of animal life, but alw=
ays
aimless, as though his wits scarcely controlled him. But he loved his mother
with a fundamental, generous, undistinguishing love. Only he always forgot =
what
he was going to do. He was much more sensitive than Maria, more shy and rel=
uctant.
But his shyness, his sensitiveness only made him more aimless and awkward, a
tiresome clown, slack and uncontrolled, witless. All day long his mother
shouted and shrilled and scolded at him, or hit him angrily. He did not min=
d,
he came up like a cork, warm and roguish and curiously appealing. She loved=
him
with a fierce protective love, grounded on pain. There was such a split, a
contrariety in his soul, one part reacting against the other, which landed =
him
always into trouble.
It was when Marco was a baby that Paolo had go=
ne
to America. They were poor on San Gaudenzio. There were the few olive trees,
the grapes, and the fruit; there was the one cow. But these scarcely made a
living. Neither was Maria content with the real peasants' lot any more, pol=
enta
at midday and vegetable soup in the evening, and no way out, nothing to look
forward to, no future, only this eternal present. She had been in service, =
and
had eaten bread and drunk coffee, and known the flux and variable chance of
life. She had departed from the old static conception. She knew what one mi=
ght
be, given a certain chance. The fixture was the thing she militated against=
. So
Paolo went to America, to California, into the gold mines.
Maria wanted the future, the endless possibili=
ty
of life on earth. She wanted her sons to be freer, to achieve a new plane of
living. The peasant's life was a slave's life, she said, railing against the
poverty and the drudgery. And it was quite true, Paolo and Giovanni worked =
twelve
and fourteen hours a day at heavy laborious work that would have broken an
Englishman. And there was nothing at the end of it. Yet Paolo was even happy
so. This was the truth to him.
It was the mother who wanted things different.=
It
was she who railed and railed against the miserable life of the peasants. W=
hen
we were going to throw to the fowls a dry broken penny roll of white bread,
Maria said, with anger and shame and resentment in her voice: 'Give it to
Marco, he will eat it. It isn't too dry for him.'
White bread was a treat for them even now, when
everybody eats bread. And Maria Fiori hated it, that bread should be a trea=
t to
her children, when it was the meanest food of all the rest of the world. She
was in opposition to this order. She did not want her sons to be peasants, =
fixed
and static as posts driven in the earth. She wanted them to be in the great
flux of life in the midst of all possibilities. So she at length sent Paolo=
to
America to the gold-mines. Meanwhile, she covered the wall of her parlour w=
ith
picture postcards, to bring the outer world of cities and industries into h=
er
house.
Paolo was entirely remote from Maria's world. =
He
had not yet even grasped the fact of money, not thoroughly. He reckoned in =
land
and olive trees. So he had the old fatalistic attitude to his circumstances,
even to his food. The earth was the Lord's and the fulness thereof; also th=
e leanness
thereof. Paolo could only do his part and leave the rest. If he ate in plen=
ty,
having oil and wine and sausage in the house, and plenty of maize-meal, he =
was
glad with the Lord. If he ate meagrely, of poor polenta, that was fate, it =
was
the skies that ruled these things, and no man ruled the skies. He took his =
fate
as it fell from the skies.
Maria was exorbitant about money. She would ch=
arge
us all she could for what we had and for what was done for us.
Yet she was not mean in her soul. In her soul =
she
was in a state of anger because of her own closeness. It was a violation to=
her
strong animal nature. Yet her mind had wakened to the value of money. She k=
new she
could alter her position, the position of her children, by virtue of money.=
She
knew it was only money that made the difference between master and servant.=
And
this was all the difference she would acknowledge. So she ruled her life
according to money. Her supreme passion was to be mistress rather than serv=
ant,
her supreme aspiration for her children was that in the end they might be
masters and not servants.
Paolo was untouched by all this. For him there=
was
some divinity about a master which even America had not destroyed. If we ca=
me
in for supper whilst the family was still at table he would have the childr=
en
at once take their plates to the wall, he would have Maria at once set the
table for us, though their own meal were never finished. And this was not s=
ervility,
it was the dignity of a religious conception. Paolo regarded us as belongin=
g to
the Signoria, those who are elect, near to God. And this was part of his
religious service. His life was a ritual. It was very beautiful, but it mad=
e me
unhappy, the purity of his spirit was so sacred and the actual facts seemed
such a sacrilege to it. Maria was nearer to the actual truth when she said =
that
money was the only distinction. But Paolo had hold of an eternal truth, whe=
re
hers was temporal. Only Paolo misapplied this eternal truth. He should not =
have
given Giovanni the inferior status and a fat, mean Italian tradesman the su=
perior.
That was false, a real falsity. Maria knew it and hated it. But Paolo could=
not
distinguish between the accident of riches and the aristocracy of the spiri=
t.
So Maria rejected him altogether, and went to the other extreme. We were all
human beings like herself; naked, there was no distinction between us, no
higher nor lower. But we were possessed of more money than she. And she had=
to
steer her course between these two conceptions. The money alone made the re=
al distinction,
the separation; the being, the life made the common level.
Paolo had the curious peasant's avarice also, =
but
it was not meanness. It was a sort of religious conservation of his own pow=
er,
his own self. Fortunately he could leave all business transactions on our
account to Maria, so that his relation with us was purely ritualistic. He w=
ould
have given me anything, trusting implicitly that I would fulfil my own natu=
re
as Signore, one of those more godlike, nearer the light of perfection than
himself, a peasant. It was pure bliss to him to bring us the first-fruit of=
the
garden, it was like laying it on an altar.
And his fulfilment was in a fine, subtle,
exquisite relationship, not of manners, but subtle interappreciation. He
worshipped a finer understanding and a subtler tact. A further fineness and
dignity and freedom in bearing was to him an approach towards the divine, s=
o he
loved men best of all, they fulfilled his soul. A woman was always a woman,=
and
sex was a low level whereon he did not esteem himself. But a man, a doer, t=
he
instrument of God, he was really godlike.
Paolo was a Conservative. For him the world was
established and divine in its establishment. His vision grasped a small cir=
cle.
A finer nature, a higher understanding, took in a greater circle, comprehen=
ded
the whole. So that when Paolo was in relation to a man of further vision, h=
e himself
was extended towards the whole. Thus he was fulfilled. And his initial
assumption was that every signore, every gentleman, was a man of further, p=
urer
vision than himself. This assumption was false. But Maria's assumption, tha=
t no
one had a further vision, no one was more elect than herself, that we are a=
ll
one flesh and blood and being, was even more false. Paolo was mistaken in
actual life, but Maria was ultimately mistaken.
Paolo, conservative as he was, believing that a
priest must be a priest of God, yet very rarely went to church. And he used=
the
religious oaths that Maria hated, even Porca-Maria. He always used oaths,
either Bacchus or God or Mary or the Sacrament. Maria was always offended. =
Yet it
was she who, in her soul, jeered at the Church and at religion. She wanted =
the
human society as the absolute, without religious abstractions. So Paolo's o=
aths
enraged her, because of their profanity, she said. But it was really becaus=
e of
their subscribing to another superhuman order. She jeered at the clerical
people. She made a loud clamour of derision when the parish priest of the
village above went down to the big village on the lake, and across the piaz=
za,
the quay, with two pigs in a sack on his shoulder. This was a real picture =
of
the sacred minister to her.
One day, when a storm had blown down an olive =
tree
in front of the house, and Paolo and Giovanni were beginning to cut it up, =
this
same priest of Mugiano came to San Gaudenzio. He was an iron-grey, thin, di=
sreputable-looking
priest, very talkative and loud and queer. He seemed like an old ne'er-do-w=
ell
in priests' black, and he talked loudly, almost to himself, as drunken peop=
le
do. At once he must show the Fiori how to cut up the tree, he must have the=
axe
from Paolo. He shouted to Maria for a glass of wine. She brought it out to =
him
with a sort of insolent deference, insolent contempt of the man and traditi=
onal
deference to the cloth. The priest drained the tumblerful of wine at one dr=
ink,
his thin throat with its Adam's apple working. And he did not pay the penny=
.
Then he stripped off his cassock and put away =
his
hat, and, a ludicrous figure in ill-fitting black knee-breeches and a not v=
ery
clean shirt, a red handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great
extravagant blows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Mar=
ia
was encouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco was st=
ifling
his hysterical amusement in his mother's apron, and prancing with glee. Pao=
lo
and Giovanni stood by the fallen tree, very grave and unmoved, inscrutable,
abstract. Then the youth came away to the doorway, with a flush mounting on=
his
face and a grimace distorting its youngness. Only Paolo, unmoved and detach=
ed,
stood by the tree with unchanging, abstract face, very strange, his eyes fi=
xed
in the ageless stare which is so characteristic.
Meanwhile the priest swung drunken blows at the
tree, his thin buttocks bending in the green-black broadcloth, supported on
thin shanks, and thin throat growing dull purple in the red-knotted kerchie=
f. Nevertheless
he was doing the job. His face was wet with sweat. He wanted another glass =
of
wine.
He took no notice of us. He was strangely a lo=
cal,
even a mountebank figure, but entirely local, an appurtenance of the distri=
ct.
It was Maria who jeeringly told us the story of
the priest, who shrugged her shoulders to imply that he was a contemptible
figure. Paolo sat with the abstract look on his face, as of one who hears a=
nd
does not hear, is not really concerned. He never opposed or contradicted he=
r,
but stayed apart. It was she who was violent and brutal in her ways. But
sometimes Paolo went into a rage, and then Maria, everybody, was afraid. It=
was
a white heavy rage, when his blue eyes shone unearthly, and his mouth opened
with a curious drawn blindness of the old Furies. There was something of the
cruelty of a falling mass of snow, heavy, horrible. Maria drew away, there =
was
a silence. Then the avalanche was finished.
They must have had some cruel fights before th=
ey
learned to withdraw from each other so completely. They must have begotten
Marco in hatred, terrible disintegrated opposition and otherness. And it was
after this, after the child of their opposition was born, that Paolo went a=
way
to California, leaving his San Gaudenzio, travelling with several companion=
s,
like blind beasts, to Havre, and thence to New York, then to California. He
stayed five years in the gold-mines, in a wild valley, living with a gang of
Italians in a town of corrugated iron.
All the while he had never really left San
Gaudenzio. I asked him, 'Used you to think of it, the lake, the Monte Baldo,
the laurel trees down the slope?' He tried to see what I wanted to know. Ye=
s,
he said--but uncertainly. I could see that he had never been really homesic=
k.
It had been very wretched on the ship going from Havre to New York. That he=
told
me about. And he told me about the gold-mines, the galleries, the valley, t=
he
huts in the valley. But he had never really fretted for San Gaudenzio whils=
t he
was in California.
In real truth he was at San Gaudenzio all the
time, his fate was riveted there. His going away was an excursion from real=
ity,
a kind of sleep-walking. He left his own reality there in the soil above the
lake of Garda. That his body was in California, what did it matter? It was =
merely
for a time, and for the sake of his own earth, his land. He would pay off t=
he
mortgage. But the gate at home was his gate all the time, his hand was on t=
he
latch.
As for Maria, he had felt his duty towards her.
She was part of his little territory, the rooted centre of the world. He se=
nt
her home the money. But it did not occur to him, in his soul, to miss her. =
He
wanted her to be safe with the children, that was all. In his flesh perhaps=
he missed
the woman. But his spirit was even more completely isolated since marriage.
Instead of having united with each other, they had made each other more
terribly distinct and separate. He could live alone eternally. It was his
condition. His sex was functional, like eating and drinking. To take a woma=
n, a
prostitute at the camp, or not to take her, was no more vitally important t=
han
to get drunk or not to get drunk of a Sunday. And fairly often on Sunday Pa=
olo
got drunk. His world remained unaltered.
But Maria suffered more bitterly. She was a yo=
ung,
powerful, passionate woman, and she was unsatisfied body and soul. Her soul=
's
satisfaction became a bodily unsatisfaction. Her blood was heavy, violent,
anarchic, insisting on the equality of the blood in all, and therefore on h=
er
own absolute right to satisfaction.
She took a wine licence for San Gaudenzio, and=
she
sold wine. There were many scandals about her. Somehow it did not matter ve=
ry
much, outwardly. The authorities were too divided among themselves to enfor=
ce
public opinion. Between the clerical party and the radicals and the sociali=
sts,
what canons were left that were absolute? Besides, these wild villages had
always been ungoverned.
Yet Maria suffered. Even she, according to her
conviction belonged to Paolo. And she felt betrayed, betrayed and deserted.=
The
iron had gone deep into her soul. Paolo had deserted her, she had been betr=
ayed
to other men for five years. There was something cruel and implacable in li=
fe.
She sat sullen and heavy, for all her quick activity. Her soul was sullen a=
nd
heavy.
I could never believe Felicina was Paolo's chi=
ld.
She was an unprepossessing little girl, affected, cold, selfish, foolish. M=
aria
and Paolo, with real Italian greatness, were warm and natural towards the c=
hild
in her. But they did not love her in their very souls, she was the fruit of=
ash
to them. And this must have been the reason that she was so self-conscious =
and
foolish and affected, small child that she was.
Paolo had come back from America a year before=
she
was born--a year before she was born, Maria insisted. The husband and wife
lived together in a relationship of complete negation. In his soul he was s=
ad
for her, and in her soul she felt annulled. He sat at evening in the chimne=
y-seat,
smoking, always pleasant and cheerful, not for a moment thinking he was
unhappy. It had all taken place in his subconsciousness. But his eyebrows a=
nd
eyelids were lifted in a kind of vacancy, his blue eyes were round and some=
how
finished, though he was so gentle and vigorous in body. But the very quick =
of
him was killed. He was like a ghost in the house, with his loose throat and
powerful limbs, his open, blue extinct eyes, and his musical, slightly husky
voice, that seemed to sound out of the past.
And Maria, stout and strong and handsome like a
peasant woman, went about as if there were a weight on her, and her voice w=
as
high and strident. She, too, was finished in her life. But she remained
unbroken, her will was like a hammer that destroys the old form.
Giovanni was patiently labouring to learn a li=
ttle
English. Paolo knew only four or five words, the chief of which were 'a'rig=
ht',
'boss', 'bread', and 'day'. The youth had these by heart, and was studying =
a little
more. He was very graceful and lovable, but he found it difficult to learn.=
A
confused light, like hot tears, would come into his eyes when he had again
forgotten the phrase. But he carried the paper about with him, and he made
steady progress.
He would go to America, he also. Not for anyth=
ing
would he stay in San Gaudenzio. His dream was to be gone. He would come bac=
k.
The world was not San Gaudenzio to Giovanni.
The old order, the order of Paolo and of Pietr=
o di
Paoli, the aristocratic order of the supreme God, God the Father, the Lord,=
was
passing away from the beautiful little territory. The household no longer
receives its food, oil and wine and maize, from out of the earth in the mot=
ion
of fate. The earth is annulled, and money takes its place. The landowner, w=
ho
is the lieutenant of God and of Fate, like Abraham, he, too, is annulled. T=
here
is now the order of the rich, which supersedes the order of the Signoria.
It is passing away from Italy as it has passed
from England. The peasant is passing away, the workman is taking his place.=
The
stability is gone. Paolo is a ghost, Maria is the living body. And the new
order means sorrow for the Italian more even than it has meant for us. But =
he
will have the new order.
San Gaudenzio is already becoming a thing of t=
he
past. Below the house, where the land drops in sharp slips to the sheer cli=
ff's
edge, over which it is Maria's constant fear that Felicina will tumble, the=
re
are the deserted lemon gardens of the little territory, snug down below. Th=
ey
are invisible till one descends by tiny paths, sheer down into them. And th=
ere
they stand, the pillars and walls erect, but a dead emptiness prevailing, l=
emon
trees all dead, gone, a few vines in their place. It is only twenty years s=
ince
the lemon trees finally perished of a disease and were not renewed. But the
deserted terrace, shut between great walls, descending in their openness fu=
ll
to the south, to the lake and the mountain opposite, seem more terrible than
Pompeii in their silence and utter seclusion. The grape hyacinths flower in=
the
cracks, the lizards run, this strange place hangs suspended and forgotten, =
forgotten
for ever, its erect pillars utterly meaningless.
I used to sit and write in the great loft of t=
he
lemon-house, high up, far, far from the ground, the open front giving across
the lake and the mountain snow opposite, flush with twilight. The old matti=
ng
and boards, the old disused implements of lemon culture made shadows in the
deserted place. Then there would come the call from the back, away above: '=
Venga,
venga mangiare.'
We ate in the kitchen, where the olive and lau=
rel
wood burned in the open fireplace. It was always soup in the evening. Then =
we
played games or cards, all playing; or there was singing, with the accordio=
n,
and sometimes a rough mountain peasant with a guitar.
But it is all passing away. Giovanni is in
America, unless he has come back to the War. He will not want to live in San
Gaudenzio when he is a man, he says. He and Marco will not spend their lives
wringing a little oil and wine out of the rocky soil, even if they are not
killed in the fighting which is going on at the end of the lake. In my loft=
by
the lemon-houses now I should hear the guns. And Giovanni kissed me with a =
kind
of supplication when I went on to the steamer, as if he were beseeching for=
a
soul. His eyes were bright and clear and lit up with courage. He will make a
good fight for the new soul he wants--that is, if they do not kill him in t=
his
War.
=
Maria
had no real licence for San Gaudenzio, yet the peasants always called for w=
ine.
It is easy to arrange in Italy. The penny is paid another time.
The wild old road that skirts the lake-side,
scrambling always higher as the precipice becomes steeper, climbing and win=
ding
to the villages perched high up, passes under the high boundary-wall of San
Gaudenzio, between that and the ruined church. But the road went just as mu=
ch between
the vines and past the house as outside, under the wall; for the high gates
were always open, and men or women and mules come into the property to call=
at
the door of the homestead. There was a loud shout, 'Ah--a--a--ah--Mari--a.
O--O--Oh Pa'o!' from outside, another wild, inarticulate cry from within, a=
nd
one of the Fiori appeared in the doorway to hail the newcomer.
It was usually a man, sometimes a peasant from
Mugiano, high up, sometimes a peasant from the wilds of the mountain, a
wood-cutter, or a charcoal-burner. He came in and sat in the house-place, h=
is
glass of wine in his hand between his knees, or on the floor between his fe=
et, and
he talked in a few wild phrases, very shy, like a hawk indoors, and unintel=
ligible
in his dialect.
Sometimes we had a dance. Then, for the wine to
drink, three men came with mandolines and guitars, and sat in a corner play=
ing
their rapid tunes, while all danced on the dusty brick floor of the little
parlour. No strange women were invited, only men; the young bloods from the=
big
village on the lake, the wild men from above. They danced the slow, trailin=
g,
lilting polka-waltz round and round the small room, the guitars and mandoli=
nes
twanging rapidly, the dust rising from the soft bricks. There were only the=
two
English women: so men danced with men, as the Italians love to do. They love
even better to dance with men, with a dear blood-friend, than with women.
'It's better like this, two men?' Giovanni say=
s to
me, his blue eyes hot, his face curiously tender.
The wood-cutters and peasants take off their
coats, their throats are bare. They dance with strange intentness, particul=
arly
if they have for partner an English Signora. Their feet in thick boots are
curiously swift and significant. And it is strange to see the Englishwomen,=
as they
dance with the peasants transfigured with a kind of brilliant surprise. All=
the
while the peasants are very courteous, but quiet. They see the women dilate=
and
flash, they think they have found a footing, they are certain. So the male
dancers are quiet, but even grandiloquent, their feet nimble, their bodies =
wild
and confident.
They are at a loss when the two English Signor=
as
move together and laugh excitedly at the end of the dance.
'Isn't it fine?'
'Fine! Their arms are like iron, carrying you
round.'
'Yes! Yes! And the muscles on their shoulders!=
I
never knew there were such muscles! I'm almost frightened.'
'But it's fine, isn't it? I'm getting into the
dance.'
'Yes--yes--you've only to let them take you.'<= o:p>
Then the glasses are put down, the guitars give
their strange, vibrant, almost painful summons, and the dance begins again.=
It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and
changing as the music changed. But it had always a kind of leisurely dignit=
y, a
trailing kind of polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never
violent in its passion, always becoming more intense. The women's faces cha=
nged
to a kind of transported wonder, they were in the very rhythm of delight. F=
rom
the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, ma=
king
hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their
cloaks, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and q=
uicker,
making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men see=
ming
to fly and to implicate other strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, =
the
women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a
breeze that was subtly rushing upon them, through them; the men worked their
feet, their thighs swifter, more vividly, the music came to an almost intol=
erable
climax, there was a moment when the dance passed into a possession, the men
caught up the women and swung them from the earth, leapt with them for a
second, and then the next phase of the dance had begun, slower again, more
subtly interwoven, taking perfect, oh, exquisite delight in every interrela=
ted
movement, a rhythm within a rhythm, a subtle approaching and drawing nearer=
to
a climax, nearer, till, oh, there was the surpassing lift and swing of the
women, when the woman's body seemed like a boat lifted over the powerful,
exquisite wave of the man's body, perfect, for a moment, and then once more=
the
slow, intense, nearer movement of the dance began, always nearer, nearer, a=
lways
to a more perfect climax.
And the women waited as if in transport for the
climax, when they would be flung into a movement surpassing all movement. T=
hey
were flung, borne away, lifted like a boat on a supreme wave, into the zeni=
th
and nave of the heavens, consummate.
Then suddenly the dance crashed to an end, and=
the
dancers stood stranded, lost, bewildered, on a strange shore. The air was f=
ull
of red dust, half-lit by the lamp on the wall; the players in the corner we=
re putting
down their instruments to take up their glasses.
And the dancers sat round the wall, crowding in
the little room, faint with the transport of repeated ecstasy. There was a
subtle smile on the face of the men, subtle, knowing, so finely sensual that
the conscious eyes could scarcely look at it. And the women were dazed, like
creatures dazzled by too much light. The light was still on their faces, li=
ke a
blindness, a reeling, like a transfiguration. The men were bringing wine, o=
n a
little tin tray, leaning with their proud, vivid loins, their faces flicker=
ing
with the same subtle smile. Meanwhile, Maria Fiori was splashing water, much
water, on the red floor. There was the smell of water among the glowing,
transfigured men and women who sat gleaming in another world, round the wal=
ls.
The peasants have chosen their women. For the
dark, handsome Englishwoman, who looks like a slightly malignant Madonna, c=
omes
Il Duro; for the 'bella bionda', the wood-cutter. But the peasants have alw=
ays
to take their turn after the young well-to-do men from the village below.
Nevertheless, they are confident. They cannot
understand the middle-class diffidence of the young men who wear collars and
ties and finger-rings.
The wood-cutter from the mountain is of medium
height, dark, thin, and hard as a hatchet, with eyes that are black like the
very flaming thrust of night. He is quite a savage. There is something stra=
nge
about his dancing, the violent way he works one shoulder. He has a wooden l=
eg, from
the knee-joint. Yet he dances well, and is inordinately proud. He is fierce=
as
a bird, and hard with energy as a thunderbolt. He will dance with the blonde
signora. But he never speaks. He is like some violent natural phenomenon ra=
ther
than a person. The woman begins to wilt a little in his possession.
'È bello--il ballo?' he asked at length,
one direct, flashing question.
'Si--molto bello,' cries the woman, glad to ha=
ve
speech again.
The eyes of the wood-cutter flash like actual
possession. He seems now to have come into his own. With all his senses, he=
is
dominant, sure.
He is inconceivably vigorous in body, and his
dancing is almost perfect, with a little catch in it, owing to his lameness,
which brings almost a pure intoxication. Every muscle in his body is supple=
as
steel, supple, as strong as thunder, and yet so quick, so delicately swift,=
it
is almost unbearable. As he draws near to the swing, the climax, the ecstas=
y,
he seems to lie in wait, there is a sense of a great strength crouching rea=
dy.
Then it rushes forth, liquid, perfect, transcendent, the woman swoons over =
in
the dance, and it goes on, enjoyment, infinite, incalculable enjoyment. He =
is
like a god, a strange natural phenomenon, most intimate and compelling,
wonderful.
But he is not a human being. The woman, somewh=
ere
shocked in her independent soul, begins to fall away from him. She has anot=
her
being, which he has not touched, and which she will fall back upon. The dan=
ce is
over, she will fall back on herself. It is perfect, too perfect.
During the next dance, while she is in the pow=
er
of the educated Ettore, a perfect and calculated voluptuary, who knows how =
much
he can get out of this Northern woman, and only how much, the wood-cutter
stands on the edge of the darkness, in the open doorway, and watches. He is
fixed upon her, established, perfect. And all the while she is aware of the=
insistent
hawk-like poising of the face of the wood-cutter, poised on the edge of the
darkness, in the doorway, in possession, unrelinquishing.
And she is angry. There is something stupid,
absurd, in the hard, talon-like eyes watching so fiercely and so confidentl=
y in
the doorway, sure, unmitigated. Has the creature no sense?
The woman reacts from him. For some time she w=
ill
take no notice of him. But he waits, fixed. Then she comes near to him, and=
his
will seems to take hold of her. He looks at her with a strange, proud, inhu=
man confidence,
as if his influence with her was already accomplished.
'Venga--venga un po',' he says, jerking his he=
ad
strangely to the darkness.
'What?' she replies, and passes shaken and dil=
ated
and brilliant, consciously ignoring him, passes away among the others, among
those who are safe.
There is food in the kitchen, great hunks of
bread, sliced sausage that Maria has made, wine, and a little coffee. But o=
nly
the quality come to eat. The peasants may not come in. There is eating and
drinking in the little house, the guitars are silent. It is eleven o'clock.=
Then there is singing, the strange bestial sin=
ging
of these hills. Sometimes the guitars can play an accompaniment, but usually
not. Then the men lift up their heads and send out the high, half-howling
music, astounding. The words are in dialect. They argue among themselves fo=
r a moment:
will the Signoria understand? They sing. The Signoria does not understand in
the least. So with a strange, slightly malignant triumph, the men sing all =
the
verses of their song, sitting round the walls of the little parlour. Their
throats move, their faces have a slight mocking smile. The boy capers in the
doorway like a faun, with glee, his straight black hair falling over his
forehead. The elder brother sits straight and flushed, but even his eyes
glitter with a kind of yellow light of laughter. Paolo also sits quiet, with
the invisible smile on his face.' Only Maria, large and active, prospering =
now,
keeps collected, ready to order a shrill silence in the same way as she ord=
ers the
peasants, violently, to keep their places.
The boy comes to me and says:
'Do you know, Signore, what they are singing?'=
'No,' I say.
So he capers with furious glee. The men with t=
he
watchful eyes, all roused, sit round the wall and sing more distinctly:
&=
nbsp;
Si verrà la primavera Fiorann' le mando=
line, Vienn' di basso le
Trentine Co=
i 'taliani
far' l'amor.
But the next verses are so improper that I pre=
tend
not to understand. The women, with wakened, dilated faces, are listening,
listening hard, their two faces beautiful in their attention, as if listeni=
ng
to something magical, a long way off. And the men sitting round the wall si=
ng
more plainly, coming nearer to the correct Italian. The song comes loud and
vibrating and maliciously from their reedy throats, it penetrates everybody.
The foreign women can understand the sound, they can feel the malicious,
suggestive mockery. But they cannot catch the words. The smile becomes more
dangerous on the faces of the men.
Then Maria Fiori sees that I have understood, =
and
she cries, in her loud, overriding voice:
'Basta--basta.
The men get up, straighten their bodies with a
curious, offering movement. The guitars and mandolines strike the vibrating
strings. But the vague Northern reserve has come over the Englishwomen. They
dance again, but without the fusion in the dance. They have had enough.
The musicians are thanked, they rise and go in=
to
the night. The men pass off in pairs. But the wood-cutter, whose name and w=
hose
nickname I could never hear, still hovered on the edge of the darkness.
Then Maria sent him also away, complaining tha=
t he
was too wild, proprio selvatico, and only the 'quality' remained, the
well-to-do youths from below. There was a little more coffee, and a talking=
, a story
of a man who had fallen over a declivity in a lonely part going home drunk =
in
the evening, and had lain unfound for eighteen hours. Then a story of a don=
key
who had kicked a youth in the chest and killed him.
But the women were tired, they would go to bed.
Still the two young men would not go away. We all went out to look at the
night.
The stars were very bright overhead, the mount=
ain
opposite and the mountains behind us faintly outlined themselves on the sky.
Below, the lake was a black gulf. A little wind blew cold from the Adige.
In the morning the visitors had gone. They had
insisted on staying the night. They had eaten eight eggs each and much brea=
d at
one o'clock in the morning. Then they had gone to sleep, lying on the floor=
in
the sitting-room.
In the early sunshine they had drunk coffee and
gone down to the village on the lake. Maria was very pleased. She would have
made a good deal of money. The young men were rich. Her cupidity seemed like
her very blossom.
=
The
first time I saw Il Duro was on a sunny day when there came up a party of
pleasure-makers to San Gaudenzio. They were three women and three men. The
women were in cotton frocks, one a large, dark, florid woman in pink, the o=
ther
two rather insignificant. The men I scarcely noticed at first, except that =
two
were young and one elderly.
They were a queer party, even on a feast day,
coming up purely for pleasure, in the morning, strange, and slightly uncert=
ain,
advancing between the vines. They greeted Maria and Paolo in loud, coarse
voices. There was something blowsy and uncertain and hesitating about the w=
omen
in particular, which made one at once notice them.
Then a picnic was arranged for them out of doo=
rs,
on the grass. They sat just in front of the house, under the olive tree, be=
yond
the well. It should have been pretty, the women in their cotton frocks, and
their friends, sitting with wine and food in the spring sunshine. But someh=
ow it
was not: it was hard and slightly ugly.
But since they were picnicking out of doors, we
must do so too. We were at once envious. But Maria was a little unwilling, =
and
then she set a table for us.
The strange party did not speak to us, they se=
emed
slightly uneasy and angry at our presence. I asked Maria who they were. She
lifted her shoulders, and, after a second's cold pause, said they were peop=
le
from down below, and then, in her rather strident, shrill, slightly bitter,=
slightly
derogatory voice, she added:
'They are not people for you, signore. You don=
't
know them.'
She spoke slightly angrily and contemptuously =
of
them, rather protectively of me. So that vaguely I gathered that they were =
not
quite 'respectable'.
Only one man came into the house. He was very
handsome, beautiful rather, a man of thirty-two or-three, with a clear gold=
en
skin, and perfectly turned face, something godlike. But the expression was =
strange.
His hair was jet black and fine and smooth, glossy as a bird's wing, his br=
ows
were beautifully drawn, calm above his grey eyes, that had long dark lashes=
.
His eyes, however, had a sinister light in the=
m, a
pale, slightly repelling gleam, very much like a god's pale-gleaming eyes, =
with
the same vivid pallor. And all his face had the slightly malignant, sufferi=
ng
look of a satyr. Yet he was very beautiful.
He walked quickly and surely, with his head ra=
ther
down, passing from his desire to his object, absorbed, yet curiously indiff=
erent,
as if the transit were in a strange world, as if none of what he was doing =
were
worth the while. Yet he did it for his own pleasure, and the light on his f=
ace,
a pale, strange gleam through his clear skin, remained like a translucent
smile, unchanging as time.
He seemed familiar with the household, he came=
and
fetched wine at his will. Maria was angry with him. She railed loudly and
violently. He was unchanged. He went out with the wine to the party on the
grass. Maria regarded them all with some hostility.
They drank a good deal out there in the sunshi=
ne.
The women and the older man talked floridly. Il Duro crouched at the feast =
in
his curious fashion--he had strangely flexible loins, upon which he seemed =
to
crouch forward. But he was separate, like an animal that remains quite sing=
le, no
matter where it is.
The party remained until about two o'clock. Th=
en,
slightly flushed, it moved on in a ragged group up to the village beyond. I=
do
not know if they went to one of the inns of the stony village, or to the la=
rge strange
house which belonged to the rich young grocer of the village below, a house
kept only for feasts and riots, uninhabited for the most part. Maria would =
tell
me nothing about them. Only the young well-to-do grocer, who had lived in
Vienna, the Bertolotti, came later in the afternoon inquiring for the party=
.
And towards sunset I saw the elderly man of the
group stumbling home very drunk down the path, after the two women, who had
gone on in front. Then Paolo sent Giovanni to see the drunken one safely pa=
st
the landslip, which was dangerous. Altogether it was an unsatisfactory busi=
ness,
very much like any other such party in any other country.
Then in the evening Il Duro came in. His name =
is
Faustino, but everybody in the village has a nickname, which is almost
invariably used. He came in and asked for supper. We had all eaten. So he a=
te a
little food alone at the table, whilst we sat round the fire.
Afterwards we played 'Up, Jenkins'. That was t=
he
one game we played with the peasants, except that exciting one of theirs, w=
hich
consists in shouting in rapid succession your guesses at the number of fing=
ers rapidly
spread out and shut into the hands again upon the table.
Il Duro joined in the game. And that was becau=
se
he had been in America, and now was rich. He felt he could come near to the
strange signori. But he was always inscrutable.
It was queer to look at the hands spread on the
table: the Englishwomen, having rings on their soft fingers; the large fresh
hands of the elder boy, the brown paws of the younger; Paolo's distorted gr=
eat
hard hands of a peasant; and the big, dark brown, animal, shapely hands of
Faustino.
He had been in America first for two years and
then for five years--seven years altogether--but he only spoke a very little
English. He was always with Italians. He had served chiefly in a flag facto=
ry, and
had had very little to do save to push a trolley with flags from the dyeing=
-room
to the drying-room I believe it was this.
Then he had come home from America with a fair
amount of money, he had taken his uncle's garden, had inherited his uncle's
little house, and he lived quite alone.
He was rich, Maria said, shouting in her strid=
ent
voice. He at once disclaimed it, peasant-wise. But before the signori he was
glad also to appear rich. He was mean, that was more, Maria cried,
half-teasing, half getting at him.
He attended to his garden, grew vegetables all=
the
year round, lived in his little house, and in spring made good money as a
vine-grafter: he was an expert vine-grafter.
After the boys had gone to bed he sat and talk=
ed
to me. He was curiously attractive and curiously beautiful, but somehow like
stone in his clear colouring and his clear-cut face. His temples, with the
black hair, were distinct and fine as a work of art.
But always his eyes had this strange,
half-diabolic, half-tortured pale gleam, like a goat's, and his mouth was s=
hut
almost uglily, his cheeks stern. His moustache was brown, his teeth strong =
and
spaced. The women said it was a pity his moustache was brown.
'Peccato!--sa, per bellezza, i baffi neri--ah-=
h!'
Then a long-drawn exclamation of voluptuous
appreciation.
'You live quite alone?' I said to him.
He did. And even when he had been ill he was
alone. He had been ill two years before. His cheeks seemed to harden like
marble and to become pale at the thought. He was afraid, like marble with f=
ear.
'But why,' I said, 'why do you live alone? You=
are
sad--è triste.'
He looked at me with his queer, pale eyes. I f=
elt
a great static misery in him, something very strange.
'Triste!' he repeated, stiffening up, hostile.=
I
could not understand.
'Vuol' dire che hai l'aria dolorosa,' cried Ma=
ria,
like a chorus interpreting. And there was always a sort of loud ring of
challenge somewhere in her voice.
'Sad,' I said in English.
'Sad I' he repeated, also in English. And he d=
id
not smile or change, only his face seemed to become more stone-like. And he
only looked at me, into my eyes, with the long, pale, steady, inscrutable l=
ook
of a goat, I can only repeat, something stone-like.
'Why,' I said, 'don't you marry? Man doesn't l=
ive
alone.'
'I don't marry,' he said to me, in his emphati=
c,
deliberate, cold fashion, 'because I've seen too much. Ho visto troppo.'
'I don't understand,' I said.
Yet I could feel that Paolo, sitting silent, l=
ike
a monolith also, in the chimney opening, he understood: Maria also understo=
od.
Il Duro looked again steadily into my eyes.
'Ho visto troppo,' he repeated, and the words
seemed engraved on stone. 'I've seen too much.'
'But you can marry,' I said, 'however much you
have seen, if you have seen all the world.'
He watched me steadily, like a strange creature
looking at me.
'What woman?' he said to me.
'You can find a woman--there are plenty of wom=
en,'
I said.
'Not for me,' he said. 'I have known too many.
I've known too much, I can marry nobody.'
'Do you dislike women?' I said.
'No--quite otherwise. I don't think ill of the=
m.'
'Then why can't you marry? Why must you live
alone?'
'Why live with a woman?' he said to me, and he
looked mockingly. 'Which woman is it to be?'
'You can find her,' I said. 'There are many
women.'
Again he shook his head in the stony, final
fashion.
'Not for me. I have known too much.'
'But does that prevent you from marrying?'
He looked at me steadily, finally. And I could=
see
it was impossible for us to understand each other, or for me to understand =
him.
I could not understand the strange white gleam of his eyes, where it came f=
rom.
Also I knew he liked me very much, almost loved
me, which again was strange and puzzling. It was as if he were a fairy, a f=
aun,
and had no soul. But he gave me a feeling of vivid sadness, a sadness that
gleamed like phosphorescence. He himself was not sad. There was a completen=
ess about
him, about the pallid otherworld he inhabited, which excluded sadness. It w=
as
too complete, too final, too defined. There was no yearning, no vague mergi=
ng
off into mistiness.... He was clear and fine as semi-transparent rock, as a
substance in moonlight. He seemed like a crystal that has achieved its final
shape and has nothing more to achieve.
That night he slept on the floor of the
sitting-room. In the morning he was gone. But a week after he came again, to
graft the vines.
All the morning and the afternoon he was among=
the
vines, crouching before them, cutting them back with his sharp, bright knif=
e,
amazingly swift and sure, like a god. It filled me with a sort of panic to =
see
him crouched flexibly, like some strange animal god, doubled on his haunche=
s,
before the young vines, and swiftly, vividly, without thought, cut, cut, cu=
t at
the young budding shoots, which fell unheeded on to the earth. Then again he
strode with his curious half-goatlike movement across the garden, to prepare
the lime.
He mixed the messy stuff, cow-dung and lime and
water and earth, carefully with his hands, as if he understood that too. He=
was
not a worker. He was a creature in intimate communion with the sensible wor=
ld, knowing
purely by touch the limey mess he mixed amongst, knowing as if by relation
between that soft matter and the matter of himself.
Then again he strode over the earth, a gleaming
piece of earth himself, moving to the young vines. Quickly, with a few clean
cuts of the knife, he prepared the new shoot, which he had picked out of a =
handful
which lay beside him on the ground; he went finely to the quick of the plan=
t, inserted
the graft, then bound it up, fast, hard.
It was like God grafting the life of man upon =
the
body of the earth, intimately conjuring with his own flesh.
All the while Paolo stood by, somehow excluded
from the mystery, talking to me, to Faustino. And Il Duro answered easily, =
as
if his mind were disengaged. It was his senses that were absorbed in the
sensible life of the plant, and the lime and the cow-dung he handled.
Watching him, watching his absorbed, bestial, =
and
yet godlike crouching before the plant, as if he were the god of lower life=
, I
somehow understood his isolation, why he did not marry. Pan and the ministe=
rs
of Pan do not marry, the sylvan gods. They are single and isolated in their
being.
It is in the spirit that marriage takes place.=
In
the flesh there is connexion, but only in the spirit is there a new thing
created out of two different antithetic things. In the body I am conjoined =
with
the woman. But in the spirit my conjunction with her creates a third thing,=
an
absolute, a Word, which is neither me nor her, nor of me nor of her, but wh=
ich
is absolute.
And Faustino had none of this spirit. In him
sensation itself was absolute--not spiritual consummation, but physical
sensation. So he could not marry, it was not for him. He belonged to the god
Pan, to the absolute of the senses.
All the while his beauty, so perfect and so
defined, fascinated me, a strange static perfection about him. But his move=
ments,
whilst they fascinated, also repelled. I can always see him crouched before=
the
vines on his haunches, his haunches doubled together in a complete animal
unconsciousness, his face seeming in its strange golden pallor and its hard=
ness
of line, with the gleaming black of the fine hair on the brow and temples, =
like
something reflective, like the reflecting surface of a stone that gleams ou=
t of
the depths of night. It was like darkness revealed in its steady, unchanging
pallor.
Again he stayed through the evening, having
quarrelled once more with the Maria about money. He quarrelled violently, y=
et
coldly. There was something terrifying in it. And as soon as the matter of
dispute was settled, all trace of interest or feeling vanished from him.
Yet he liked, above all things, to be near the
English signori. They seemed to exercise a sort of magnetic attraction over
him. It was something of the purely physical world, as a magnetized needle
swings towards soft iron. He was quite helpless in the relation. Only by me=
chanical
attraction he gravitated into line with us.
But there was nothing between us except our
complete difference. It was like night and day flowing together.
=
Besides
Il Duro, we found another Italian who could speak English, this time quite
well. We had walked about four or five miles up the lake, getting higher and
higher. Then quite suddenly, on the shoulder of a bluff far up, we came on a
village, icy cold, and as if forgotten.
We went into the inn to drink something hot. T=
he
fire of olive sticks was burning in the open chimney, one or two men were
talking at a table, a young woman with a baby stood by the fire watching
something boil in a large pot. Another woman was seen in the house-place
beyond.
In the chimney-seats sat a young mule-driver, =
who
had left his two mules at the door of the inn, and opposite him an elderly
stout man. They got down and offered us the seats of honour, which we accep=
ted
with due courtesy.
The chimneys are like the wide, open
chimney-places of old English cottages, but the hearth is raised about a fo=
ot
and a half or two feet from the floor, so that the fire is almost level with
the hands; and those who sit in the chimney-seats are raised above the audi=
ence
in the room, something like two gods flanking the fire, looking out of the =
cave
of ruddy darkness into the open, lower world of the room.
We asked for coffee with milk and rum. The sto=
ut
landlord took a seat near us below. The comely young woman with the baby to=
ok
the tin coffee-pot that stood among the grey ashes, put in fresh coffee amo=
ng the
old bottoms, filled it with water, then pushed it more into the fire.
The landlord turned to us with the usual
naïve, curious deference, and the usual question:
'You are Germans?'
'English.'
'Ah--Inglesi.'
Then there is a new note of cordiality--or so I
always imagine--and the rather rough, cattle-like men who are sitting with
their wine round the table look up more amicably. They do not like being
intruded upon. Only the landlord is always affable.
'I have a son who speaks English,' he says: he=
is
a handsome, courtly old man, of the Falstaff sort.
'Oh!'
'He has been in America.'
'And where is he now?'
'He is at home. O--Nicoletta, where is the
Giovann'?'
The comely young woman with the baby came in.<= o:p>
'He is with the band,' she said.
The old landlord looked at her with pride.
'This is my daughter-in-law,' he said.
She smiled readily to the Signora.
'And the baby?' we asked.
'Mio figlio,' cried the young woman, in the
strong, penetrating voice of these women. And she came forward to show the
child to the Signora.
It was a bonny baby: the whole company was uni=
ted
in adoration and service of the bambino. There was a moment of suspension, =
when
religious submission seemed to come over the inn-room.
Then the Signora began to talk, and it broke u=
pon
the Italian child-reverence.
'What is he called?'
'Oscare,' came the ringing note of pride. And =
the
mother talked to the baby in dialect. All, men and women alike, felt themse=
lves
glorified by the presence of the child.
At last the coffee in the tin coffee-pot was
boiling and frothing out of spout and lid. The milk in the little copper pan
was also hot, among the ashes. So we had our drink at last.
The landlord was anxious for us to see Giovann=
i,
his son. There was a village band performing up the street, in front of the
house of a colonel who had come home wounded from Tripoli. Everybody in the
village was wildly proud about the colonel and about the brass band, the mu=
sic of
which was execrable.
We just looked into the street. The band of
uncouth fellows was playing the same tune over and over again before a
desolate, newish house. A crowd of desolate, forgotten villagers stood roun=
d in
the cold upper air. It seemed altogether that the place was forgotten by God
and man.
But the landlord, burly, courteous, handsome,
pointed out with a flourish the Giovanni, standing in the band playing a
cornet. The band itself consisted only of five men, rather like beggars in =
the
street. But Giovanni was the strangest! He was tall and thin and somewhat G=
erman-looking,
wearing shabby American clothes and a very high double collar and a small
American crush hat. He looked entirely like a ne'er-do-well who plays a vio=
lin
in the street, dressed in the most down-at-heel, sordid respectability.
'That is he--you see, Signore--the young one u=
nder
the balcony.'
The father spoke with love and pride, and the
father was a gentleman, like Falstaff, a pure gentleman. The daughter-in-law
also peered out to look at Il Giovann', who was evidently a figure of reput=
e,
in his sordid, degenerate American respectability. Meanwhile, this figure o=
f repute
blew himself red in the face, producing staccato strains on his cornet. And=
the
crowd stood desolate and forsaken in the cold, upper afternoon.
Then there was a sudden rugged 'Evviva, Evviva=
!'
from the people, the band stopped playing, somebody valiantly broke into a =
line
of the song:
&=
nbsp;
Tripoli, sarà italiana, Sarà itali=
ana al
rombo del cannon'.
The colonel had appeared on the balcony, a sma=
llish
man, very yellow in the face, with grizzled black hair and very shabby legs.
They all seemed so sordidly, hopelessly shabby.
He suddenly began to speak, leaning forward, h=
ot
and feverish and yellow, upon the iron rail of the balcony. There was somet=
hing
hot and marshy and sick about him, slightly repulsive, less than human. He =
told
his fellow-villagers how he loved them, how, when he lay uncovered on the s=
ands
of Tripoli, week after week, he had known they were watching him from the
Alpine height of the village, he could feel that where he was they were all
looking. When the Arabs came rushing like things gone mad, and he had recei=
ved
his wound, he had known that in his own village, among his own dear ones, t=
here
was recovery. Love would heal the wounds, the home country was a lover who
would heal all her sons' wounds with love.
Among the grey desolate crowd were sharp, rend=
ing
'Bravos!'--the people were in tears--the landlord at my side was repeating
softly, abstractedly: 'Caro--caro--Ettore, caro colonello--' and when it wa=
s finished,
and the little colonel with shabby, humiliated legs was gone in, he turned =
to
me and said, with challenge that almost frightened me:
'Un brav' uomo.'
'Bravissimo,' I said.
Then we, too, went indoors.
It was all, somehow, grey and hopeless and acr=
id,
unendurable.
The colonel, poor devil--we knew him
afterwards--is now dead. It is strange that he is dead. There is something
repulsive to me in the thought of his lying dead: such a humiliating, someh=
ow
degraded corpse. Death has no beauty in Italy, unless it be violent. The de=
ath
of man or woman through sickness is an occasion of horror, repulsive. They
belong entirely to life, they are so limited to life, these people.
Soon the Giovanni came home, and took his corn=
et
upstairs. Then he came to see us. He was an ingenuous youth, sordidly shabby
and dirty. His fair hair was long and uneven, his very high starched collar
made one aware that his neck and his ears were not clean, his American crim=
son tie
was ugly, his clothes looked as if they had been kicking about on the floor=
for
a year.
Yet his blue eyes were warm and his manner and
speech very gentle.
'You will speak English with us,' I said.
'Oh,' he said, smiling and shaking his head, 'I
could speak English very well. But it is two years that I don't speak it no=
w,
over two years now, so I don't speak it.'
'But you speak it very well.'
'No. It is two years that I have not spoke, no=
t a
word--so, you see, I have--'
'You have forgotten it? No, you haven't. It wi=
ll
quickly come back.'
'If I hear it--when I go to America--then I
shall--I shall--'
'You will soon pick it up.'
'Yes--I shall pick it up.'
The landlord, who had been watching with pride,
now went away. The wife also went away, and we were left with the shy, gent=
le,
dirty, and frowsily-dressed Giovanni.
He laughed in his sensitive, quick fashion.
'The women in America, when they came into the
store, they said, "Where is John, where is John?" Yes, they liked
me.'
And he laughed again, glancing with vague, warm
blue eyes, very shy, very coiled upon himself with sensitiveness.
He had managed a store in America, in a smalli=
sh
town. I glanced at his reddish, smooth, rather knuckly hands, and thin wris=
ts
in the frayed cuff. They were real shopman's hands.
The landlord brought some special feast-day ca=
ke,
so overjoyed he was to have his Giovanni speaking English with the Signoria=
.
When we went away, we asked 'John' to come dow=
n to
our villa to see us. We scarcely expected him to turn up.
Yet one morning he appeared, at about half past
nine, just as we were finishing breakfast. It was sunny and warm and beauti=
ful,
so we asked him please to come with us picnicking.
He was a queer shoot, again, in his unkempt
longish hair and slovenly clothes, a sort of very vulgar down-at-heel Ameri=
can
in appearance. And he was transported with shyness. Yet ours was the world =
he
had chosen as his own, so he took his place bravely and simply, a hanger-on=
.
We climbed up the water-course in the
mountain-side, up to a smooth little lawn under the olive trees, where dais=
ies
were flowering and gladioli were in bud. It was a tiny little lawn of grass=
in
a level crevice, and sitting there we had the world below us--the lake, the=
distant
island, the far-off low Verona shore.
Then 'John' began to talk, and he talked
continuously, like a foreigner, not saying the things he would have said in
Italian, but following the suggestion and scope of his limited English.
In the first place, he loved his father--it was
'my father, my father' always. His father had a little shop as well as the =
inn
in the village above. So John had had some education. He had been sent to
Brescia and then to Verona to school, and there had taken his examinations =
to
become a civil engineer. He was clever, and could pass his examinations. Bu=
t he
never finished his course. His mother died, and his father, disconsolate, h=
ad
wanted him at home. Then he had gone back, when he was sixteen or seventeen=
, to
the village beyond the lake, to be with his father and to look after the sh=
op.
'But didn't you mind giving up all your work?'=
I
said.
He did not quite understand.
'My father wanted me to come back,' he said.
It was evident that Giovanni had had no defini=
te
conception of what he was doing or what he wanted to do. His father, wishin=
g to
make a gentleman of him, had sent him to school in Verona. By accident he h=
ad been
moved on into the engineering course. When it all fizzled to an end, and he
returned half-baked to the remote, desolate village of the mountain-side, he
was not disappointed or chagrined. He had never conceived of a coherent
purposive life. Either one stayed in the village, like a lodged stone, or o=
ne
made random excursions into the world, across the world. It was all aimless=
and
purposeless.
So he had stayed a while with his father, then=
he
had gone, just as aimlessly, with a party of men who were emigrating to
America. He had taken some money, had drifted about, living in the most
comfortless, wretched fashion, then he had found a place somewhere in
Pennsylvania, in a dry goods store. This was when he was seventeen or eight=
een years
old.
All this seemed to have happened to him without
his being very much affected, at least consciously. His nature was simple a=
nd
self-complete. Yet not so self-complete as that of Il Duro or Paolo. They h=
ad
passed through the foreign world and been quite untouched. Their souls were=
static,
it was the world that had flowed unstable by.
But John was more sensitive, he had come more =
into
contact with his new surroundings. He had attended night classes almost eve=
ry
evening, and had been taught English like a child. He had loved the American
free school, the teachers, the work.
But he had suffered very much in America. With= his curious, over-sensitive, wincing laugh, he told us how the boys had followed him and jeered at him, calling after him, 'You damn Dago, you damn Dago.' T= hey had stopped him and his friend in the street and taken away their hats, and spat into them. So that at last he had gone mad. They were youths and men w= ho always tortured him, using bad language which startled us very much as he repeated it, there on the little lawn under the olive trees, above the perf= ect lake: English obscenities and abuse so coarse and startling that we bit our lips, shocked almost into laughter, whilst John, simple and natural, and somehow, for all his long hair and dirty appearance, flower-like in soul, repeated to us these things which may never be repeated in decent company.<= o:p>
'Oh,' he said, 'at last, I get mad. When they =
come
one day, shouting, "You damn Dago, dirty dog," and will take my h=
at
again, oh, I get mad, and I would kill them, I would kill them, I am so mad=
. I
run to them, and throw one to the floor, and I tread on him while I go upon
another, the biggest. Though they hit me and kick me all over, I feel nothi=
ng,
I am mad. I throw the biggest to the floor, a man; he is older than I am, a=
nd I
hit him so hard I would kill him. When the others see it they are afraid, t=
hey
throw stones and hit me on the face. But I don't feel it--I don't know noth=
ing.
I hit the man on the floor, I almost kill him. I forget everything except I
will kill him--'
'But you didn't?'
'No--I don't know--' and he laughed his queer, shaken laugh. 'The other man that was with me, my friend, he came to me and= we went away. Oh, I was mad. I was completely mad. I would have killed them.'<= o:p>
He was trembling slightly, and his eyes were
dilated with a strange greyish-blue fire that was very painful and elementa=
l.
He looked beside himself. But he was by no means mad.
We were shaken by the vivid, lambent excitemen=
t of
the youth, we wished him to forget. We were shocked, too, in our souls to s=
ee
the pure elemental flame shaken out of his gentle, sensitive nature. By his=
slight,
crinkled laugh we could see how much he had suffered. He had gone out and f=
aced
the world, and he had kept his place, stranger and Dago though he was.
'They never came after me no more, not all the
while I was there.'
Then he said he became the foreman in the
store--at first he was only assistant. It was the best store in the town, a=
nd
many English ladies came, and some Germans. He liked the English ladies very
much: they always wanted him to be in the store. He wore white clothes ther=
e,
and they would say:
'You look very nice in the white coat, John'; =
or
else:
'Let John come, he can find it'; or else they
said:
'John speaks like a born American.'
This pleased him very much.
In the end, he said, he earned a hundred dolla=
rs a
month. He lived with the extraordinary frugality of the Italians, and had q=
uite
a lot of money.
He was not like Il Duro. Faustino had lived in=
a
state of miserliness almost in America, but then he had had his debauches of
shows and wine and carousals. John went chiefly to the schools, in one of w=
hich
he was even asked to teach Italian. His knowledge of his own language was r=
emarkable
and most unusual!
'But what,' I asked, 'brought you back?'
'It was my father. You see, if I did not come =
to
have my military service, I must stay till I am forty. So I think perhaps my
father will be dead, I shall never see him. So I came.'
He had come home when he was twenty to fulfil =
his
military duties. At home he had married. He was very fond of his wife, but =
he
had no conception of love in the old sense. His wife was like the past, to =
which
he was wedded. Out of her he begot his child, as out of the past. But the
future was all beyond her, apart from her. He was going away again, now, to
America. He had been some nine months at home after his military service was
over. He had no more to do. Now he was leaving his wife and child and his
father to go to America.
'But why,' I said, 'why? You are not poor, you=
can
manage the shop in your village.'
'Yes,' he said. 'But I will go to America. Per=
haps
I shall go into the store again, the same.'
'But is it not just the same as managing the s=
hop
at home?'
'No--no--it is quite different.'
Then he told us how he bought goods in Brescia=
and
in Said for the shop at home, how he had rigged up a funicular with the
assistance of the village, an overhead wire by which you could haul the goo=
ds
up the face of the cliffs right high up, to within a mile of the village. He
was very proud of this. And sometimes he himself went down the funicular to=
the
water's edge, to the boat, when he was in a hurry. This also pleased him.
But he was going to Brescia this day to see ab=
out
going again to America. Perhaps in another month he would be gone.
It was a great puzzle to me why he would go. He
could not say himself. He would stay four or five years, then he would come=
home
again to see his father--and his wife and child.
There was a strange, almost frightening destiny
upon him, which seemed to take him away, always away from home, from the pa=
st,
to that great, raw America. He seemed scarcely like a person with individual
choice, more like a creature under the influence of fate which was disinteg=
rating
the old life and precipitating him, a fragment inconclusive, into the new
chaos.
He submitted to it all with a perfect
unquestioning simplicity, never even knowing that he suffered, that he must
suffer disintegration from the old life. He was moved entirely from within,=
he
never questioned his inevitable impulse.
'They say to me, "Don't go--don't go"=
;--'
he shook his head. 'But I say I will go.'
And at that it was finished.
So we saw him off at the little quay, going do=
wn
the lake. He would return at evening, and be pulled up in his funicular bas=
ket.
And in a month's time he would be standing on the same lake steamer going to
America.
Nothing was more painful than to see him stand=
ing
there in his degraded, sordid American clothes, on the deck of the steamer,
waving us good-bye, belonging in his final desire to our world, the world of
consciousness and deliberate action. With his candid, open, unquestioning f=
ace,
he seemed like a prisoner being conveyed from one form of life to another, =
or
like a soul in trajectory, that has not yet found a resting-place.
What were wife and child to him?--they were the
last steps of the past. His father was the continent behind him; his wife a=
nd
child the foreshore of the past; but his face was set outwards, away from i=
t all--whither,
neither he nor anybody knew, but he called it America. Italians in Exile
=
When I
was in Constance the weather was misty and enervating and depressing, it wa=
s no
pleasure to travel on the big flat desolate lake.
When I went from Constance, it was on a small
steamer down the Rhine to Schaffhausen. That was beautiful. Still, the mist
hung over the waters, over the wide shallows of the river, and the sun, com=
ing
through the morning, made lovely yellow lights beneath the bluish haze, so =
that
it seemed like the beginning of the world. And there was a hawk in the upper
air fighting with two crows, or two rooks. Ever they rose higher and higher,
the crow flickering above the attacking hawk, the fight going on like some
strange symbol in the sky, the Germans on deck watching with pleasure.
Then we passed out of sight between wooded ban=
ks
and under bridges where quaint villages of old romance piled their red and
coloured pointed roofs beside the water, very still, remote, lost in the
vagueness of the past. It could not be that they were real. Even when the b=
oat
put in to shore, and the customs officials came to look, the village remain=
ed remote
in the romantic past of High Germany, the Germany of fairy tales and minstr=
els
and craftsmen. The poignancy of the past was almost unbearable, floating th=
ere
in colour upon the haze of the river.
We went by some swimmers, whose white shadowy
bodies trembled near the side of the steamer under water. One man with a ro=
und,
fair head lifted his face and one arm from the water and shouted a greeting=
to
us, as if he were a Niebelung, saluting with bright arm lifted from the wat=
er,
his face laughing, the fair moustache hanging over his mouth. Then his whit=
e body
swirled in the water, and he was gone, swimming with the side stroke.
Schaffhausen the town, half old and bygone, ha=
lf
modern, with breweries and industries, that is not very real. Schaffhausen
Falls, with their factory in the midst and their hotel at the bottom, and t=
he
general cinematograph effect, they are ugly.
It was afternoon when I set out to walk from t=
he
Falls to Italy, across Switzerland. I remember the big, fat, rather gloomy
fields of this part of Baden, damp and unliving. I remember I found some ap=
ples
under a tree in a field near a railway embankment, then some mushrooms, and=
I
ate both. Then I came on to a long, desolate high-road, with dreary, wither=
ed
trees on either side, and flanked by great fields where groups of men and w=
omen
were working. They looked at me as I went by down the long, long road, alone
and exposed and out of the world.
I remember nobody came at the border village to
examine my pack, I passed through unchallenged. All was quiet and lifeless =
and
hopeless, with big stretches of heavy land.
Till sunset came, very red and purple, and
suddenly, from the heavy spacious open land I dropped sharply into the Rhine
valley again, suddenly, as if into another glamorous world.
There was the river rushing along between its
high, mysterious, romantic banks, which were high as hills, and covered with
vine. And there was the village of tall, quaint houses flickering its light=
s on
to the deep-flowing river, and quite silent, save for the rushing of water.=
There was a fine covered bridge, very dark. I =
went
to the middle and looked through the opening at the dark water below, at the
façade of square lights, the tall village-front towering remote and
silent above the river. The hill rose on either side the flood; down here w=
as a
small, forgotten, wonderful world that belonged to the date of isolated vil=
lage
communities and wandering minstrels.
So I went back to the inn of The Golden Stag, =
and,
climbing some steps, I made a loud noise. A woman came, and I asked for foo=
d.
She led me through a room where were enormous barrels, ten feet in diameter,
lying fatly on their sides; then through a large stone-clean kitchen, with =
bright
pans, ancient as the Meistersinger; then up some steps and into the long
guest-room, where a few tables were laid for supper.
A few people were eating. I asked for Abendess=
en,
and sat by the window looking at the darkness of the river below, the cover=
ed
bridge, the dark hill opposite, crested with its few lights.
Then I ate a very large quantity of knoedel so=
up
and bread, and drank beer, and was very sleepy. Only one or two village men
came in, and these soon went again; the place was dead still. Only at a long
table on the opposite side of the room were seated seven or eight men, ragg=
ed, disreputable,
some impudent--another came in late; the landlady gave them all thick soup =
with
dumplings and bread and meat, serving them in a sort of brief disapprobatio=
n.
They sat at the long table, eight or nine tramps and beggars and wanderers =
out
of work and they ate with a sort of cheerful callousness and brutality for =
the
most part, and as if ravenously, looking round and grinning sometimes, subd=
ued,
cowed, like prisoners, and yet impudent. At the end one shouted to know whe=
re
he was to sleep. The landlady called to the young serving-woman, and in a c=
lassic
German severity of disapprobation they were led up the stone stairs to their
room. They tramped off in threes and twos, making a bad, mean, humiliated e=
xit.
It was not yet eight o'clock. The landlady sat talking to one bearded man,
staid and severe, whilst, with her work on the table, she sewed steadily.
As the beggars and wanderers went slinking out=
of
the room, some called impudently, cheerfully:
'Nacht, Frau Wirtin--G'Nacht, Wirtin--'te Nach=
t,
Frau,' to all of which the hostess answered a stereotyped 'Gute Nacht,' nev=
er
turning her head from her sewing, or indicating by the faintest movement th=
at she
was addressing the men who were filing raggedly to the doorway.
So the room was empty, save for the landlady a=
nd
her sewing, the staid, elderly villager to whom she was talking in the
unbeautiful dialect, and the young serving-woman who was clearing away the
plates and basins of the tramps and beggars.
Then the villager also went.
'Gute Nacht, Frau Seidl,' to the landlady; 'Gu=
te
Nacht,' at random, to me.
So I looked at the newspaper. Then I asked the
landlady for a cigarette, not knowing how else to begin. So she came to my
table, and we talked.
It pleased me to take upon myself a sort of
romantic, wandering character; she said my German was 'schön'; a little
goes a long way.
So I asked her who were the men who had sat at=
the
long table. She became rather stiff and curt.
'They are the men looking for work,' she said,=
as
if the subject were disagreeable.
'But why do they come here, so many?' I asked.=
Then she told me that they were going out of t=
he
country: this was almost the last village of the border: that the relieving
officer in each village was empowered to give to every vagrant a ticket
entitling the holder to an evening meal, bed, and bread in the morning, at =
a certain
inn. This was the inn for the vagrants coming to this village. The landlady
received fourpence per head, I believe it was, for each of these wanderers.=
'Little enough,' I said.
'Nothing,' she replied.
She did not like the subject at all. Only her
respect for me made her answer.
'Bettler, Lumpen, und Taugenichtse!' I said
cheerfully.
'And men who are out of work, and are going ba=
ck
to their own parish,' she said stiffly.
So we talked a little, and I too went to bed.<= o:p>
'Gute Nacht, Frau Wirtin.'
'Gute Nacht, mein Herr.'
So I went up more and more stone stairs, atten=
ded
by the young woman. It was a great, lofty, old deserted house, with many dr=
ab
doors.
At last, in the distant topmost floor, I had my
bedroom, with two beds and bare floor and scant furniture. I looked down at=
the
river far below, at the covered bridge, at the far lights on the hill above=
, opposite.
Strange to be here in this lost, forgotten place, sleeping under the roof w=
ith
tramps and beggars. I debated whether they would steal my boots if I put th=
em
out. But I risked it. The door-latch made a loud noise on the deserted land=
ing,
everywhere felt abandoned, forgotten. I wondered where the eight tramps and
beggars were asleep. There was no way of securing the door. But somehow I f=
elt
that, if I were destined to be robbed or murdered, it would not be by tramps
and beggars. So I blew out the candle and lay under the big feather bed, li=
stening
to the running and whispering of the medieval Rhine.
And when I waked up again it was sunny, it was
morning on the hill opposite, though the river deep below ran in shadow.
The tramps and beggars were all gone: they mus=
t be
cleared out by seven o'clock in the morning. So I had the inn to myself, I,=
and
the landlady, and the serving-woman. Everywhere was very clean, full of the
German morning energy and brightness, which is so different from the Latin =
morning.
The Italians are dead and torpid first thing, the Germans are energetic and
cheerful.
It was cheerful in the sunny morning, looking =
down
on the swift river, the covered, picturesque bridge, the bank and the hill
opposite. Then down the curving road of the facing hill the Swiss cavalry c=
ame
riding, men in blue uniforms. I went out to watch them. They came thunderin=
g romantically
through the dark cavern of the roofed-in bridge, and they dismounted at the
entrance to the village. There was a fresh morning-cheerful newness everywh=
ere,
in the arrival of the troops, in the welcome of the villagers.
The Swiss do not look very military, neither in
accoutrement nor bearing. This little squad of cavalry seemed more like a p=
arty
of common men riding out in some business of their own than like an army. T=
hey were
very republican and very free. The officer who commanded them was one of
themselves, his authority was by consent.
It was all very pleasant and genuine; there wa=
s a
sense of ease and peacefulness, quite different from the mechanical, slight=
ly
sullen manoeuvring of the Germans.
The village baker and his assistant came hot a=
nd
floury from the bakehouse, bearing between them a great basket of fresh bre=
ad.
The cavalry were all dismounted by the bridge-head, eating and drinking lik=
e business
men. Villagers came to greet their friends: one soldier kissed his father, =
who
came wearing a leathern apron. The school bell tang-tang-tanged from above,
school children merged timidly through the grouped horses, up the narrow
street, passing unwillingly with their books. The river ran swiftly, the so=
ldiers,
very haphazard and slack in uniform, real shack-bags, chewed their bread in
large mouthfuls; the young lieutenant, who seemed to be an officer only by
consent of the men, stood apart by the bridge-head, gravely. They were all
serious and self-contented, very unglamorous. It was like a business excurs=
ion
on horseback, harmless and uninspiring. The uniforms were almost ludicrous,=
so
ill-fitting and casual.
So I shouldered my own pack and set off, throu=
gh
the bridge over the Rhine, and up the hill opposite.
There is something very dead about this countr=
y. I
remember I picked apples from the grass by the roadside, and some were very
sweet. But for the rest, there was mile after mile of dead, uninspired coun=
try--uninspired,
so neutral and ordinary that it was almost destructive.
One gets this feeling always in Switzerland,
except high up: this feeling of average, of utter soulless ordinariness,
something intolerable. Mile after mile, to Zurich, it was just the same. It=
was
just the same in the tram-car going into Zurich; it was just the same in the
town, in the shops, in the restaurant. All was the utmost level of ordinari=
ness
and well-being, but so ordinary that it was like a blight. All the
picturesqueness of the town is nothing, it is like a most ordinary, average,
usual person in an old costume. The place was soul-killing.
So after two hours' rest, eating in a restaura=
nt,
wandering by the quay and through the market, and sitting on a seat by the
lake, I found a steamer that would take me away. That is how I always feel =
in Switzerland:
the only possible living sensation is the sensation of relief in going away,
always going away. The horrible average ordinariness of it all, something
utterly without flower or soul or transcendence, the horrible vigorous
ordinariness, is too much.
So I went on a steamer down the long lake,
surrounded by low grey hills. It was Saturday afternoon. A thin rain came o=
n. I
thought I would rather be in fiery Hell than in this dead level of average
life.
I landed somewhere on the right bank, about
three-quarters of the way down the lake. It was almost dark. Yet I must walk
away. I climbed a long hill from the lake, came to the crest, looked down t=
he
darkness of the valley, and descended into the deep gloom, down into a soul=
less
village.
But it was eight o'clock, and I had had enough.
One might as well sleep. I found the Gasthaus zur Post.
It was a small, very rough inn, having only one
common room, with bare tables, and a short, stout, grim, rather surly landl=
ady,
and a landlord whose hair stood up on end, and who was trembling on the edg=
e of
delirium tremens.
They could only give me boiled ham: so I ate
boiled ham and drank beer, and tried to digest the utter cold materialism of
Switzerland.
As I sat with my back to the wall, staring bla=
nkly
at the trembling landlord, who was ready at any moment to foam at the mouth,
and at the dour landlady, who was quite capable of keeping him in order, th=
ere
came in one of those dark, showy Italian girls with a man. She wore a blous=
e and
skirt, and no hat. Her hair was perfectly dressed. It was really Italy. The=
man
was soft, dark, he would get stout later, trapu, he would have somewhat the
figure of Caruso. But as yet he was soft, sensuous, young, handsome.
They sat at the long side-table with their bee=
r,
and created another country at once within the room. Another Italian came, =
fair
and fat and slow, one from the Venetian province; then another, a little th=
in
young man, who might have been a Swiss save for his vivid movement.
This last was the first to speak to the German=
s.
The others had just said 'Bier.' But the little newcomer entered into a
conversation with the landlady.
At last there were six Italians sitting talking
loudly and warmly at the side-table. The slow, cold German-Swiss at the oth=
er
tables looked at them occasionally. The landlord, with his crazed, stretched
eyes, glared at them with hatred. But they fetched their beer from the bar =
with
easy familiarity, and sat at their table, creating a bonfire of life in the=
callousness
of the inn.
At last they finished their beer and trooped o= ff down the passage. The room was painfully empty. I did not know what to do.<= o:p>
Then I heard the landlord yelling and screechi=
ng
and snarling from the kitchen at the back, for all the world like a mad dog.
But the Swiss Saturday evening customers at the other tables smoked on and
talked in their ugly dialect, without trouble. Then the landlady came in, a=
nd
soon after the landlord, he collarless, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, show=
ing
his loose throat, and accentuating his round pot-belly. His limbs were thin=
and
feverish, the skin of his face hung loose, his eyes glaring, his hands
trembled. Then he sat down to talk to a crony. His terrible appearance was a
fiasco; nobody heeded him at all, only the landlady was surly.
From the back came loud noises of pleasure and
excitement and banging about. When the room door was opened I could see down
the dark passage opposite another lighted door. Then the fat, fair Italian =
came
in for more beer.
'What is all the noise?' I asked the landlady =
at
last.
'It is the Italians,' she said.
'What are they doing?'
'They are doing a play.'
'Where?'
She jerked her head: 'In the room at the back.=
'
'Can I go and look at them?'
'I should think so.'
The landlord glaringly watched me go out. I we=
nt
down the stone passage and found a great, half-lighted room that might be u=
sed
to hold meetings, with forms piled at the side. At one end was raised platf=
orm or
stage. And on this stage was a table and a lamp, and the Italians grouped r=
ound
the light, gesticulating and laughing. Their beer mugs were on the table an=
d on
the floor of the stage; the little sharp youth was intently looking over so=
me
papers, the others were bending over the table with him.
They looked up as I entered from the distance,
looked at me in the distant twilight of the dusky room, as if I were an
intruder, as if I should go away when I had seen them. But I said in German=
:
'May I look?'
They were still unwilling to see or to hear me=
.
'What do you say?' the small one asked in repl=
y.
The others stood and watched, slightly at bay,
like suspicious animals.
'If I might come and look,' I said in German;
then, feeling very uncomfortable, in Italian: 'You are doing a drama, the
landlady told me.'
The big empty room was behind me, dark, the li=
ttle
company of Italians stood above me in the light of the lamp which was on the
table. They all watched with unseeing, unwilling looks: I was merely an
intrusion.
'We are only learning it,' said the small yout=
h.
They wanted me to go away. But I wanted to sta=
y.
'May I listen?' I said. 'I don't want to stay = in there.' And I indicated, with a movement of the head, the inn-room beyond.<= o:p>
'Yes,' said the young intelligent man. 'But we=
are
only reading our parts.'
They had all become more friendly to me, they
accepted me.
'You are a German?' asked one youth.
'No--English.'
'English? But do you live in Switzerland?'
'No--I am walking to Italy.'
'On foot?'
They looked with wakened eyes.
'Yes.'
So I told them about my journey. They were
puzzled. They did not quite understand why I wanted to walk. But they were
delighted with the idea of going to Lugano and Como and then to Milan.
'Where do you come from?' I asked them.
They were all from the villages between Verona=
and
Venice. They had seen the Garda. I told them of my living there.
'Those peasants of the mountains,' they said at
once, 'they are people of little education. Rather wild folk.'
And they spoke with good-humoured contempt.
I thought of Paolo, and Il Duro, and the Signor
Pietro, our padrone, and I resented these factory-hands for criticizing the=
m.
So I sat on the edge of the stage whilst they
rehearsed their parts. The little thin intelligent fellow, Giuseppino, was =
the
leader. The others read their parts in the laborious, disjointed fashion of=
the
peasant, who can only see one word at a time, and has then to put the words=
together,
afterwards, to make sense. The play was an amateur melodrama, printed in li=
ttle
penny booklets, for carnival production. This was only the second reading t=
hey
had given it, and the handsome, dark fellow, who was roused and displaying
himself before the girl, a hard, erect piece of callousness, laughed and
flushed and stumbled, and understood nothing till it was transferred into h=
im
direct through Giuseppino. The fat, fair, slow man was more conscientious. =
He
laboured through his part. The other two men were in the background more or
less.
The most confidential was the fat, fair, slow =
man,
who was called Alberto. His part was not very important, so he could sit by=
me
and talk to me.
He said they were all workers in the
factory--silk, I think it was--in the village. They were a whole colony of
Italians, thirty or more families. They had all come at different times.
Giuseppino had been longest in the village. He=
had
come when he was eleven, with his parents, and had attended the Swiss schoo=
l.
So he spoke perfect German. He was a clever man, was married, and had two
children.
He himself, Alberto, had been seven years in t=
he
valley; the girl, la Maddelena, had been here ten years; the dark man, Alfr=
edo,
who was flushed with excitement of her, had been in the village about nine =
years--he
alone of all men was not married.
The others had all married Italian wives, and =
they
lived in the great dwelling whose windows shone yellow by the rattling fact=
ory.
They lived entirely among themselves; none of them could speak German, more
than a few words, except the Giuseppino, who was like a native here.
It was very strange being among these Italians
exiled in Switzerland. Alfredo, the dark one, the unmarried, was in the old
tradition. Yet even he was curiously subject to a new purpose, as if there =
were
some greater new will that included him, sensuous, mindless as he was. He
seemed to give his consent to something beyond himself. In this he was
different from Il Duro, in that he had put himself under the control of the=
outside
conception.
It was strange to watch them on the stage, the
Italians all lambent, soft, warm, sensuous, yet moving subject round
Giuseppino, who was always quiet, always ready, always impersonal. There wa=
s a
look of purpose, almost of devotion on his face, that singled him out and m=
ade him
seem the one stable, eternal being among them. They quarrelled, and he let =
them
quarrel up to a certain point; then he called them back. He let them do as =
they
liked so long as they adhered more or less to the central purpose, so long =
as
they got on in some measure with the play.
All the while they were drinking beer and smok=
ing
cigarettes. The Alberto was barman: he went out continually with the glasse=
s.
The Maddelena had a small glass. In the lamplight of the stage the little p=
arty
read and smoked and practised, exposed to the empty darkness of the big roo=
m.
Queer and isolated it seemed, a tiny, pathetic magicland far away from the
barrenness of Switzerland. I could believe in the old fairy-tales where, wh=
en
the rock was opened, a magic underworld was revealed.
The Alfredo, flushed, roused, handsome, but ve=
ry
soft and enveloping in his heat, laughed and threw himself into his pose,
laughed foolishly, and then gave himself up to his part. The Alberto, slow =
and
laborious, yet with a spark of vividness and natural intensity flashing
through, replied and gesticulated; the Maddelena laid her head on the bosom=
of Alfredo,
the other men started into action, and the play proceeded intently for half=
an
hour.
Quick, vivid, and sharp, the little Giuseppino=
was
always central. But he seemed almost invisible. When I think back, I can
scarcely see him, I can only see the others, the lamplight on their faces a=
nd
on their full gesticulating limbs. I can see--the Maddelena, rather coarse =
and
hard and repellent, declaiming her words in a loud, half-cynical voice, fal=
ling
on the breast of the Alfredo, who was soft and sensuous, more like a female,
flushing, with his mouth getting wet, his eyes moist, as he was roused. I c=
an
see the Alberto, slow, laboured, yet with a kind of pristine simplicity in =
all
his movements, that touched his fat commonplaceness with beauty. Then there
were the two other men, shy, inflammable, unintelligent, with their sudden
Italian rushes of hot feeling. All their faces are distinct in the lampligh=
t,
all their bodies ate palpable and dramatic.
But the face of the Giuseppino is like a pale
luminousness, a sort of gleam among all the ruddy glow, his body is evanesc=
ent,
like a shadow. And his being seemed to cast its influence over all the othe=
rs,
except perhaps the woman, who was hard and resistant. The other men seemed =
all overcast,
mitigated, in part transfigured by the will of the little leader. But they =
were
very soft stuff, if inflammable.
The young woman of the inn, niece of the landl=
ady,
came down and called out across the room.
'We will go away from here now,' said the Gius=
eppino
to me. 'They close at eleven. But we have another inn in the next parish th=
at
is open all night. Come with us and drink some wine.'
'But,' I said, 'you would rather be alone.'
No; they pressed me to go, they wanted me to go
with them, they were eager, they wanted to entertain me. Alfredo, flushed,
wet-mouthed, warm, protested I must drink wine, the real Italian red wine, =
from
their own village at home. They would have no nay.
So I told the landlady. She said I must be bac=
k by
twelve o'clock.
The night was very dark. Below the road the st=
ream
was rushing; there was a great factory on the other side of the water, maki=
ng
faint quivering lights of reflection, and one could see the working of mach=
inery
shadowy through the lighted windows. Near by was the tall tenement where the
Italians lived.
We went on through the straggling, raw village,
deep beside the stream, then over the small bridge, and up the steep hill d=
own
which I had come earlier in the evening.
So we arrived at the café. It was so
different inside from the German inn, yet it was not like an Italian
café either. It was brilliantly lighted, clean, new, and there were
red-and-white cloths on the tables. The host was in the room, and his daugh=
ter,
a beautiful red-haired girl.
Greetings were exchanged with the quick, intim=
ate
directness of Italy. But there was another note also, a faint echo of reser=
ve,
as though they reserved themselves from the outer world, making a special i=
nner
community.
Alfredo was hot: he took off his coat. We all =
sat
freely at a long table, whilst the red-haired girl brought a quart of red w=
ine.
At other tables men were playing cards, with the odd Neapolitan cards. They=
too
were talking Italian. It was a warm, ruddy bit of Italy within the cold dar=
kness
of Switzerland.
'When you come to Italy,' they said to me, 'sa=
lute
it from us, salute the sun, and the earth, l'Italia.'
So we drank in salute of Italy. They sent their
greeting by me.
'You know in Italy there is the sun, the sun,'
said Alfredo to me, profoundly moved, wet-mouthed, tipsy.
I was reminded of Enrico Persevalli and his
terrifying cry at the end of Ghosts:
'Il sole, il sole!'
So we talked for a while of Italy. They had a
pained tenderness for it, sad, reserved.
'Don't you want to go back?' I said, pressing =
them
to tell me definitely. 'Won't you go back some time?'
'Yes,' they said, 'we will go back.'
But they spoke reservedly, without freedom. We
talked about Italy, about songs, and Carnival; about the food, polenta, and
salt. They laughed at my pretending to cut the slabs of polenta with a stri=
ng:
that rejoiced them all: it took them back to the Italian mezzo-giorno, the
bells jangling in the campanile, the eating after the heavy work on the lan=
d.
But they laughed with the slight pain and cont=
empt
and fondness which every man feels towards his past, when he has struggled =
away
from that past, from the conditions which made it.
They loved Italy passionately; but they would =
not
go back. All their blood, all their senses were Italian, needed the Italian
sky, the speech, the sensuous life. They could hardly live except through t=
he senses.
Their minds were not developed, mentally they were children, lovable,
naïve, almost fragile children. But sensually they were men: sensually
they were accomplished.
Yet a new tiny flower was struggling to open in
them, the flower of a new spirit. The substratum of Italy has always been
pagan, sensuous, the most potent symbol the sexual symbol. The child is rea=
lly
a non-Christian symbol: it is the symbol of mans's triumph of eternal life =
in
procreation. The worship of the Cross never really held good in Italy. The
Christianity of Northern Europe has never had any place there.
And now, when Northern Europe is turning back =
on
its own Christianity, denying it all, the Italians are struggling with might
and main against the sensuous spirit which still dominates them. When North=
ern
Europe, whether it hates Nietzsche or not, is crying out for the Dionysic e=
cstasy,
practising on itself the Dionysic ecstasy, Southern Europe is breaking free
from Dionysus, from the triumphal affirmation of life over death, immortali=
ty
through procreation.
I could see these sons of Italy would never go
back. Men like Paolo and Il Duro broke away only to return. The dominance of
the old form was too strong for them. Call it love of country or love of the
village, campanilismo, or what not, it was the dominance of the old pagan f=
orm,
the old affirmation of immortality through procreation, as opposed to the
Christian affirmation of immortality through self-death and social love.
But 'John' and these Italians in Switzerland w=
ere
a generation younger, and they would not go back, at least not to the old
Italy. Suffer as they might, and they did suffer, wincing in every nerve and
fibre from the cold material insentience of the northern countries and of
America, still they would endure this for the sake of something else they
wanted. They would suffer a death in the flesh, as 'John' had suffered in f=
ighting
the street crowd, as these men suffered year after year cramped in their bl=
ack
gloomy cold Swiss valley, working in the factory. But there would come a new
spirit out of it.
Even Alfredo was submitted to the new process;
though he belonged entirely by nature to the sort of Il Duro, he was purely
sensuous and mindless. But under the influence of Giuseppino he was thrown
down, as fallow to the new spirit that would come.
And then, when the others were all partially
tipsy, the Giuseppino began to talk to me. In him was a steady flame burnin=
g,
burning, burning, a flame of the mind, of the spirit, something new and cle=
ar,
something that held even the soft, sensuous Alfredo in submission, besides =
all
the others, who had some little development of mind.
'Sa signore,' said the Giuseppino to me, quiet,
almost invisible or inaudible, as it seemed, like a spirit addressing me,
'l'uomo non ha patria--a man has no country. What has the Italian Governmen=
t to
do with us. What does a Government mean? It makes us work, it takes part of=
our
wages away from us, it makes us soldiers--and what for? What is government
for?'
'Have you been a soldier?' I interrupted him.<= o:p>
He had not, none of them had: that was why they
could not really go back to Italy. Now this was out; this explained partly
their curious reservation in speaking about their beloved country. They had
forfeited parents as well as homeland.
'What does the Government do? It takes taxes; =
it
has an army and police, and it makes roads. But we could do without an army,
and we could be our own police, and we could make our own roads. What is th=
is
Government? Who wants it? Only those who are unjust, and want to have advan=
tage
over somebody else. It is an instrument of injustice and of wrong.
'Why should we have a Government? Here, in this
village, there are thirty families of Italians. There is no government for
them, no Italian Government. And we live together better than in Italy. We =
are
richer and freer, we have no policemen, no poor laws. We help each other, a=
nd
there are no poor.
'Why are these Governments always doing what we
don't want them to do? We should not be fighting in the Cirenaica if we were
all Italians. It is the Government that does it. They talk and talk and do
things with us: but we don't want them.'
The others, tipsy, sat round the table with the
terrified gravity of children who are somehow responsible for things they do
not understand. They stirred in their seats, turning aside, with gestures
almost of pain, of imprisonment. Only Alfredo, laying his hand on mine, was=
laughing,
loosely, floridly. He would upset all the Government with a jerk of his
well-built shoulder, and then he would have a spree--such a spree. He laugh=
ed
wetly to me.
The Giuseppino waited patiently during this ti=
psy
confidence, but his pale clarity and beauty was something constant star-lik=
e in
comparison with the flushed, soft handsomeness of the other. He waited
patiently, looking at me.
But I did not want him to go on: I did not wan=
t to
answer. I could feel a new spirit in him, something strange and pure and
slightly frightening. He wanted something which was beyond me. And my soul =
was somewhere
in tears, crying helplessly like an infant in the night. I could not respon=
d: I
could not answer. He seemed to look at me, me, an Englishman, an educated m=
an,
for corroboration. But I could not corroborate him. I knew the purity and n=
ew
struggling towards birth of a true star-like spirit. But I could not confirm
him in his utterance: my soul could not respond. I did not believe in the
perfectibility of man. I did not believe in infinite harmony among men. And
this was his star, this belief.
It was nearly midnight. A Swiss came in and as=
ked
for beer. The Italians gathered round them a curious darkness of reserve. A=
nd
then I must go.
They shook hands with me warmly, truthfully,
putting a sort of implicit belief in me, as representative of some further
knowledge. But there was a fixed, calm resolve over the face of the Giusepp=
ino,
a sort of steady faith, even in disappointment. He gave me a copy of a litt=
le
Anarchist paper published in Geneva. L'Anarchista, I believe it was called.=
I glanced
at it. It was in Italian, naïve, simple, rather rhetorical. So they we=
re
all Anarchists, these Italians.
I ran down the hill in the thick Swiss darknes=
s to
the little bridge, and along the uneven cobbled street. I did not want to
think, I did not want to know. I wanted to arrest my activity, to keep it
confined to the moment, to the adventure.
When I came to the flight of stone steps which=
led
up to the door of the inn, at the side I saw in the darkness two figures. T=
hey
said a low good night and parted; the girl began to knock at the door, the =
man disappeared.
It was the niece of the landlady parting from her lover.
We waited outside the locked door, at the top =
of
the stone steps, in the darkness of midnight. The stream rustled below. Then
came a shouting and an insane snarling within the passage; the bolts were n=
ot
withdrawn.
'It is the gentleman, it is the strange
gentleman,' called the girl.
Then came again the furious shouting snarls, a=
nd
the landlord's mad voice:
'Stop out, stop out there. The door won't be
opened again.'
'The strange gentleman is here,' repeated the
girl.
Then more movement was heard, and the door was
suddenly opened, and the landlord rushed out upon us, wielding a broom. It =
was
a strange sight, in the half-lighted passage. I stared blankly in the doorw=
ay.
The landlord dropped the broom he was waving and collapsed as if by magic, =
looking
at me, though he continued to mutter madly, unintelligibly. The girl slipped
past me, and the landlord snarled. Then he picked up the brush, at the same
time crying:
'You are late, the door was shut, it will not =
be
opened. We shall have the police in the house. We said twelve o'clock; at
twelve o'clock the door must be shut, and must not be opened again. If you =
are
late you stay out--'
So he went snarling, his voice rising higher a=
nd
higher, away into the kitchen.
'You are coming to your room?' the landlady sa=
id
to me coldly. And she led me upstairs.
The room was over the road, clean, but rather =
ugly,
with a large tin, that had once contained lard or Swiss-milk, to wash in. B=
ut
the bed was good enough, which was all that mattered.
I heard the landlord yelling, and there was a =
long
and systematic thumping somewhere, thump, thump, thump, and banging. I wond=
ered
where it was. I could not locate it at all, because my room lay beyond anot=
her large
room: I had to go through a large room, by the foot of two beds, to get to =
my
door; so I could not quite tell where anything was.
But I went to sleep whilst I was wondering.
I woke in the morning and washed in the tin. I
could see a few people in the street, walking in the Sunday morning leisure=
. It
felt like Sunday in England, and I shrank from it. I could see none of the
Italians. The factory stood there, raw and large and sombre, by the stream,=
and
the drab-coloured stone tenements were close by. Otherwise the village was =
a straggling
Swiss street, almost untouched.
The landlord was quiet and reasonable, even
friendly, in the morning. He wanted to talk to me: where had I bought my bo=
ots,
was his first question. I told him in Munich. And how much had they cost? I
told him twenty-eight marks. He was much impressed by them: such good boots=
, of
such soft, strong, beautiful leather; he had not seen such boots for a long
time.
Then I knew it was he who had cleaned my boots=
. I
could see him fingering them and wondering over them. I rather liked him. I
could see he had had imagination once, and a certain fineness of nature. No=
w he
was corrupted with drink, too far gone to be even a human being. I hated the
village.
They set bread and butter and a piece of cheese
weighing about five pounds, and large, fresh, sweet cakes for breakfast. I =
ate
and was thankful: the food was good.
A couple of village youths came in, in their Sunday clothes. They had the Sunday stiffness. It reminded me of the stiffn= ess and curious self-consciousness that comes over life in England on a Sunday.= But the Landlord sat with his waistcoat hanging open over his shirt, pot-bellie= d, his ruined face leaning forward, talking, always talking, wanting to know.<= o:p>
So in a few minutes I was out on the road agai=
n,
thanking God for the blessing of a road that belongs to no man, and travels
away from all men.
I did not want to see the Italians. Something =
had
got tied up in me, and I could not bear to see them again. I liked them so
much; but, for some reason or other, my mind stopped like clockwork if I wa=
nted
to think of them and of what their lives would be, their future. It was as =
if
some curious negative magnetism arrested my mind, prevented it from working=
, the
moment I turned it towards these Italians.
I do not know why it was. But I could never wr=
ite
to them, or think of them, or even read the paper they gave me though it la=
y in
my drawer for months, in Italy, and I often glanced over six lines of it. A=
nd
often, often my mind went back to the group, the play they were rehearsing,=
the
wine in the pleasant café, and the night. But the moment my memory t=
ouched
them, my whole soul stopped and was null; I could not go on. Even now I can=
not
really consider them in thought.
I shrink involuntarily away. I do not know why
this is.
=
=
When
one walks, one must travel west or south. If one turns northward or eastwar=
d it
is like walking down a cul-de-sac, to the blind end.
So it has been since the Crusaders came home
satiated, and the Renaissance saw the western sky as an archway into the
future. So it is still. We must go westwards and southwards.
It is a sad and gloomy thing to travel even fr=
om
Italy into France. But it is a joyful thing to walk south to Italy, south a=
nd
west. It is so. And there is a certain exaltation in the thought of going w=
est,
even to Cornwall, to Ireland. It is as if the magnetic poles were south-west
and north-east, for our spirits, with the south-west, under the sunset, as =
the
positive pole. So whilst I walk through Switzerland, though it is a valley =
of
gloom and depression, a light seems to flash out under every footstep, with=
the
joy of progression.
It was Sunday morning when I left the valley w=
here
the Italians lived. I went quickly over the stream, heading for Lucerne. It=
was
a good thing to be out of doors, with one's pack on one's back, climbing
uphill. But the trees were thick by the roadside; I was not yet free. It was
Sunday morning, very still.
In two hours I was at the top of the hill, loo=
king
out over the intervening valley at the long lake of Zurich, spread there be=
yond
with its girdle of low hills, like a relief-map. I could not bear to look a=
t it,
it was so small and unreal. I had a feeling as if it were false, a large
relief-map that I was looking down upon, and which I wanted to smash. It se=
emed
to intervene between me and some reality. I could not believe that that was=
the
real world. It was a figment, a fabrication, like a dull landscape painted =
on a
wall, to hide the real landscape.
So I went on, over to the other side of the hi=
ll,
and I looked out again. Again there were the smoky-looking hills and the la=
ke
like a piece of looking-glass. But the hills were higher: that big one was =
the Rigi.
I set off down the hill.
There was fat agricultural land and several
villages. And church was over. The churchgoers were all coming home: men in
black broadcloth and old chimney-pot silk hats, carrying their umbrellas; w=
omen
in ugly dresses, carrying books and umbrellas. The streets were dotted with=
these
black-clothed men and stiff women, all reduced to a Sunday nullity. I hated=
it.
It reminded me of that which I knew in my boyhood, that stiff, null 'propri=
ety'
which used to come over us, like a sort of deliberate and self-inflicted cr=
amp,
on Sundays. I hated these elders in black broadcloth, with their neutral fa=
ces,
going home piously to their Sunday dinners. I hated the feeling of these
villages, comfortable, well-to-do, clean, and proper.
And my boot was chafing two of my toes. That
always happens. I had come down to a wide, shallow valley-bed, marshy. So a=
bout
a mile out of the village I sat down by a stone bridge, by a stream, and to=
re
up my handkerchief, and bound up the toes. And as I sat binding my toes, tw=
o of
the elders in black, with umbrellas under their arms, approached from the
direction of the village.
They made me so furious, I had to hasten to fa=
sten
my boot, to hurry on again, before they should come near me. I could not be=
ar
the way they walked and talked, so crambling and material and mealy-mouthed=
.
Then it did actually begin to rain. I was just
going down a short hill. So I sat under a bush and watched the trees drip. I
was so glad to be there, homeless, without place or belonging, crouching un=
der
the leaves in the copse by the road, that I felt I had, like the meek,
inherited the earth. Some men went by, with their coat-collars turned up, a=
nd
the rain making still blacker their black broadcloth shoulders. They did no=
t see
me. I was as safe and separate as a ghost. So I ate the remains of my food =
that
I had bought in Zurich, and waited for the rain.
Later, in the wet Sunday afternoon, I went on =
to
the little lake, past many inert, neutral, material people, down an ugly ro=
ad
where trams ran. The blight of Sunday was almost intolerable near the town.=
So on I went, by the side of the steamy, reedy
lake, walking the length of it. Then suddenly I went in to a little villa by
the water for tea. In Switzerland every house is a villa.
But this villa, was kept by two old ladies and=
a
delicate dog, who must not get his feet wet. I was very happy there. I had =
good
jam and strange honey-cakes for tea, that I liked, and the little old ladies
pattered round in a great stir, always whirling like two dry leaves after t=
he restless
dog.
'Why must he not go out?' I said.
'Because it is wet,' they answered, 'and he co=
ughs
and sneezes.'
'Without a handkerchief, that is not angenehm'=
I
said.
So we became bosom friends.
'You are Austrian?' they said to me.
I said I was from Graz; that my father was a
doctor in Graz, and that I was walking for my pleasure through the countrie=
s of
Europe.
I said this because I knew a doctor from Graz =
who
was always wandering about, and because I did not want to be myself, an
Englishman, to these two old ladies. I wanted to be something else. So we
exchanged confidences.
They told me, in their queer, old, toothless
fashion, about their visitors, a man who used to fish all day, every day for
three weeks, fish every hour of the day, though many a day he caught
nothing--nothing at all--still he fished from the boat; and so on, such
trivialities. Then they told me of a third sister who had died, a third lit=
tle
old lady. One could feel the gap in the house. They cried; and I, being an =
Austrian
from Graz, to my astonishment felt my tears slip over on to the table. I al=
so
was sorry, and I would have kissed the little old ladies to comfort them.
'Only in heaven it is warm, and it doesn't rai=
n,
and no one dies,' I said, looking at the wet leaves.
Then I went away. I would have stayed the nigh=
t at
this house: I wanted to. But I had developed my Austrian character too far.=
So I went on to a detestable brutal inn in the
town. And the next day I climbed over the back of the detestable Rigi, with=
its
vile hotel, to come to Lucerne. There, on the Rigi, I met a lost young
Frenchman who could speak no German, and who said he could not find people =
to
speak French. So we sat on a stone and became close friends, and I promised=
faithfully
to go and visit him in his barracks in Algiers: I was to sail from Naples to
Algiers. He wrote me the address on his card, and told me he had friends in=
the
regiment, to whom I should be introduced, and we could have a good time, if=
I
would stay a week or two, down there in Algiers.
How much more real Algiers was than the rock on
the Rigi where we sat, or the lake beneath, or the mountains beyond. Algier=
s is
very real, though I have never seen it, and my friend is my friend for ever,
though I have lost his card and forgotten his name. He was a Government cle=
rk from
Lyons, making this his first foreign tour before he began his military serv=
ice.
He showed me his 'circular excursion ticket'. Then at last we parted, for h=
e must
get to the top of the Rigi, and I must get to the bottom.
Lucerne and its lake were as irritating as
ever--like the wrapper round milk chocolate. I could not sleep even one nig=
ht
there: I took the steamer down the lake, to the very last station. There I
found a good German inn, and was happy.
There was a tall thin young man, whose face was
red and inflamed from the sun. I thought he was a German tourist. He had ju=
st
come in; and he was eating bread and milk. He and I were alone in the
eating-room. He was looking at an illustrated paper.
'Does the steamer stop here all night?' I asked
him in German, hearing the boat bustling and blowing her steam on the water
outside, and glancing round at her lights, red and white, in the pitch
darkness.
He only shook his head over his bread and milk,
and did not lift his face.
'Are you English, then?' I said.
No one but an Englishman would have hidden his
face in a bowl of milk, and have shaken his red ears in such painful confus=
ion.
'Yes,' he said, 'I am.'
And I started almost out of my skin at the
unexpected London accent. It was as if one suddenly found oneself in the Tu=
be.
'So am I,' I said. 'Where have you come from?'=
Then he began, like a general explaining his
plans, to tell me. He had walked round over the Furka Pass, had been on foot
four or five days. He had walked tremendously. Knowing no German, and nothi=
ng
of the mountains, he had set off alone on this tour: he had a fortnight's h=
oliday.
So he had come over the Rhône Glacier across the Furka and down from
Andermatt to the Lake. On this last day he had walked about thirty mountain
miles.
'But weren't you tired?' I said, aghast.
He was. Under the inflamed redness of his sun-=
and
wind- and snow-burned face he was sick with fatigue. He had done over a hun=
dred
miles in the last four days.
'Did you enjoy it?' I asked.
'Oh yes. I wanted to do it all.' He wanted to =
do
it, and he had done it. But God knows what he wanted to do it for. He had n=
ow
one day at Lucerne, one day at Interlaken and Berne, then London.
I was sorry for him in my soul, he was so crue=
lly
tired, so perishingly victorious.
'Why did you do so much?' I said. 'Why did you
come on foot all down the valley when you could have taken the train? Was it
worth it?'
'I think so,' he said.
Yet he was sick with fatigue and over-exhausti=
on.
His eyes were quite dark, sightless: he seemed to have lost the power of
seeing, to be virtually blind. He hung his head forward when he had to writ=
e a
post card, as if he felt his way. But he turned his post card so that I sho=
uld
not see to whom it was addressed; not that I was interested; only I noticed=
his
little, cautious, English movement of privacy.
'What time will you be going on?' I asked.
'When is the first steamer?' he said, and he
turned out a guide-book with a time-table. He would leave at about seven.
'But why so early?' I said to him.
He must be in Lucerne at a certain hour, and at
Interlaken in the evening.
'I suppose you will rest when you get to Londo=
n?'
I said.
He looked at me quickly, reservedly.
I was drinking beer: I asked him wouldn't he h=
ave
something. He thought a moment, then said he would have another glass of hot
milk. The landlord came--'And bread?' he asked.
The Englishman refused. He could not eat, real=
ly.
Also he was poor; he had to husband his money. The landlord brought the milk
and asked me, when would the gentleman want to go away. So I made arrangeme=
nts
between the landlord and the stranger. But the Englishman was slightly unco=
mfortable
at my intervention. He did not like me to know what he would have for
breakfast.
I could feel so well the machine that had him =
in
its grip. He slaved for a year, mechanically, in London, riding in the Tube,
working in the office. Then for a fortnight he was let free. So he rushed t=
o Switzerland,
with a tour planned out, and with just enough money to see him through, and=
to
buy presents at Interlaken: bits of the edelweiss pottery: I could see him
going home with them.
So he arrived, and with amazing, pathetic cour=
age
set forth on foot in a strange land, to face strange landlords, with no
language but English at his command, and his purse definitely limited. Yet =
he
wanted to go among the mountains, to cross a glacier. So he had walked on a=
nd
on, like one possessed, ever forward. His name might have been Excelsior,
indeed.
But then, when he reached his Furka, only to w=
alk
along the ridge and to descend on the same side! My God, it was killing to =
the
soul. And here he was, down again from the mountains, beginning his journey
home again: steamer and train and steamer and train and Tube, till he was b=
ack
in the machine.
It hadn't let him go, and he knew it. Hence his
cruel self-torture of fatigue, his cruel exercise of courage. He who hung h=
is
head in his milk in torment when I asked him a question in German, what cou=
rage
had he not needed to take this his very first trip out of England, alone, on
foot!
His eyes were dark and deep with unfathomable
courage. Yet he was going back in the morning. He was going back. All he had
courage for was to go back. He would go back, though he died by inches. Why
not? It was killing him, it was like living loaded with irons. But he had t=
he courage
to submit, to die that way, since it was the way allotted to him.
The way he sank on the table in exhaustion, dr=
inking
his milk, his will, nevertheless, so perfect and unblemished, triumphant,
though his body was broken and in anguish, was almost too much to bear. My
heart was wrung for my countryman, wrung till it bled.
I could not bear to understand my countryman, a
man who worked for his living, as I had worked, as nearly all my countrymen
work. He would not give in. On his holiday he would walk, to fulfil his
purpose, walk on; no matter how cruel the effort were, he would not rest, he
would not relinquish his purpose nor abate his will, not by one jot or titt=
le.
His body must pay whatever his will demanded, though it were torture.
It all seemed to me so foolish. I was almost in
tears. He went to bed. I walked by the dark lake, and talked to the girl in=
the
inn. She was a pleasant girl: it was a pleasant inn, a homely place. One co=
uld
be happy there.
In the morning it was sunny, the lake was blue=
. By
night I should be nearly at the crest of my journey. I was glad.
The Englishman had gone. I looked for his name=
in
the book. It was written in a fair, clerkly hand. He lived at Streatham.
Suddenly I hated him. The dogged fool, to keep his nose on the grindstone l=
ike
that. What was all his courage but the very tip-top of cowardice? What a vi=
le nature--almost
Sadish, proud, like the infamous Red Indians, of being able to stand tortur=
e.
The landlord came to talk to me. He was fat and
comfortable and too respectful. But I had to tell him all the Englishman had
done, in the way of a holiday, just to shame his own fat, ponderous,
inn-keeper's luxuriousness that was too gross. Then all I got out of his
enormous comfortableness was:
'Yes, that's a very long step to take.'
So I set off myself, up the valley between the
close, snow-topped mountains, whose white gleamed above me as I crawled, sm=
all
as an insect, along the dark, cold valley below.
There had been a cattle fair earlier in the
morning, so troops of cattle were roving down the road, some with bells
tang-tanging, all with soft faces and startled eyes and a sudden swerving of
horns. The grass was very green by the roads and by the streams; the shadow=
s of
the mountain slopes were very dark on either hand overhead, and the sky with
snowy flanks and tips was high up.
Here, away from the world, the villages were q=
uiet
and obscure--left behind. They had the same fascinating atmosphere of being
forgotten, left out of the world, that old English villages have. And buying
apples and cheese and bread in a little shop that sold everything and smell=
ed of
everything, I felt at home again.
But climbing gradually higher, mile after mile,
always between the shadows of the high mountains, I was glad I did not live=
in
the Alps. The villages on the slopes, the people there, seemed, as if they =
must
gradually, bit by bit, slide down and tumble to the water-course, and be ro=
lled
on away, away to the sea. Straggling, haphazard little villages ledged on t=
he
slope, high up, beside their wet, green, hanging meadows, with pine trees
behind and the valley bottom far below, and rocks right above, on both side=
s,
seemed like little temporary squattings of outcast people. It seemed imposs=
ible
that they should persist there, with great shadows wielded over them, like a
menace, and gleams of brief sunshine, like a window. There was a sense of
momentariness and expectation. It seemed as though some dramatic upheaval m=
ust
take place, the mountains fall down into their own shadows. The valley beds
were like deep graves, the sides of the mountains like the collapsing walls=
of
a grave. The very mountain-tops above, bright with transcendent snow, seemed
like death, eternal death.
There, it seemed, in the glamorous snow, was t=
he
source of death, which fell down in great waves of shadow and rock, rushing=
to
the level earth. And all the people of the mountains, on the slopes, in the
valleys, seemed to live upon this great, rushing wave of death, of
breaking-down, of destruction.
The very pure source of breaking-down,
decomposition, the very quick of cold death, is the snowy mountain-peak abo=
ve.
There, eternally, goes on the white foregathering of the crystals, out of t=
he
deathly cold of the heavens; this is the static nucleus where death meets l=
ife
in its elementality. And thence, from their white, radiant nucleus of death=
in life,
flows the great flux downwards, towards life and warmth. And we below, we
cannot think of the flux upwards, that flows from the needle-point of snow =
to
the unutterable cold and death.
The people under the mountains, they seem to l=
ive
in the flux of death, the last, strange, overshadowed units of life. Big
shadows wave over them, there is the eternal noise of water falling icily
downwards from the source of death overhead.
And the people under the shadows, dwelling in =
the
tang of snow and the noise of icy water, seem dark, almost sordid, brutal.
There is no flowering or coming to flower, only this persistence, in the
ice-touched air, of reproductive life.
But it is difficult to get a sense of a native
population. Everywhere are the hotels and the foreigners, the parasitism. Y=
et
there is, unseen, this overshadowed, overhung, sordid mountain population,
ledged on the slopes and in the crevices. In the wider valleys there is sti=
ll a
sense of cowering among the people. But they catch a new tone from their co=
ntact
with the foreigners. And in the towns are nothing but tradespeople.
So I climbed slowly up, for a whole day, first
along the highroad, sometimes above and sometimes below the twisting,
serpentine railway, then afterwards along a path on the side of the hill--a
path that went through the crew-yards of isolated farms and even through the
garden of a village priest. The priest was decorating an archway. He stood =
on a
chair in the sunshine, reaching up with a garland, whilst the serving-woman
stood below, talking loudly.
The valley here seemed wider, the great flanks=
of
the mountains gave place, the peaks above were further back. So one was
happier. I was pleased as I sat by the thin track of single flat stones that
dropped swiftly downhill.
At the bottom was a little town with a factory=
or
quarry, or a foundry, some place with long, smoking chimneys; which made me
feel quite at home among the mountains.
It is the hideous rawness of the world of men,=
the
horrible, desolating harshness of the advance of the industrial world upon =
the
world of nature, that is so painful. It looks as though the industrial spre=
ad
of mankind were a sort of dry disintegration advancing and advancing, a pro=
cess
of dry disintegration. If only we could learn to take thought for the whole
world instead of for merely tiny bits of it.
I went through the little, hideous, crude
factory-settlement in the high valley, where the eternal snows gleamed, past
the enormous advertisements for chocolate and hotels, up the last steep slo=
pe
of the pass to where the tunnel begins. Göschenen, the village at the
mouth of the tunnel, is all railway sidings and haphazard villas for touris=
ts, post
cards, and touts and weedy carriages; disorder and sterile chaos, high up. =
How
should any one stay there!
I went on up the pass itself. There were vario=
us
parties of visitors on the roads and tracks, people from towns incongruously
walking and driving. It was drawing on to evening. I climbed slowly, between
the great cleft in the rock where are the big iron gates, through which the=
road
winds, winds half-way down the narrow gulley of solid, living rock, the very
throat of the path, where hangs a tablet in memory of many Russians killed.=
Emerging through the dark rocky throat of the =
pass
I came to the upper world, the level upper world. It was evening, livid, co=
ld.
On either side spread the sort of moorland of the wide pass-head. I drew ne=
ar along
the high-road, to Andermatt.
Everywhere were soldiers moving about the livi=
d,
desolate waste of this upper world. I passed the barracks and the first vil=
las
for visitors. Darkness was coming on; the straggling, inconclusive street of
Andermatt looked as if it were some accident--houses, hotels, barracks, lod=
ging-places
tumbled at random as the caravan of civilization crossed this high, cold, a=
rid
bridge of the European world.
I bought two post cards and wrote them out of
doors in the cold, livid twilight. Then I asked a soldier where was the
post-office. He directed me. It was something like sending post cards from
Skegness or Bognor, there in the post-office.
I was trying to make myself agree to stay in
Andermatt for the night. But I could not. The whole place was so terribly r=
aw
and flat and accidental, as if great pieces of furniture had tumbled out of=
a pantechnicon
and lay discarded by the road. I hovered in the street, in the twilight, tr=
ying
to make myself stay. I looked at the announcements of lodgings and boarding=
for
visitors. It was no good. I could not go into one of these houses.
So I passed on, through the old, low, broad-ea=
ved
houses that cringe down to the very street, out into the open again. The air
was fierce and savage. On one side was a moorland, level; on the other a sw=
eep
of naked hill, curved concave, and sprinkled with snow. I could see how
wonderful it would all be, under five or six feet of winter snow, skiing an=
d tobogganing
at Christmas. But it needed the snow. In the summer there is to be seen not=
hing
but the winter's broken detritus.
The twilight deepened, though there was still =
the
strange, glassy translucency of the snow-lit air. A fragment of moon was in=
the
sky. A carriage-load of French tourists passed me. There was the loud noise=
of water,
as ever, something eternal and maddening in its sound, like the sound of Ti=
me
itself, rustling and rushing and wavering, but never for a second ceasing. =
The
rushing of Time that continues throughout eternity, this is the sound of the
icy streams of Switzerland, something that mocks and destroys our warm bein=
g.
So I came, in the early darkness, to the little
village with the broken castle that stands for ever frozen at the point whe=
re
the track parts, one way continuing along the ridge, to the Furka Pass, the
other swerving over the hill to the left, over the Gotthardt.
In this village I must stay. I saw a woman loo=
king
hastily, furtively from a doorway. I knew she was looking for visitors. I w=
ent
on up the hilly street. There were only a few wooden houses and a gaily lig=
hted
wooden inn, where men were laughing, and strangers, men, standing talking
loudly in the doorway.
It was very difficult to go to a house this ni=
ght.
I did not want to approach any of them. I turned back to the house of the
peering woman. She had looked hen-like and anxious. She would be glad of a
visitor to help her pay her rent.
It was a clean, pleasant wooden house, made to
keep out the cold. That seemed its one function: to defend the inmates from=
the
cold. It was furnished like a hut, just tables and chairs and bare wooden
walls. One felt very close and secure in the room, as in a hut, shut away f=
rom
the outer world.
The hen-like woman came.
'Can I have a bed,' I said, 'for the night?'
'Abendessen, ja!' she replied. 'Will you have =
soup
and boiled beef and vegetables?'
I said I would, so I sat down to wait, in the
utter silence. I could scarcely hear the ice-stream, the silence seemed fro=
zen,
the house empty. The woman seemed to be flitting aimlessly, scurriedly, in
reflex against the silence. One could almost touch the stillness as one cou=
ld touch
the walls, or the stove, or the table with white American oil-cloth.
Suddenly she appeared again.
'What will you drink?'
She watched my face anxiously, and her voice w=
as
pathetic, slightly pleading in its quickness.
'Wine or beer?' she said.
I would not trust the coldness of beer.
'A half of red wine,' I said.
I knew she was going to keep me an indefinite
time.
She appeared with the wine and bread.
'Would you like omelette after the beef?' she
asked. 'Omelette with cognac--I can make it very good.'
I knew I should be spending too much, but I sa=
id
yes. After all, why should I not eat, after the long walk?
So she left me again, whilst I sat in the utter
isolation and stillness, eating bread and drinking the wine, which was good.
And I listened for any sound: only the faint noise of the stream. And I
wondered, Why am I here, on this ridge of the Alps, in the lamp-lit, wooden,
close-shut room, alone? Why am I here?
Yet somehow I was glad, I was happy even: such
splendid silence and coldness and clean isolation. It was something eternal,
unbroachable: I was free, in this heavy, ice-cold air, this upper world, al=
one.
London, far away below, beyond, England, Germany, France--they were all so =
unreal
in the night. It was a sort of grief that this continent all beneath was so
unreal, false, non-existent in its activity. Out of the silence one looked =
down
on it, and it seemed to have lost all importance, all significance. It was =
so
big, yet it had no significance. The kingdom of the world had no significan=
ce:
what could one do but wander about?
The woman came with my soup. I asked her, did =
not
many people come in the summer. But she was scared away, she did not answer,
she went like a leaf in the wind. However, the soup was good and plentiful.=
She was a long time before she came with the n=
ext
course. Then she put the tray on the table, and looking at me, then looking
away, shrinking, she said:
'You must excuse me if I don't answer you--I d=
on't
hear well--I am rather deaf.'
I looked at her, and I winced also. She shrank=
in
such simple pain from the fact of her defect. I wondered if she were bullied
because of it, or only afraid lest visitors would dislike it.
She put the dishes in order, set me my plate,
quickly, nervously, and was gone again, like a scared chicken. Being tired,=
I
wanted to weep over her, the nervous, timid hen, so frightened by her own
deafness. The house was silent of her, empty. It was perhaps her deafness w=
hich
created this empty soundlessness.
When she came with the omelette, I said to her
loudly:
'That was very good, the soup and meat.' So she
quivered nervously, and said, 'Thank you,' and I managed to talk to her. She
was like most deaf people, in that her terror of not hearing made her six t=
imes
worse than she actually was.
She spoke with a soft, strange accent, so I
thought she was perhaps a foreigner. But when I asked her she misunderstood,
and I had not the heart to correct her. I can only remember she said her ho=
use
was always full in the winter, about Christmas-time. People came for the wi=
nter
sport. There were two young English ladies who always came to her.
She spoke of them warmly. Then, suddenly afrai=
d,
she drifted off again. I ate the omelette with cognac, which was very good,
then I looked in the street. It was very dark, with bright stars, and smell=
ed
of snow. Two village men went by. I was tired, I did not want to go to the =
inn.
So I went to bed, in the silent, wooden house.=
I
had a small bedroom, clean and wooden and very cold. Outside, the stream was
rushing. I covered myself with a great depth of featherbed, and looked at t=
he stars,
and the shadowy upper world, and went to sleep.
In the morning I washed in the ice-cold water,=
and
was glad to set out. An icy mist was over the noisy stream, there were a few
meagre, shredded pine-trees. I had breakfast and paid my bill: it was seven=
francs--more
than I could afford; but that did not matter, once I was out in the air.
The sky was blue and perfect, it was a ringing
morning, the village was very still. I went up the hill till I came to the
signpost. I looked down the direction of the Furka, and thought of my tired
Englishman from Streatham, who would be on his way home. Thank God I need n=
ot
go home: never, perhaps. I turned up the track to the left, to the Gothard.=
Standing looking round at the mountain-tops, at
the village and the broken castle below me, at the scattered debris of
Andermatt on the moor in the distance, I was jumping in my soul with deligh=
t.
Should one ever go down to the lower world?
Then I saw another figure striding along, a yo=
uth
with knee-breeches and Alpine hat and braces over his shirt, walking manful=
ly,
his coat slung in his rucksack behind. I laughed, and waited. He came my wa=
y.
'Are you going over the Gothard?' I said.
'Yes,' he replied. 'Are you also?'
'Yes' I said. 'We will go together.'
So we set off, climbing a track up the heathy
rocks.
He was a pale, freckled town youth from Basel,
seventeen years old. He was a clerk in a baggage-transport firm--Gondrand
Frères, I believe. He had a week's holiday, in which time he was goi=
ng
to make a big circular walk, something like the Englishman's. But he was
accustomed to this mountain walking: he belonged to a Sportverein. Manfully=
he
marched in his thick hob-nailed boots, earnestly he scrambled up the rocks.=
We were in the crest of the pass. Broad
snow-patched slopes came down from the pure sky; the defile was full of sto=
nes,
all bare stones, enormous ones as big as a house, and small ones, pebbles.
Through these the road wound in silence, through this upper, transcendent
desolation, wherein was only the sound of the stream. Sky and snow-patched
slopes, then the stony, rocky bed of the defile, full of morning sunshine: =
this
was all. We were crossing in silence from the northern world to the souther=
n.
But he, Emil, was going to take the train back,
through the tunnel, in the evening, to resume his circular walk at
Göschenen.
I, however, was going on, over the ridge of the
world, from the north into the south. So I was glad.
We climbed up the gradual incline for a long t=
ime.
The slopes above became lower, they began to recede. The sky was very near,=
we
were walking under the sky.
Then the defile widened out, there was an open
place before us, the very top of the pass. Also there were low barracks, and
soldiers. We heard firing. Standing still, we saw on the slopes of snow, un=
der
the radiant blue heaven, tiny puffs of smoke, then some small black figures
crossing the snow patch, then another rattle of rifle-fire, rattling dry an=
d unnatural
in the upper, skyey air, between the rocks.
'Das ist schön,' said my companion, in his
simple admiration.
'Hübsch,' I said.
'But that would be splendid, to be firing up
there, manoeuvring up in the snow.'
And he began to tell me how hard a soldier's l=
ife
was, how hard the soldier was drilled.
'You don't look forward to it?' I said.
'Oh yes, I do. I want to be a soldier, I want =
to
serve my time.'
'Why?'I said.
'For the exercise, the life, the drilling. One
becomes strong.'
'Do all the Swiss want to serve their time in =
the
army?' I asked.
'Yes--they all want to. It is good for every m=
an,
and it keeps us all together. Besides, it is only for a year. For a year it=
is
very good. The Germans have three years--that is too long, that is bad.'
I told him how the soldiers in Bavaria hated t=
he
military service.
'Yes,' he said, 'that is true of Germans. The
system is different. Ours is much better; in Switzerland a man enjoys his t=
ime
as a soldier. I want to go.'
So we watched the black dots of soldiers crawl=
ing
over the high snow, listened to the unnatural dry rattle of guns, up there.=
Then we were aware of somebody whistling, of
soldiers yelling down the road. We were to come on, along the level, over t=
he
bridge. So we marched quickly forward, away from the slopes, towards the ho=
tel,
once a monastery, that stood in the distance. The light was blue and clear =
on the
reedy lakes of this upper place; it was a strange desolation of water and b=
og
and rocks and road, hedged by the snowy slopes round the rim, under the very
sky.
The soldier was yelling again. I could not tell
what he said.
'He says if we don't run we can't come at all,'
said Emil.
'I won't run,' I said.
So we hurried forwards, over the bridge, where=
the
soldier on guard was standing.
'Do you want to be shot?' he said angrily, as =
we
came up.
'No, thanks,' I said.
Emil was very serious.
'How long should we have had to wait if we had= n't got through now?' he asked the soldier, when we were safely out of danger.<= o:p>
'Till one o'clock,' was the reply.
'Two hours!' said Emil, strangely elated. 'We
should have had to wait two hours before we could come on. He was riled tha=
t we
didn't run,' and he laughed with glee.
So we marched over the level to the hotel. We
called in for a glass of hot milk. I asked in German. But the maid, a pert
hussy, elegant and superior, was French. She served us with great contempt,=
as
two worthless creatures, poverty-stricken. It abashed poor Emil, but we man=
aged
to laugh at her. This made her very angry. In the smoking-room she raised up
her voice in French:
'Du lait chaud pour les chameaux.'
'Some hot milk for the camels, she says,' I
translated for Emil. He was covered with confusion and youthful anger.
But I called to her, tapped the table and call=
ed:
'Mademoiselle!'
She appeared flouncingly in the doorway.
'Encore du lait pour les chameaux,' I said.
And she whisked our glasses off the table, and
flounced out without a word.
But she would not come in again with the milk.=
A
German girl brought it. We laughed, and she smiled primly.
When we set forth again, Emil rolled up his
sleeves and turned back his shirt from his neck and breast, to do the thing
thoroughly. Besides, it was midday, and the sun was hot; and, with his bulky
pack on his back, he suggested the camel of the French maid more than ever.=
We were on the downward slope. Only a short way
from the hotel, and there was the drop, the great cleft in the mountains
running down from this shallow pot among the peaks.
The descent on the south side is much more
precipitous and wonderful than the ascent from the north. On the south, the
rocks are craggy and stupendous; the little river falls headlong down; it is
not a stream, it is one broken, panting cascade far away in the gulley belo=
w,
in the darkness.
But on the slopes the sun pours in, the road w=
inds
down with its tail in its mouth, always in endless loops returning on itsel=
f.
The mules that travel upward seem to be treading in a mill.
Emil took the narrow tracks, and, like the wat=
er,
we cascaded down, leaping from level to level, leaping, running, leaping,
descending headlong, only resting now and again when we came down on to ano=
ther
level of the high-road.
Having begun, we could not help ourselves, we =
were
like two stones bouncing down. Emil was highly elated. He waved his thin, b=
are,
white arms as he leapt, his chest grew pink with the exercise. Now he felt =
he was
doing something that became a member of his Sportverein. Down we went, jump=
ing,
running, britching.
It was wonderful on this south side, so sunny,
with feathery trees and deep black shadows. It reminded me of Goethe, of th=
e romantic
period:
&=
nbsp;
Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blühen?
So we went tumbling down into the south, very
swiftly, along with the tumbling stream. But it was very tiring. We went at=
a
great pace down the gully, between the sheer rocks. Trees grew in the ledges
high over our heads, trees grew down below. And ever we descended.
Till gradually the gully opened, then opened i=
nto
a wide valley-head, and we saw Airolo away below us, the railway emerging f=
rom
its hole, the whole valley like a cornucopia full of sunshine.
Poor Emil was tired, more tired than I was. And
his big boots had hurt his feet in the descent. So, having come to the open
valley-head, we went more gently. He had become rather quiet.
The head of the valley had that half-tamed,
ancient aspect that reminded me of the Romans. I could only expect the Roman
legions to be encamped down there; and the white goats feeding on the bushes
belonged to a Roman camp.
But no, we saw again the barracks of the Swiss
soldiery, and again we were in the midst of rifle-fire and manoeuvres. But =
we
went evenly, tired now, and hungry. We had nothing to eat.
It is strange how different the sun-dried,
ancient, southern slopes of the world are, from the northern slopes. It is =
as
if the god Pan really had his home among these sun-bleached stones and toug=
h,
sun-dark trees. And one knows it all in one's blood, it is pure, sun-dried
memory. So I was content, coming down into Airolo.
We found the streets were Italian, the houses
sunny outside and dark within, like Italy, there were laurels in the road. =
Poor
Emil was a foreigner all at once. He rolled down his shirt sleeves and fast=
ened
his shirt-neck, put on his coat and collar, and became a foreigner in his s=
oul,
pale and strange.
I saw a shop with vegetables and grapes, a real
Italian shop, a dark cave.
'Quanto costa l'uva?' were my first words in t=
he
south.
'Sessanta al chilo,' said the girl.
And it was as pleasant as a drink of wine, the
Italian.
So Emil and I ate the sweet black grapes as we
went to the station.
He was very poor. We went into the third-class
restaurant at the station. He ordered beer and bread and sausage; I ordered
soup and boiled beef and vegetables.
They brought me a great quantity, so, whilst t=
he
girl was serving coffee-with-rum to the men at the bar, I took another spoon
and knife and fork and plates for Emil, and we had two dinners from my one.
When the girl--she was a woman of thirty-five--came back, she looked at us =
sharply.
I smiled at her coaxingly; so she gave a small, kindly smile in reply.
'Ja, dies ist reizend,' said Emil, sotto voce,
exulting. He was very shy. But we were curiously happy, in that railway
restaurant.
Then we sat very still, on the platform, and
waited for the train. It was like Italy, pleasant and social to wait in the
railway station, all the world easy and warm in its activity, with the sun
shining.
I decided to take a franc's worth of
train-journey. So I chose my station. It was one franc twenty, third class.
Then my train came, and Emil and I parted, he waving to me till I was out of
sight. I was sorry he had to go back, he did so want to venture forth.
So I slid for a dozen miles or more, sleepily,
down the Ticino valley, sitting opposite two fat priests in their feminine
black.
When I got out at my station I felt for the fi=
rst
time ill at ease. Why was I getting out at this wayside place, on to the gr=
eat,
raw high-road? I did not know. But I set off walking. It was nearly tea-tim=
e.
Nothing in the world is more ghastly than these
Italian roads, new, mechanical, belonging to a machine life. The old roads =
are
wonderful, skilfully aiming their way. But these new great roads are
desolating, more desolating than all the ruins in the world.
I walked on and on, down the Ticino valley,
towards Bellinzona. The valley was perhaps beautiful: I don't know. I can o=
nly
remember the road. It was broad and new, and it ran very often beside the
railway. It ran also by quarries and by occasional factories, also through
villages. And the quality of its sordidness is something that does not bear=
thinking
of, a quality that has entered Italian life now, if it was not there before=
.
Here and there, where there were quarries or
industries, great lodging-houses stood naked by the road, great, grey, deso=
late
places; and squalid children were playing round the steps, and dirty men sl=
ouched
in. Everything seemed under a weight.
Down the road of the Ticino valley I felt agai=
n my
terror of this new world which is coming into being on top of us. One always
feels it in a suburb, on the edge of a town, where the land is being broken
under the advance of houses. But this is nothing, in England, to the terror=
one
feels on the new Italian roads, where these great blind cubes of dwellings =
rise
stark from the destroyed earth, swarming with a sort of verminous life, rea=
lly
verminous, purely destructive.
It seems to happen when the peasant suddenly
leaves his home and becomes a workman. Then an entire change comes over
everywhere. Life is now a matter of selling oneself to slave-work, building=
roads
or labouring in quarries or mines or on the railways, purposeless, meaningl=
ess,
really slave-work, each integer doing his mere labour, and all for no purpo=
se, except
to have money, and to get away from the old system.
These Italian navvies work all day long, their
whole life is engaged in the mere brute labour. And they are the navvies of=
the
world. And whilst they are navvying, they are almost shockingly indifferent=
to
their circumstances, merely callous to the dirt and foulness.
It is as if the whole social form were breaking
down, and the human element swarmed within the disintegration, like maggots=
in
cheese. The roads, the railways are built, the mines and quarries are
excavated, but the whole organism of life, the social organism, is slowly
crumbling and caving in, in a kind of process of dry rot, most terrifying to
see. So that it seems as though we should be left at last with a great syst=
em
of roads and railways and industries, and a world of utter chaos seething u=
pon
these fabrications: as if we had created a steel framework, and the whole b=
ody
of society were crumbling and rotting in between. It is most terrifying to
realize; and I have always felt this terror upon a new Italian high-road--m=
ore
there than anywhere.
The remembrance of the Ticino valley is a sort= of nightmare to me. But it was better when at last, in the darkness of night, I got into Bellinzona. In the midst of the town one felt the old organism sti= ll living. It is only at its extremities that it is falling to pieces, as in dry rot.<= o:p>
In the morning, leaving Bellinzona, again I we=
nt
in terror of the new, evil high-road, with its skirting of huge cubical hou=
ses
and its seething navvy population. Only the peasants driving in with fruit =
were
consoling. But I was afraid of them: the same spirit had set in in them.
I was no longer happy in Switzerland, not even
when I was eating great blackberries and looking down at the Lago Maggiore,=
at
Locarno, lying by the lake; the terror of the callous, disintegrating proce=
ss
was too strong in me.
At a little inn a man was very good to me. He =
went
into his garden and fetched me the first grapes and apples and peaches,
bringing them in amongst leaves, and heaping them before me. He was
Italian-Swiss; he had been in a bank in Bern; now he had retired, had bought
his paternal home, and was a free man. He was about fifty years old; he spe=
nt
all his time in his garden; his daughter attended to the inn.
He talked to me, as long as I stayed, about It=
aly
and Switzerland and work and life. He was retired, he was free. But he was =
only
nominally free. He had only achieved freedom from labour. He knew that the
system he had escaped at last, persisted, and would consume his sons and hi=
s grandchildren.
He himself had more or less escaped back to the old form; but as he came wi=
th
me on to the hillside, looking down the high-road at Lugano in the distance=
, he
knew that his old order was collapsing by a slow process of disintegration.=
Why did he talk to me as if I had any hope, as=
if
I represented any positive truth as against this great negative truth that =
was
advancing up the hill-side. Again I was afraid. I hastened down the high-ro=
ad, past
the houses, the grey, raw crystals of corruption.
I saw a girl with handsome bare legs, ankles
shining like brass in the sun. She was working in a field, on the edge of a
vineyard. I stopped to look at her, suddenly fascinated by her handsome nak=
ed
flesh that shone like brass.
Then she called out to me, in a jargon I could=
not
understand, something mocking and challenging. And her voice was raucous and
challenging; I went on, afraid.
In Lugano I stayed at a German hotel. I rememb=
er
sitting on a seat in the darkness by the lake, watching the stream of
promenaders patrolling the edge of the water, under the trees and the lamps=
. I
can still see many of their faces: English, German, Italian, French. And it
seemed here, here in this holiday-place, was the quick of the disintegratio=
n, the
dry-rot, in this dry, friable flux of people backwards and forwards on the =
edge
of the lake, men and women from the big hotels, in evening dress, curiously
sinister, and ordinary visitors, and tourists, and workmen, youths, men of =
the
town, laughing, jeering. It was curiously and painfully sinister, almost
obscene.
I sat a long time among them, thinking of the =
girl
with her limbs of glowing brass. Then at last I went up to the hotel, and s=
at
in the lounge looking at the papers. It was the same here as down below, th=
ough
not so intense, the feeling of horror.
So I went to bed. The hotel was on the edge of=
a
steep declivity. I wondered why the whole hills did not slide down, in some
great natural catastrophe.
In the morning I walked along the side of the =
Lake
of Lugano, to where I could take a steamer to ferry me down to the end. The
lake is not beautiful, only picturesque. I liked most to think of the Roman=
s coming
to it.
So I steamed down to the lower end of the wate=
r.
When I landed and went along by a sort of railway I saw a group of men.
Suddenly they began to whoop and shout. They were hanging on to an immense =
pale
bullock, which was slung up to be shod; and it was lunging and kicking with
terrible energy. It was strange to see that mass of pale, soft-looking fles=
h working
with such violent frenzy, convulsed with violent, active frenzy, whilst men=
and
women hung on to it with ropes, hung on and weighed it down. But again it
scattered some of them in its terrible convulsion. Human beings scattered i=
nto
the road, the whole place was covered with hot dung. And when the bullock b=
egan
to lunge again, the men set up a howl, half of triumph, half of derision.
I went on, not wanting to see. I went along a = very dusty road. But it was not so terrifying, this road. Perhaps it was older.<= o:p>
In dreary little Chiasso I drank coffee, and
watched the come and go through the Customs. The Swiss and the Italian Cust=
oms
officials had their offices within a few yards of each other, and everybody
must stop. I went in and showed my rucksack to the Italian, then I mounted a
tram, and went to the Lake of Como.
In the tram were dressed-up women, fashionable,
but business-like. They had come by train to Chiasso, or else had been shop=
ping
in the town.
When we came to the terminus a young miss,
dismounting before me, left behind her parasol. I had been conscious of my
dusty, grimy appearance as I sat in the tram, I knew they thought me a work=
man
on the roads. However, I forgot that when it was time to dismount.
'Pardon, Mademoiselle,' I said to the young mi=
ss.
She turned and withered me with a rather overdone contempt--'bourgeoise,' I
said to myself, as I looked at her--'Vous avez laissé votre parasol.=
'
She turned, and with a rapacious movement dart=
ed
upon her parasol. How her soul was in her possessions! I stood and watched =
her.
Then she went into the road and under the trees, haughty, a demoiselle. She=
had
on white kid boots.
I thought of the Lake of Como what I had thoug=
ht
of Lugano: it must have been wonderful when the Romans came there. Now it is
all villas. I think only the sunrise is still wonderful, sometimes.
I took the steamer down to Como, and slept in a
vast old stone cavern of an inn, a remarkable place, with rather nice peopl=
e.
In the morning I went out. The peace and the bygone beauty of the cathedral
created the glow of the great past. And in the market-place they were selli=
ng chestnuts
wholesale, great heaps of bright, brown chestnuts, and sacks of chestnuts, =
and
peasants very eager selling and buying. I thought of Como, it must have been
wonderful even a hundred years ago. Now it is cosmopolitan, the cathedral is
like a relic, a museum object, everywhere stinks of mechanical money-pleasu=
re.
I dared not risk walking to Milan: I took a train. And there, in Milan, sit=
ting
in the Cathedral Square, on Saturday afternoon, drinking Bitter Campari and
watching the swarm of Italian city-men drink and talk vivaciously, I saw th=
at
here the life was still vivid, here the process of disintegration was vigor=
ous,
and centred in a multiplicity of mechanical activities that engage the huma=
n mind
as well as the body. But always there was the same purpose stinking in it a=
ll,
the mechanizing, the perfect mechanizing of human life.