How hot it was that day, even at sunset. Blood was afire, air was afire, and there was fire in every glance. The air seemed filled with gold and roses; that was the substance of life, gold and roses.
“At last you are among us! Let yourself go, let the currents that are flowing all about you and within yourself carry you.”
“Never before have I felt so well and happy,” the young artist replied. “You are right: all of you are right! I have been a fool, a dreamer. Man belongs to the world of reality, not to the world of the imagination.”
Through the narrow streets the young people walked, playing their guitars and singing. The lovely carnations of the Campagna were with them.
In Angelo’s studio, among the half-finished sketches and the glowingly colorful, ornate paintings, their voices grew soft but not less passionate. Everywhere drawings of the daughters of the Campagna could be seen in all their robust loveliness; and yet they were much more beautiful in reality. The six-armed candelabrum burned brightly, casting its light in all directions, and the passion-filled faces of the young people shone as if they were gods.
“Apollo! Jupiter! To your heaven do I want to ascend. Now, at this moment, for the first time, the flower of life is blooming in my heart.”
Yes, it bloomed, bent its head, and withered. A strange, horrible smell of corruption blended itself with the odor of roses, it lamed his mind and blinded his sight. The fireworks of sensuality were over and darkness came.
He reached home and sat down on the bed. “Shame!” The word was not only on his tongue, it came from his heart. “Wretch! Leave me alone! Go away!” and he sighed deeply and painfully.
“Leave me alone. Go away!” Those were the words that the living Psyche had said to him. He lay down on the bed; his thoughts became unclear and he fell asleep.
At dawn he awoke. What had happened? Was it all a dream: the visit to the restaurant, the evening and the night with the girls of the Campagna? … No, it was real; and now he knew that reality that he had never known before.
Through the purple dawn shone the clear star of morning. Its light fell upon him and upon the marble Psyche. He trembled when he saw the divine innocence of the sculpture. Convinced that his glance sullied it, he threw a cloth over it. For a moment he let his hands glide over the figure, but he could not look at it.
Silently, motionlessly, turned inward—into himself—he sat through the long day. He knew nothing about what was happening outside in the world, and no one knew what took place within him, in his soul.
Days passed and weeks. The nights were the longest. Then one morning the star saw him get out of bed. He was pale and feverish. Walking over to the marble statue, he lifted the cloth and gazed at his work. His face was filled with anguish and pain. Bending under its weight, with great difficulty he carried it out into the garden, where there was an abandoned well. It had long since dried up and was half filled with rubbish and dirt. Into it the young artist threw the marble Psyche; then he filled up the hole with earth, and spread branches and nettles over the burial place.
“Leave me alone! Go away!” That was the funeral oration.
The star saw everything through the rose-red dawn and mirrored itself in the two tears on the young man’s pale cheeks.
Everyone who saw him agreed that he was dying. From the nearby monastery Brother Ignatius arrived. He was both a friend and a physician. He came with the comfort and consolation of religion. He talked of man’s sins, of God’s grace and forgiveness, and of the peace and happiness to be found within the Church. And his words fell like the rays of the sun on the moist, fermenting earth. A mist rose and in a mist can be seen strange shapes and pictures. From these “islands” floating above him, the young artist saw himself looking down at all mankind. Errors and disappointments had guided his life. Art was only an enchantress who with her magic gave him vain dreams of earthly glory. She could make us all false to ourselves, false to our friends, false to God. The snake was ever whispering: “Taste and you shall be a god.”
He felt that now, at last, he had found the road to truth and peace. In the Church God’s light shone in all its glory; in the tranquillity of the monk’s cell his soul would know eternity.
Brother Ignatius encouraged him and a child of the world became a servant of the Church. The young artist bade the world adieu.
How kindly, how happily his new brothers greeted him, and how like a festival on a high holy day it was when he took his vows. “Here,” he thought, “God is our sunlight; it shines from the holy paintings and from the cross.” At sunset, he would stand at the open window of his cell and look out over the ancient city with its crumbled temples and gigantic but dead Colosseum. Especially in spring, when there were roses everywhere, the evergreens were fresh, the acacia trees were in bloom, the yellow and red of the lemons and oranges could be seen through the dark foliage, and the palm trees waved their great leaves in the breeze, he felt himself to be more alive and to feel more deeply than he ever had before. The broad, silent Campagna stretched toward the blue, snow-covered mountains. Everything melted into one, everything spoke of peace and beauty: a fairy tale, everything was a dream!
Yes, the world was a dream. Dreams can reign for hours and can be recaptured for hours, but life in a monastery is made up of years: many years, long years.
Unclean, evil thoughts come from inside yourself, he learned. What were these strange flames that seemed to set his body on fire? Where did the evil come from that he wanted no part of, yet that seemed always to be present within him? He punished his body, but the evil did not come from the surface but from deep within him. One part of his soul was supple as a snake and could bend and twist itself around his conscience, so that it became one with it—and thus could come under the cloak of the all-loving, who would console him: the saints who pray for us; the Madonna who prays for us; and Jesus, God’s son, who has given his life for us. He asked himself whether it was his childlike innocence or the flightiness of youth—which made everything and nothing seem serious—that had made him seek refuge in God’s mercy and grace and had made him feel that he had been elevated, chosen out of so many, to give up the vanity of the world, to become a son of the Church.
One day, many years later, he met his friend Angelo, who recognized him immediately.
“My friend!” he cried. “Are you happy now? You have sinned by throwing away the gift God gave you. Read the parable of the ten pieces of silver. The Master who told it, told the truth. What have you won? What have you sought and what have you gained? Is your life not a life of dreams? Have you not created a religion out of your own head, as all monks do? What if it is only dreams? Only imagination? Only beautiful thoughts?”
“Satan, leave me alone!” shouted the monk, and fled from his friend Angelo.
“That was the devil … my personal devil. I have recognized him,” said the monk. “Once I gave him a finger and he grabbed my whole hand.… No,” he sighed. “That is not true. The evil is within myself. It is within Angelo. Yet to him it is no burden. He holds his head high and seems to prosper. And I … I search for happiness and comfort in the consolation of religion. But what if it is only consolation? If everything here, as in the world I left behind, is but vain dreams: an illusion that disappears as the beautiful pink color of the sunset, or changes when you come close to it as the blueness of the distant mountains does? Eternity, you are a great ocean of endless stillness. You fill us with curiosity and foreboding; you beckon and call; but if we step out upon your quiet waters we disappear, die, cease to exist. A fraud! Deceit! … Leave me alone! Go away!”
Without tears, sunken into himself, he knelt on his hard bed. Why did he kneel? Was it for the stone cross in the wall? No, it was out of habit that his body assumed that position.
The deeper he looked into his soul, the darker it seemed to him. “There is nothing within me, and there is nothing outside me. My life has been wasted.” And this thought grew, like snow sliding down the mountainside, until it was
an avalanche that crushed him.
“No one do I dare tell about this worm within my heart. This secret is my prisoner; if I told it, I would be its captive.”
Faith and doubt wrestled within him. “O Master! Master!” he cried out, in his despair. “Have pity on me and give me faith. I threw Your gift away. Your purpose I ignored. I did not have the strength! You gave me the skill but not the strength! Immortality, the Psyche in my heart—Leave me alone! Go away! Why can you not be buried like the Psyche I once created? That one part of my life, let it remain buried in the grave, never to be resurrected.”
The star of dawn shone brightly; someday even that star would cease to be. Only the human soul is immortal. The star’s rays fell on the whitewashed walls of the cell, but they wrote no message there of God’s greatness and grace, nor of the all-embracing love that lives within the heart of those who truly believe.
“The Psyche within my heart will never die,” he thought, and then he asked himself aloud, “Will it be conscious forever? Can that which is beyond understanding happen? Yes! Yes! That which is incomprehensible is my own soul! O God, O Master, it is You and Your whole world that are beyond understanding and let it remain so: a wonder of power and glory and love!”
His eyes brightened and then they grew glazed. The ringing of the church bells was the last sound he heard in this world; the man was dead. They buried him in earth brought from Jerusalem and mixed with the dust of the pious dead.
Years went by; then, as was the custom, his skeleton was dug up and dressed in a monk’s frock, while in his hands was placed a rosary. Finally he was put in a niche among other human bones, in the tombs of the monastery. Outside, above him, the sun shone; inside there was the sweet smell of incense; mass was being recited.
Again the years passed, many years. The skeletons fell apart and became merely bones. With the skulls the monks constructed a wall around the church of the monastery, and his skull was among them. There were so many dead. No one knew their names or remembered any of them. Look! In the bright sunshine you could see something moving. What was it? A bright-colored lizard had made his home in that skull, and ran in and out of the holes. That was all the life that now existed in the space where once there had been great thoughts, happy dreams, love of art and all innocent beauty; where tears had fallen, and where hope of immortality had lived.
Centuries later, the morning star shone as before, as brightly as it had for thousands of years. The air had been made red by the upcoming sun: as red as a rose, as red as blood.
Where there once had been a narrow street and the remains of an old temple there now stood a convent. That morning a young nun had died and a grave was being dug in the cloister’s garden. A shovel struck stone and something brilliantly white could be seen beneath the dirt. The earth was lifted carefully. First a shoulder appeared, then a woman’s head.
That beautiful pink summer morning, a sculpture of Psyche had been unearthed, while a grave was being dug for a nun. Everyone agreed that it was beautiful. “A perfect work of art from that period which was the height of artistic achievement.” But whose work was it? Who was the master who had created it? No one knew but the star of dawn, who knew of his earthly struggle, his trial, his weaknesses, his humanity! But all that was dead, had disappeared, turned to dust. But his gain, his profit from his struggle and his search, the glory that proved the godliness within him, his Psyche, will never die. It will live beyond the name of its creator. His spark still shines here on earth and is admired, appreciated, and loved.
The light of the morning star shone on the Psyche and on that happy crowd of people who stood admiring that soul that had been carved in marble.
What belongs to the earth follows the winds and is forgotten; only the stars can remember forever. What belongs to heaven shines in its creator and, when he dies, his Psyche lives still.
113
The Snail and the Rosebush
Around the garden ran a hedge of hazelnuts, beyond it there were fields and meadows, where cows and sheep grazed; but in the center of the garden there was a rosebush in full bloom. Under it lay a snail who was very satisfied with the company he kept: his own.
“Wait till my time comes,” he would say, “and see what I shall accomplish. I am not going to be satisfied with merely blossoming into flowers, or bearing nuts, or giving milk as the cows and sheep do.”
“Oh, I do expect a lot of you. Won’t you tell me when it’s going to happen?” asked the rosebush very humbly.
“I must take my time,” replied the snail. “Do you think anyone would expect very much of me if I hurried the way you do?”
The following year the snail lay in the same sunny place, under the rosebush. The plant was full of buds and flowers, and there were always fresh roses on it, and each and every one was a tiny bit different from all the others. The snail crept halfway out of his house and stretched his horns upward; then he pulled them back in again.
“Everything looks exactly as it did last year. No change and no advancement. The rosebush is still producing roses; it will never be able to do anything else.”
Summer was past and autumn was past. Until the first snow, the rosebush continued to bloom. The weather became raw and cold. The rosebush bent its branches toward the ground and the snail crawled down into the earth.
Another spring came. The rosebush blossomed and the snail stuck its head out of its house. “You are getting old,” he said to the rosebush. “It is about time you withered and died. You have given the world everything you could. Whether what you gave was worth anything or not is another question, and I don’t have time to think about it. But one thing is certain and that is that you have never developed your inner self, or something more would have become of you. Soon you will be only a wizened stick. What have you got to say for yourself? … Aren’t you listening? … Can you understand what I am saying?”
“You frighten me so.” The rosebush trembled. “You have asked me about things I have never thought about.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever thought about anything. Have you ever contemplated your own existence? Have you ever asked yourself why you are here? Why you blossom? Why you are what you are, and not something else?”
“No,” the rosebush said. “My flowers spring forth out of joy! I cannot stop them from coming. The sun is warm, the air refreshing. I drink the dew and the rain. From the soil and the air I draw my strength. I feel so happy that I have to flower. I cannot do anything else.”
“You have lived a very comfortable and a very indolent life,” said the snail severely.
“How true! I have never lacked anything. But you have been given much more than I. You are a thinker. You can think deeply and clearly. You are gifted. You will astound the world.”
“Astound the world! Not I!” The snail drew in his horns and then stretched them out again. “The world means nothing to me. Why should I care about the world? I have enough within myself. I don’t need anything from the outside.”
“But isn’t it the duty of all of us here on earth to do our best for each other, to give what we can? I know I have only given roses. But you who have received so much, what have you given? What will you give?”
“What have I given! What shall I give!” snarled the snail. “I spit on the whole world. It is not worth anything and means nothing to me. Go on creating your roses, since you cannot stop anyway. Let the bushes go on bearing their nuts, and the cows and the sheep giving their milk. Each of them has their own public; and I have mine in myself. I am going to withdraw from the world; nothing that happens there is any concern of mine.” And the snail went into his house and puttied up the entrance.
“It is so sad,” said the rosebush. “No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t withdraw into myself. My branches are always stretching outward, my leaves unfolding, my flowers blooming. My petals fall off and are carried away by the wind. But one of my roses was pressed in a mother’s psalmbook, another was pinned on a young girl’s breast, an
d one was kissed by a child to show his joy in being alive. Those are my remembrances: my life.”
The rosebush went on blooming innocently, and the snail withdrew from the world, which meant nothing to him, by hibernating in his house.
The years passed. The rosebush had become earth and the snail had become earth; even the rose that had been pressed in the psalmbook was no more. But in the garden rosebushes bloomed and there were snails, who spat and retreated into their houses: the world meant nothing to them.
Should I tell the story from the beginning again? I could but it would be no different.
114
“The Will-o’-the-Wisps Are in Town,”
Said the Bog Witch
Once there was a man who was well acquainted with fairy tales. They used to come knocking at his door. But lately he had not had any such visitors, and he wondered why the fairy tales didn’t come any more. True, he had not thought of the fairy tales during the last few years and had not been expecting them to just come to his door, for outside there was war and inside—in the houses—there were the sorrow and despair that war brings.
Without thinking of the dangers, the stork and the swallow had made their long journey home, only to find their nests destroyed, the houses in the villages burned, and the fences around the fields broken. In the churchyards the enemy horses grazed among the tombstones. These were hard times, dark times, but even periods of unhappiness must end. “Now it is over,” he said, but still the fairy tales did not come and knock at his door.
A whole year went by, and he missed them sorely. “Maybe they’ll never come again,” he thought. He recalled vividly the many forms that they had taken in the past. One had been a lovely young girl with a wreath of flowers in her hair and a birch branch in her hand. She had been as beautiful and fresh as spring itself, with eyes as deep and clear as the little lakes in the forest. Often the fairy tale had been a peddler, who would take his pack from his back and open it right there in the living room; and out would come the loveliest silk ribbons and every one had a verse on it. Best of all had it been when the fairy tale came as a little old woman with silver-white hair, and eyes large with age and filled with knowledge. For she could tell tales from the really ancient times: from the era before the one in which the princesses spun on golden spinning wheels and were guarded by dragons. And she could make the stories seem so alive that you saw spots in front of your eyes and the floor became black with human blood. Oh, she told gruesome tales, dreadful to hear and see, and yet such a pleasure, for they had happened so very long ago.