des erdenlebens

schweres traumbild sinkt, und sinkt, und sinkt.

“das ideal und das lebens.”

(the dream shape of the heavy earthly life sinks, and sinks, and sinks.)

she stood within the chamber, and gazed around her; no signs by which an inquisitor of old could have detected the scholar of the black art were visible. no crucibles and caldrons, no brass-bound volumes and ciphered girdles, no skulls and cross-bones. quietly streamed the broad moonlight through the desolate chamber with its bare, white walls. a few bunches of withered herbs, a few antique vessels of bronze, placed carelessly on a wooden form, were all which that curious gaze could identify with the pursuits of the absent owner. the magic, if it existed, dwelt in the artificer, and the materials, to other hands, were but herbs and bronze. so is it ever with thy works and wonders, o genius,— seeker of the stars! words themselves are the common property of all men; yet, from words themselves, thou architect of immortalities, pilest up temples that shall outlive the pyramids, and the very leaf of the papyrus becomes a shinar, stately with towers, round which the deluge of ages, shall roar in vain!

but in that solitude has the presence that there had invoked its wonders left no enchantment of its own? it seemed so; for as viola stood in the chamber, she became sensible that some mysterious change was at work within herself. her blood coursed rapidly, and with a sensation of delight, through her veins,— she felt as if chains were falling from her limbs, as if cloud after cloud was rolling from her gaze. all the confused thoughts which had moved through her trance settled and centred themselves in one intense desire to see the absent one,— to be with him. the monads that make up space and air seemed charged with a spiritual attraction,— to become a medium through which her spirit could pass from its clay, and confer with the spirit to which the unutterable desire compelled it. a faintness seized her; she tottered to the seat on which the vessels and herbs were placed, and, as she bent down, she saw in one of the vessels a small vase of crystal. by a mechanical and involuntary impulse, her hand seized the vase; she opened it, and the volatile essence it contained sparkled up, and spread through the room a powerful and delicious fragrance. she inhaled the odour, she laved her temples with the liquid, and suddenly her life seemed to spring up from the previous faintness,— to spring, to soar, to float, to dilate upon the wings of a bird. the room vanished from her eyes. away, away, over lands and seas and space on the rushing desire flies the disprisoned mind!

upon a stratum, not of this world, stood the world-born shapes of the sons of science, upon an embryo world, upon a crude, wan, attenuated mass of matter, one of the nebulae, which the suns of the myriad systems throw off as they roll round the creator’s throne*, to become themselves new worlds of symmetry and glory,— planets and suns that forever and forever shall in their turn multiply their shining race, and be the fathers of suns and planets yet to come.

* “astronomy instructs us that, in the original condition of the solar system, the sun was the nucleus of a nebulosity or luminous mass which revolved on its axis, and extended far beyond the orbits of all the planets,— the planets as yet having no existence. its temperature gradually diminished, and, becoming contracted by cooling, the rotation increased in rapidity, and zones of nebulosity were successively thrown off, in consequence of the centrifugal force overpowering the central attraction. the condensation of these separate masses constituted the planets and satellites. but this view of the conversion of gaseous matter into planetary bodies is not limited to our own system; it extends to the formation of the innumerable suns and worlds which are distributed throughout the universe. the sublime discoveries of modern astronomers have shown that every part of the realms of space abounds in large expansions of attenuated matter termed nebulae, which are irregularly reflective of light, of various figures, and in different states of condensation, from that of a diffused, luminous mass to suns and planets like our own.”— from mantell’s eloquent and delightful work, entitled “the wonders of geology,” volume i. page 22.

there, in that enormous solitude of an infant world, which thousands and thousands of years can alone ripen into form, the spirit of viola beheld the shape of zanoni, or rather the likeness, the simulacrun, the lemur of his shape, not its human and corporeal substance,— as if, like hers, the intelligence was parted from the clay,— and as the sun, while it revolves and glows, had cast off into remotest space that nebular image of itself, so the thing of earth, in the action of its more luminous and enduring being, had thrown its likeness into that new-born stranger of the heavens. there stood the phantom,— a phantom mejnour, by its side. in the gigantic chaos around raved and struggled the kindling elements; water and fire, darkness and light, at war,— vapour and cloud hardening into mountains, and the breath of life moving like a steadfast splendour over all.

as the dreamer looked, and shivered, she beheld that even there the two phantoms of humanity were not alone. dim monster-forms that that disordered chaos alone could engender, the first reptile colossal race that wreathe and crawl through the earliest stratum of a world labouring into life, coiled in the oozing matter or hovered through the meteorous vapours. but these the two seekers seemed not to heed; their gaze was fixed intent upon an object in the farthest space. with the eyes of the spirit, viola followed theirs; with a terror far greater than the chaos and its hideous inhabitants produced, she beheld a shadowy likeness of the very room in which her form yet dwelt, its white walls, the moonshine sleeping on its floor, its open casement, with the quiet roofs and domes of venice looming over the sea that sighed below,— and in that room the ghost-like image of herself! this double phantom — here herself a phantom, gazing there upon a phantomself — had in it a horror which no words can tell, no length of life forego.

but presently she saw this image of herself rise slowly, leave the room with its noiseless feet: it passes the corridor, it kneels by a cradle! heaven of heaven! she beholds her child!— still with its wondrous, child-like beauty and its silent, wakeful eyes. but beside that cradle there sits cowering a mantled, shadowy form,— the more fearful and ghastly from its indistinct and unsubstantial gloom. the walls of that chamber seem to open as the scene of a theatre. a grim dungeon; streets through which pour shadowy crowds; wrath and hatred, and the aspect of demons in their ghastly visages; a place of death; a murderous instrument; a shamble-house of human flesh; herself; her child;— all, all, rapid phantasmagoria, chased each other. suddenly the phantom-zanoni turned, it seemed to perceive herself,— her second self. it sprang towards her; her spirit could bear no more. she shrieked, she woke. she found that in truth she had left that dismal chamber; the cradle was before her, the child! all — all as that trance had seen it; and, vanishing into air, even that dark, formless thing!

“my child! my child! thy mother shall save thee yet!”