Selected Writings (Dario, Ruben) (21 page)

The Greek Hall was filled with marbles depicting goddesses, muses, nymphs, and satyrs. The Hall of the Age of Gallantry contained paintings by the great Watteau and Chardin—two, three, four, so many salons and halls!

And this Maecenas would stroll through them all, his face filled with majesty, his belly happy, and his crown perched upon his head like the King of Hearts in a deck of playing cards.

One day a strange species of man was brought before the throne where the king sat surrounded by courtiers, rhetoricians, and riding and dancing masters.

“What sort of man is this?” the king asked.

“My lord, he is a poet.”

The king had swans in the pool, canaries, swallows, and mockingbirds in the aviary, but a poet was something new and strange.

“Bring him here.”

And the poet said:

“My lord, I have not eaten.”

And the king said:

“Speak and you shall eat.”

And so he began:

“My lord, for long years I have sung the word of the future. I was born in the time of the dawn and I have spread my wings in the hurricane. I seek the chosen race that awaits, with hymns upon its lips and lyres in its hands, the rising of the great sun. I have fled the inspiration of the unhealthful city and the boudoir reeking of perfume, I have fled the muse of flesh that fills the soul with trifles and covers the face with rice-powder. I have smashed the fawning, loose-stringed harp against the goblets of Bohemian crystal and the pitchers filled with sparkling wine that inebriates without giving strength; I have put off the mantle that made me appear to be an actor, or a woman, and I have dressed in a more savage, splendid way: my rags are crimson. I have gone to the jungle, where I have become vigorous, sating myself upon fecund milk and the liquor of new life, and to the banks of the harsh sea, where, shaking my head in the black, strong tempest like a proud angel, or an Olympian demigod, I have rehearsed iambs, the ringing madrigal forgotten.

“I have caressed great Nature, and I have sought, in the warmth of the ideal, the verse that lies in the star at the end of the heavens, the pearl in the depths of ancient Ocean. I have sought to boom, to crash! For the age of the great revolutions is coming, with a Messiah that is all Light, and Agitation, and Power, and we must receive his spirit with a poem that is a triumphal arch, with lines of iron, and lines of gold, and lines of love.

“My lord, art lies not in the cold trappings of marble, nor in highly polished paintings, nor in the excellent M. Ohnet. Art does not wear rich wool pants, or speak Bourgeois, or dot all its
i
’s. Art is august, and it wears mantles of gold, or flames, or nothing at all, and walks about quite naked, or it kneads fever into its clay, and paints with light, and is opulent, and beats its wings like the eagles, swipes its claws like the lions. My lord, between an Apollo and a goose, give preference to Apollo, though Apollo be of fired earth and the goose of finest marble.

“Oh, poesy!

“And yet, my lord—Poetry may prostitute itself. It may sing songs to the beauty mark upon a woman’s cheek, or concoct syrupy rhymes. Not to mention, my lord, that the cobbler criticizes my hendecasyllables, and the professor of pharmacology adds semicolons to my inspiration. And what is worst of all, my lord, is that you give your blessing to all this! . . . The ideal, the ideal . . .”

The king interrupted:

“My courtiers, you have heard him. What shall be done?”

And a philosopher, according to custom, replied:

“If you please, my lord, he might earn his board with a hand-organ. We could put him in the garden, near the swans, for those times when you go out for a walk.”

“Indeed,” said the king. Then turning to the poet, he said:

“You will turn the hand-crank. You will close your mouth. You will provide us with music from a music-box that plays waltzes, quadrilles, and gallopes, unless you prefer to starve. Piece of music for crust of bread. But no more prattling, and no more talk of ideals. Go.”

And from that day forth, the starving poet might be seen on the bank of the swans’ pool, turning the crank on the hand-organ—
tra-la-la
,
tra-la-lee
. . . embarrassed by the glances of the great sun! And when the king strolled anywhere nearby?
Tra-la-la
,
tra-la-lee !
Was the stomach in need of filling?
Tra-la-la
,
Tra-la-lee!
All to the mockery of the birds flying free, who came to drink dewdrops from the blooming lilacs, the buzzing of the bees that stung his face and filled his eyes with tears . . . bitter tears that rolled down his cheeks and fell to the black earth!

And winter came, and the poor man was chilled in body and soul. And his brain seemed almost petrified, and the grand anthems were forgotten, and the poet from the mountain crowned with eagles was naught but a poor devil cranking a hand-organ:
Tra-la-la
,
tra-la-la!

And when the snow fell, the king and his vassals forgot about the poet. They gave the birds warm shelter, but the poet they left out in the glacial wind that nipped at his flesh and burned his face.

And one night when the white rain of tiny crystal feathers was falling fast, there was a feast within the palace, and the light of the chandeliers laughed gaily down upon the marbles, upon the gold, upon the tunics of the ancient porcelain mandarins. And the people inside madly applauded the toasts raised by the professor of rhetoric, which were studded with dactyls, anapests, and phyrrics, while in crystal goblets the champagne’s fleeting bubbles burst and sparkled. Night of winter, night of revelry! And the poor wretch out by the swans’ pool, shivering with cold, insulted by the north wind, covered with snow, standing stiff in the implacable whiteness of the garden, in the gloomy night, turned the hand-crank to keep himself warm, and the wild music of gallopes and quadrilles echoed among the leafless trees. And then he died, thinking that the sun would rise the next day, and with it, the ideal . . . and that art would wear not wool pants, but a mantle of gold, and flames. . . . And the next day the king and his courtiers found him there, the poor devil of a poet, like a swallow frozen in the ice, with a bitter smile on his lips, and his hand still on the hand-crank.

 

Oh, my friend! The sky is dark, the wind is cold, the day is sad. The gray mists of melancholy fill the air. . . .

But how a kind word, a squeezing of the hand can warm us! And with that moral to my tale, adieu.

THE DEAF SATYR

 

 

 

Near Olympus there lived a satyr, and he was the old king of the forest. Long years ago the gods had told him: “Here, disport yourself, the woods are yours. Be a happy rascal—chase nymphs and play your flute.” Life was great fun for the satyr.

 

One day, as father Apollo was strumming his sacred lyre, the satyr emerged from the woods within which lay his domain, and he had the audacity to scale the sacred mount, where he surprised the long-haired god at his music. To punish the satyr, the god struck him deaf—as deaf as a post. In vain did the birds of the dense woods scatter birdsong on the air and fill the breeze with cooing. The satyr could hear nothing. Philomela would come and perch above his grape-wreathed brow, to sing him songs that made rivulets stop flowing and turned pale roses red. The satyr would sit impassive, or laugh his rude laughter, or leap up, lecherous and gay, when through the leafy branches he caught a glimpse of some round, white thigh caressed by the sun’s soft golden light.

All the animals came to sit around him, for he was their master, who was to be obeyed. And before him, to cheer his spirit, danced choruses of bacchantes in their wild feverish dance, and the harmony was accompanied by adolescent fauns, like lovely ephebes, who caressed him reverently with their smiles. And although he could hear no voice, not even the sound of the rattlesnake, still there were other ways by which he took his enjoyment.

And so passed the life of this bearded, goat-footed king.

He was a capricious satyr.

He had two court counselors: a lark and an ass. The lark fell in the hierarchy of the rustic court, for she lost the king’s ear when the satyr became deaf. Before, if he tired of his lecherous pursuits he would sweetly play his flute, and the lark would accompany him. Afterward, in the wide forest, where not even Olympian thunder was heard by the monarch of the woods, the patient long-eared ass allowed him to ride, while the lark, at the apogee of dawn, would fly skyward from his hands, singing.

The woods were immense. The lark had been given the tree-tops; the ass, the greensward under the trees. The lark was kissed by the first rays of the dawn; she drank dewdrops from the new sprouts and woke the oak tree saying, “Old oak, awake!” She took delight in the kiss of the sun, and she was loved by the morning star. And the deep azure of the sky, so immense, knew that she, so tiny, existed within its immensity. The ass (though he had not yet conversed with Kant) was an expert in philosophy, as Victor Hugo has told us. The satyr, who watched him graze in the meadows, moving his ears gravely, had a high idea indeed of this thinker. (In those days, unlike our own, the ass had not yet developed a reputation.) As the satyr watched him chew, he would never have imagined that Daniel Heinsius was to praise him in Latin; Passerat, Buffon, and the great Hugo in French; and Posada and Valderrama in Spanish.

The ass was a patient creature, and if the flies stung him he would flick them away with his tail; he would kick his heels in the air from time to time, and in the great nave of the forest lift up his throat’s strange song. And he was greatly pampered there. When he lay down on the soft black earth for his afternoon siesta, the grasses and flowers offered him their fragrance and the great trees spread their leaves over him, for shade.

It was during this time that Orpheus, the poet, sickened by mankind’s misery, decided to flee to the woods, where the trees and rocks might understand him and listen to him in ecstasy, and where, when he played his lyre, he might make all things tremble with harmony and the fire of love. For when Orpheus strummed his lyre, a smile would come to Apollo’s face, and Demeter would shiver with pleasure; the palm trees would release their pollen, seeds would burst, lions would softly shake their golden manes. Once, a carnation, transformed into a red butterfly, fluttered up off its stalk, and a star, fascinated, descended and became a fleur-de-lis.

What better forest could there be than this one belonging to the satyr? He lived a life of pure delight here, and was treated like a demigod. The woods were all happiness and dancing, beauty and lustful voluptuousness. Nymphs and bacchantes were always caressed yet always virgins; there were grapes and roses and the sound of zithers; and the caper-footed king, as intoxicated and expressive as Silenus, would dance before his fauns.

 

Orpheus, proud, radiant, went to that forest with his crown of laurel, his lyre, his high poetic brow.

He came to the hairy, half-savage satyr, and to beg his hospitality, he sang. He sang of great Jove, of Eros and Aphrodite, of regal centaurs and ardent bacchantes. He sang of Dionysius’ cup, and of the vine-wreathed staff that wounds the happy air, and of Pan, the emperor of the mountains and sovereign of the woods, the satyr-god who, like Orpheus himself, would sing. He sang of the intimacies of the air of great mother earth. And thus from him issued the harmonies of an Aeolian harp, the whisper of a grove, the hoarse murmur of a seashell, and the chorded notes that emerge from a pipe of Pan. He sang of poetry, which descends from heaven and gives pleasure to the gods, the song that accompanies the barbitos in the ode and the tympanum in the paean. He sang of warm snowy breasts and goblets of hammered gold, and the beak of the bird and the glory of the sun.

And even as he began his song, the light shone brighter. The enormous trees were moved, and there were roses that dropped their petals, lilies that drooped in languor, as though in a sweet swoon. For the music of Orpheus’ lyre made lions moan, made pebbles cry. The most furious bacchantes fell silent, and they listened to him as though entranced. A virgin naiad, whose beauty had never been profaned by even a single glance from the satyr, shyly stole near the singer and said to him, “I love you.” Philomela fluttered down to perch upon the lyre, like the Anacreontic dove. The only echo within the grove was that of the voice of Orpheus; all Nature listened to his song. Venus, who happened to be passing nearby, asked from afar in her divine voice: “Is that by chance Apollo that I hear?”

And in all that immensity of wondrous harmony, the one creature who heard nothing was the deaf satyr.

When the poet ended, he said to the satyr:

“Has my song pleased you? If it has, I shall bide with you in the forest.”

The satyr looked toward his two councillors. They would have to resolve what he himself could not understand. His look was querying.

“Sire,” said the lark, straining to raise his voice above a chirp, “he who has sung so beautifully must be allowed to stay with us. His lyre is beautiful, and has great power. He has offered you the grandeur, the rare light that you have seen today in your woodland. He has made you a gift of his harmony. Sire, I know about these things. When the naked dawn comes, and the world awakes, I fly up into the profound heavens and from on high pour down the invisible pearls of my trilling song, and in the morning’s light my melody floods the breeze, and is the delight of the air. And I tell you that Orpheus has sung well, for he is chosen of the gods. The entire forest has been intoxicated by his music. The eagles have come close, to soar over our heads, the flowering bushes have softly waved their mysterious censers, the bees have left their hives to come hereby to listen. And as for me, oh, my lord! if I were in your place I would crown him with my wreath of grapes and vines, and pass him my vine-twined staff. There are two great potencies: the real and the ideal. What Hercules would do with his mighty arms, Orpheus does with his inspiration. With one blow, the muscled god would crush Athos himself. But with the power of his triumphant voice, Orpheus would tame his lion Nemea and his wild boar Erimanthus. Some men are born to forge metal, others to wrest from the fertile soil the tender stalks of wheat, others to fight in bloody war, and others yet to teach, to glorify, and to sing. If I am your cup-bearer and I give you wine, your palate is pleased; if I offer you a hymn, it delights your soul.