Sacred and Profane Love

Giovanni Baglione, Sacred Love and Profane Love, 1602

The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for he has become one with what will never fade.



Source:

"Symposium" by Plato, translated by M. Joyce, "Collected Dialogues of Plato ",1961.

An excerpt from "Lazarus" by Leonid Andreyev

Portrait of the writer Leonid Andreev by Valentin Serov, 1907

All objects seen by the eye and palpable to the hand became empty, light and transparent, as though they were light shadows in the darkness; and this darkness enveloped the whole universe. It was dispelled neither by the sun, nor by the moon, nor by the stars, but embraced the earth like a mother, and clothed it in a boundless black veil.
Into all bodies it penetrated, even into iron and stone; and the particles of the body lost their unity and became lonely. Even to the heart of the particles it penetrated, and the particles of the particles became lonely.
The vast emptiness which surrounds the universe, was not filled with things seen, with sun or moon or stars; it stretched boundless, penetrating everywhere, disuniting everything, body from body, particle from particle.
In emptiness the trees spread their roots, themselves empty; in emptiness rose phantom temples, palaces and houses--all empty; and in the emptiness moved restless Man, himself empty and light, like a shadow.
There was no more a sense of time; the beginning of all things and their end merged into one. In the very moment when a building was being erected and one could hear the builders striking with their hammers, one seemed already to see its ruins, and then emptiness where the ruins were.
A man was just born, and funeral candles were already lighted at his head, and then were extinguished; and soon there was emptiness where before had been the man and the candles.
And surrounded by Darkness and Empty Waste, Man trembled hopelessly before the dread of the Infinite.


Source:

Lazarus By Leonid N. Andreyev

Related reading:

Judas Iscariot by L.N. Andreyev, tr. W.H. Lowe, p. F. Griffiths, 1910

Mi Amore

Castor and Pollux

I pray that it may for ever be my lot in life to sit opposite my dear one and hear close to me his sweet voice, to go out when he goes out and share every activity with him. And so a lover might well pray that his cherished one should journey to old age without any sorrow through a life free from stumbling or swerving, without having experienced at all any malicious spite of Fortune. But, if in accordance with the law governing the human body, illness should lay its hand on him, I shall ail with him when he is weak, and, when he puts out to sea through stormy waves, I shall sail with him. And, should a violent tyrant bind him in chains, I shall put the same fetters around myself. All who hate him will be my enemies and those well disposed to him shall I hold dear. Should I see bandits or foemen rushing upon him, I would arm myself even beyond my strength, and if he dies, I shall not bear to live. I shall give final instructions to those I love next best after him to pile up a common tomb for both of us, to unite my bones with his and not to keep even our dumb ashes apart from each other.


Source:

Affairs of the Heart, Pseudo-Lucian, tr. A.M. Harmon

The Veiled Image at Sais by Friedrich Schiller

A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser or a greater?
The truth thou speak'st of, like mere earthly dross,
Is't but a sum that can be held by man
In larger or in smaller quantity?
Surely 'tis changeless, indivisible;
Deprive a harmony of but one note,
Deprive the rainbow of one single color,
And all that will remain is naught, so long
As that one color, that one note, is wanting."

While thus they converse held, they chanced to stand
Within the precincts of a lonely temple,
Where a veiled statue of gigantic size
The youth's attention caught. In wonderment
He turned him toward his guide, and asked him, saying,
"What form is that concealed beneath yon veil?"
"Truth!" was the answer. "What!" the young man cried,
"When I am striving after truth alone,
Seekest thou to hide that very truth from me?"

"The Godhead's self alone can answer thee,"
Replied the Hierophant. "'Let no rash mortal
Disturb this veil,' said he, 'till raised by me;
For he who dares with sacrilegious hand
To move the sacred mystic covering,
He'--said the Godhead--" "Well?"--"'will see the truth.'"
"Strangely oracular, indeed! And thou
Hast never ventured, then, to raise the veil?"
"I? Truly not! I never even felt
The least desire."--"Is't possible? If I
Were severed from the truth by nothing else
Than this thin gauze--" "And a divine decree,"
His guide broke in. "Far heavier than thou thinkest
Is this thin gauze, my son. Light to thy hand
It may be--but most weighty to thy conscience."

The youth now sought his home, absorbed in thought;
His burning wish to solve the mystery
Banished all sleep; upon his couch he lay,
Tossing his feverish limbs. When midnight came,
He rose, and toward the temple timidly,
Led by a mighty impulse, bent his way.
The walls he scaled, and soon one active spring
Landed the daring boy beneath the dome.

Behold him now, in utter solitude,
Welcomed by naught save fearful, deathlike silence,--
A silence which the echo of his steps
Alone disturbs, as through the vaults he paces.
Piercing an opening in the cupola,
The moon cast down her pale and silvery beams,
And, awful as a present deity,
Glittering amid the darkness of the pile,
In its long veil concealed, the statue stands.

With hesitating step, he now draws near--
His impious hand would fain remove the veil--
Sudden a burning chill assails his bones
And then an unseen arm repulses him.
"Unhappy one, what wouldst thou do?" Thus cries
A faithful voice within his trembling breast.
"Wouldst thou profanely violate the All-Holy?"
"'Tis true the oracle declared, 'Let none
Venture to raise the veil till raised by me.'
But did the oracle itself not add,
That he who did so would behold the truth?
Whate'er is hid behind, I'll raise the veil."
And then he shouted: "Yes! I will behold it!"
"Behold it!"
Repeats in mocking tone the distant echo.

He speaks, and, with the word, lifts up the veil.
Would you inquire what form there met his eye?
I know not,--but, when day appeared, the priests
Found him extended senseless, pale as death,
Before the pedestal of Isis' statue.
What had been seen and heard by him when there
He never would disclose, but from that hour
His happiness in life had fled forever,
And his deep sorrow soon conducted him
To an untimely grave. "Woe to that man,"
He warning said to every questioner,
"Woe to that man who wins the truth by guilt,
For truth so gained will ne'er reward its owner."

- Friedrich Schiller


Source:

poemhunter.com


Related reading:

A Translation of "Die Lehrlinge zu Sais" by Novalis

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun by Nicolas Poussin, 1658

Hesiod says that he was the son of Euryale, the daughter of Minos, and of Poseidon, and that there was given him as a gift the power of walking upon the waves as though upon land. When he was come to Chios, he outraged Merope, the daughter of Oenopion, being drunken; but Oenopion when he learned of it was greatly vexed at the outrage and blinded him and cast him out of the country. Then he came to Lemnos as a beggar and there met Hephaestus who took pity on him and gave him Cedalion his own servant to guide him. So Orion took Cedalion upon his shoulders and used to carry him about while he pointed out the roads. Then he came to the east and appears to have met Helius (the Sun) and to have been healed, and so returned back again to Oenopion to punish him; but Oenopion was hidden away by his people underground. Being disappointed, then, in his search for the king, Orion went away to Crete and spent his time hunting in company with Artemis and Leto. It seems that he threatened to kill every beast there was on earth; whereupon, in her anger, Earth sent up against him a scorpion of very great size by which he was stung and so perished. After this Zeus, at one prayer of Artemis and Leto, put him among the stars, because of his manliness, and the scorpion also as a memorial of him and of what had occurred.

Fragment #4—Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catast. fr. xxxii: Orion

Sources:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/348/348-h/348-h.htm#link2H_4_0020


http://www.wikiart.org/en/nicolas-poussin/blind-orion-searching-for-the-rising-sun-1658#close

Threnody Upon a Decadent Art

Le Suicidé by Édouard Manet, 1881

Threnody Upon a Decadent Art

by Joseph W. Krutch

 In no department of human activity is our decline from the grace of the ancients more evident than in that of suicide.

 It is not that people do not continue to take their own lives, but that they no longer do it exquisitely. We achieve our ends with devastating thoroughness, but, with all of our effectiveness, we are crude. The polished gesture is no more. Our crass utilitarianism has destroyed all of the fine arts, including that of suicide, and we are no longer careful that no act of life shall be more becoming us than the leaving of it. The modern designer of a suicide, like the modern builder, aims only at achieving his end. If he succeeds in getting himself dead he is satisfied, and cares nothing for the grace or beauty of the thing. As a consequence, his friends are likely to be shocked at his indelicacy, whereas, had he been an artist, his death might have added to his name a luster that no act of his life had been able to attribute.

 The disgusting crudity complained of can in part be attributed to loss of caste by the act itself. Feeling that he is doing a shameful thing, the modern does it shamefully. It was not so with the Roman or Greek. He recognized in suicide a fitting end to an earthly career. To take one's leave gracefully and voluntarily seemed to him a more dignified end than to be snatched by death unwillingly away, and which of us barbarians dare question him in a matter of taste? Pliny, indeed, counted the right of self-destruction one of the most valuable of man's prerogatives, and pointed out exultingly that in that respect mortals are superior to God, who, though it is said all things are possible to Him, cannot compass his own destruction.

 To the Christian must be very largely attributed the changed attitude. To him it seemed that to take one's life betrayed an unseemly haste to taste the delights of Heaven, which were not to be purchased so easily. Such precipitancy, in fact, was likely to result in his being permanently excluded from the very delights he had been so eager to enjoy, just as children are sent supperless to bed for plucking a cake before grace is pronounced.

   

 Even had illuminating gas been known in the days of the Ptolemies, it is inconceivable that Cleopatra should have used it. Death by such a means suggests stuffy hall bedrooms and unfortunate shop girls, and is incompatible with "immortal longings." Moreover, its use seems to betray more concern for personal ease than artistic effect, and the pursuit of mere comfort is as fatal to beauty as any of the other characteristic vices of the philistine. Cleopatra's experiments, whereby she watched the effect of different poisons on slaves, were justifiable, since it must be remembered that she was seeking not merely a relatively painless death, but one that would be in no way repulsive to the finer sensibilities. Well aware that her story was one to be acted over in countries yet unfound and accents still unknown, she was too much of an artist to spoil the effect by leaving a distorted or mutilated corpse at the end.

   

  Her work will repay the closest analysis, for the infallible intuition of genius arranged every detail of the plan. Admiration for the instrument which she finally adopted may be regarded as a sort of touchstone. Anyone with an authentic taste in suicide will feel at once the exquisite fitness of her final choice —the asp, for such a means smacks neither of the lamp nor the laboratory, but brings one in touch at once with nature—the source of all genuine beauty. Cunningly compounded poisons would have suggested the ignoble labor of vulgar apothecaries, puttering in dirty shops, but the venom of the asp was quietly distilled in nature's alembic.

 "I wish you joy of the worm," Shakespeare makes one of the servants say to her.

Evidently the spectators were regarding the catastrophe of her drama with proper aesthetic detachment.

    

 The connoisseur can do no better than to avoid the newspaper as carefully as the lover of the drama does the contemporary stage, for he will find there nothing but accounts of performances that will shock all of his finer sensibilities. Even when poison has been employed— a method that has the sanction of the masters—he will discover that none of the finer effects possible have been achieved or, indeed, even attempted.

 Socrates, involuntary though his suicide was, showed what could be done in this branch of the art. Surrounded by an audience capable of appreciating the best that he could give them, he tossed off the lethean bumper, not only like a man, but like an artist. Your modern, on the other hand, buys his vial of laudanum and, sneaking off to a corner, dies like a dog. Indeed, I am not aware that hemlock, with all its noble associations, can even be bought. No single fact could show more clearly how blind to their opportunities suicides have become.

   

 The history of every art will reveal one supreme figure, without whom the ultimate reach of that art could never have been dreamed. Had Bach never lived, music might have meant no more than an aural titillation. Without Michael Angelo the sublimity of marble and paint would never have been suspected. By the side of Michael Angelo must be written Petronius Arbiter, for, as the former name stands for the perfection of the plastic and graphic arts, so does the latter for the suicidal. The great figures should be ever before us as counsels of perfection, and the story of Petronius cannot be too often told.

 It is to Nero that we owe his triumph —to Nero who was, in a way, the greatest patron of this art, which during his reign and thanks to his influence flourished mightily. Yet, however much the emperor might enjoy the works of others, he himself had, as his end showed, no productive genius, and even his taste, one is inclined to suspect, was crude, so that he was likely to be content with mere bloodshed without having any just appreciation of the subtler effects. When his own time came he failed miserably, even, if we are to believe the gossipy Suetonius, ludicrously. When the news of his downfall reached him, he knew that his great opportunity had arrived, and we may be most charitable by attributing his failure to stage fright, arising from a realization of his responsibility. "What, is it so hard to die as that?" jeered some of the guards, but even their scorn could not awaken inspiration. Unable to persuade anybody to relieve him of the responsibility and do the deed for him, he snatched some poison (which he never used) and fled. At the last moment he attempted to drive the dagger into his throat, but lacked the courage, so that a kindhearted soldier was compelled to lend his assistance. Surely so great an opportunity was never so completely bungled. While he lived fear compelled the award of the laurel to his atrocious voice, but dead none need praise his suicide.

  

 But let us turn to the more pleasing contemplation of a glorious success. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of Petronius save what is told by Tacitus Yet from the latter's laconic phrases we may infer the greatness of the Arbiter of Elegance. He was, it seems, erudito luxu, and spent his days in sleep' in order to reserve the night for social delights, but such habits will not be held to count too severely in the estimation of an artist. For a time Nero regarded him so highly that no diversion was considered elegant unless it had received the approval of Petronius. But at length the emperor wearied of elegant inventions just as he wearied (and this is more easily understandable) of the salutary commonplaces of Seneda. When Petronius heard that his approach to the emperor had been forbidden, he hesitated no longer, but, conscious of his ability to show the world how suicide should be accomplished, he prepared to achieve his masterpiece.

  

 The austerity of Tacitus prevents him from fully appreciating the genius of Petronius, but a sympathetic imagination can easily reconstruct the picture from the skeleton given in the Annals. Gathering a few friends about him at the bath, he descended leisurely into the tepid water, and, reclining negligently, began to discourse with his companions. Casually, he drew the curved bronze razor over his wrists and lowered his arms into the water. A slender stream like crimson smoke curled upward and dispersed itself through the crystal water, which, after a time, began to blush faintly and then to grow more deeply incarnated. Being a man of pleasure, he avoided the usual death-bed topics and indulged in convivial songs and stories. From time to time he arrested the course of his too rapid dissolution by stopping the flow of blood, but, intermittent though the loss was, he gradually grew weaker and weaker, until with the breaking of the last jest and the emptying of the last bottle he was no more. Petronius Arbiter was dead, but he had left a name that is to endure as long as art is revered. What the discerning lover of suicide will note particularly is the device by which the process of dying was prolonged. More than anything else, the repeated stopping of the blood reveals the touch of genius. The greatest limitation of our art is that its practitioners cannot appreciate their own achievements. By prolonging the process, Petronius showed how this limitation could be practically transcended. I have no desire to belittle the work of other great classical artists. There is a noble simplicity about the deaths of Cato and Brutus, and Empedocles, when he flung himself into the crater of Aetna, revealed imagination and a fine sense of theatrical effect, exhibiting the soles of his feet as the last vision he offered to the world. Still, in spite of many worthy rivals, Petronius remains The Master.

  

  However valuable the force of a beautiful example, the too absorbed contemplation of past excellence is fraught with danger. Our ultimate purpose is to create anew, not to stop at any realization, however complete, of past accomplishment. We must make art live again; we must not decline into a sterile aestheticism. What, we must ask, can be done today? Can the golden age of suicide be revived?

  

 Personally, my attitude is one of hope. Does not modern life offer an abundance of inducements to get away from it? Are there not as many things to escape from as there ever were? Surely, we should be no less willing to leave New York in the twentieth century than Petronius was to leave Rome in the first, for there are as many things to induce the taedimn vitae and as many examples of the lachrymae rerum as there ever were.

  

 The root of the trouble lies, as I have tried to suggest, in our attitude toward the art. Could we but escape from the feeling, born of puritanism, that the beautiful is merely one of the divisions of the sinful, we should find an increased perception of the beauty of suicide. Christianity, teaching that this world is a vale of tears, has done its best to make it such. To endure and, if necessary, create trouble is the essence of godliness, and consequently, to the austerely minded, a work like that of Petronius is doubly damned, first because it got him out of trouble, and, secondly, because it is beautiful. To the aesthete, on the other hand, it is admirable for these very reasons, and just as soon as the world can be brought to a proper appreciation of aesthetic values, the creator of a pleasing suicide, instead of being regarded as merely the provider of another skeleton to be hid in the closet, will be exhibited, like a great painter or musician, as an ornament to the family tree.

  

 Let me forestall the impertinence so often flung at the critic or connoisseur. "Why," no doubt many of my readers have asked me with an air of triumphant finality, "don't you show us how the thing ought to be done. "For," and here the triumph grows complete, "example is perhaps better than precept."

 The truth of the matter is, that though I know what is good, I am bound to confess that I am not able to compass it. To achieve a perfect suicide, the artist must have completely lost interest in all that life has to offer, while I, I must admit, have grown so much interested in self-destruction that I am unable to bear the idea of joining the dead where it is no longer possible.

Source:

The Smart Set, Volume 64, Issue 1, January 1921

Anywhere Out of the World

Baudelaire by David X

Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire, and another is certain that he would get well if he were by the window.

It seems to me that I should always be happy if I were somewhere else, and this question of moving house is one that I am continually talking over with my soul. "Tell me, my soul, poor chilly soul, what do you say to living in Lisbon? It must be very warm there, and you would bask merrily, like a lizard. It is by the sea; they say that it is built of marble, and that the people have such a horror of vegetation that they tear up all the trees. There is a country after your own soul; a country made up of light and mineral, and with liquid to reflect them."

My soul makes no answer.

"Since you love rest, and to see moving things, will you come and live in that heavenly land, Holland? Perhaps you would be happy in a country which you have so often admired in pictures. What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships anchored at the doors of houses?"

My soul remains silent.

"Or perhaps Java seems to you more attractive? Well, there we shall find the mind of Europe married to tropical beauty."

Not a word. Can my soul be dead?

"Have you sunk then into so deep a stupor that only your own pain gives you pleasure? If that be so, let us go to the lands that are made in the likeness of Death. I know exactly the place for us, poor soul! We will book our passage to Borneo. We will go still further, to the last limits of the Baltic; and, if it be possible, further still from life; we will make our abode at the Pole. There the sun only grazes the earth, and the slow alternations of light and night put out variety and bring in the half of nothingness, monotony. There we can take great baths of darkness, while, from time to time, for our pleasure, the Aurora Borealis shall scatter its rosy sheaves before us, like reflections of fireworks in hell! "

At last my soul bursts into speech, and wisely she cries to me: "Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!"

- Charles Baudelaire (tr. Arthur Symons)


Source:

Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry, edited by T.R. Smith, New York, Boni and Liveright, 1919.