Bradshaw William Richard
The Goddess of Atvatabar
CHAPTER XVII.
GNAPHISTHASIA
The day following our arrival in Calnogor his majesty the king had projected for us a journey to the palace of art at Gnaphisthasia, which stood on the slope of a mountain in a rich valley lying one hundred miles southwest of Calnogor. The palace itself was surrounded by high walls of massive porcelain, beautifully adorned with sculpture mouldings, and midway on each side massive gateways, each formed of rounded cones, rising to a great height and covered with sculptured forms, between which the porcelain wall was pierced with fretted arabesque, running high above the arched opening beneath. Once within the gorgeous gateway, the porcelain walls of Gnaphisthasia stood before the enraptured eyes more than a mile in length and half a mile in depth, a many-colored dream of imposing magnificence covered with the work of sculptors. The principal part of the wall was of a greenish-white vitrification, finely diversified by horizontal friezes, with arabesques in red and green, purple and yellow, lavender, sea-green, blue and silver and pale rose and deep gray, all separated by wide bands of greenish-white stone.
In the centre of the buildings stood a semi-circle of massive conical towers, gleaming like enormous jewels and connected by sculptured walls. The four corners of the palace were also groups of towers, all the various groups being connected with the rectangular walls that were decorated with arcades and balconies.
Here in this splendid abode were poets and painters, musicians, sculptors and architects, dancers, weavers of fabrics, ceramists, jewellers, engravers, enamellers, artists in lacquer, carvers, designers and workers in glass and metal, pearl and ivory and the precious stones.
In an immense chamber of the palace a fête was being held. On either side a double range of massive porcelain pillars supported the roof, which covered this grand sanctuary of art like an immense vitrified jewel. The floor of the court was formed of polished wood of a deep rose color that emitted a rich, heavy perfume. Wood of a brilliant green, with interlacing arabesques of red, formed the border of the floor. At the further end of the court stood three thrones, being composed, respectively, of terrelium, aquelium, and plutulium, the three most precious metals. On the threefold throne sat Yermoul, lord of art, his majesty the king, and myself. In ample recesses amid the pillars stood the devotees of art, while the centre of the court was filled with the musicians. A procession of priests and priestesses passed down the living aisles, clad in the most gorgeous fabrics of silk spun by gigantic spiders, and they bore singly trophies of art, or moved in groups, supporting golden litters carrying piled-up treasures of dazzling splendor.
First came a band of priestesses bearing fan-like ensigns of carved wood and fretwork, and panels filled with silks, rare brocades and embroideries. Then came priests bearing heavy vases and urns of gold, terrelium, aquelium, plutulium, silver, and alloys of precious bronze. Then followed others bearing litters piled with vases and figures carved from solid pearl, or fashioned in precious metals. Cups, plates, vases in endless shapes, designs and colors went past, piled high on golden litters, looking like gardens of tropic flowers. Rare laces made of threads spun from the precious metals of Atvatabar, mosaics, ivories, art forgings, costly enamels, decorative bas-reliefs, implements of war, agriculture and commerce, magnic spears and daggers, with shaft and handle encrusted with grotesque carvings in metallic alloys. These alloys took the forms of figures, animals and emblems, having the strangest colorings, like the hilts and scabbards of Japanese swords carved in shakudo and shibuichi. There were exhibited vases of cinnabar, vases wondrously carved from tea-rose, coral-red, pearl-gray, ashes-of-roses, mustard-yellow, apple-green, pistache and crushed-strawberry colored metals. There were also splendid crowns, flowers, animals, birds, and fishes, carved from precious kragon, an imperial stone harder than the diamond and of a pale rose-pink color. Every object was as perfect as though modelled in wax.
Through all this decorative movement there was something more than decoration understood as mere ornamentation – there was the keenest evidence of soul movement on the part of the artist. The music gloriously celebrated the passions of love, ambition and triumph that had filled the souls of the artists when engaged in their incomparable labors, and pealed forth that serene life of the spirit as symbolized in the perfect works of art exhibited, wherein were sealed in eternal magnificence fragments of the souls that had created them.
Between the pauses of the music an organ-megaphone shouted forth in musically-stentorian tones the words that had been impressed on its cylinders in praise of art. The five thousand priests and priestesses of art had simultaneously shouted their art ritual down five thousand tubes, which were all focussed into a single tube of large calibre. The multitudinous sound of their voices had been indelibly impressed on this phonograph-megaphone that now yielded up the sentiments impressed upon it, its tones being that of a vast multitude, re-enforced by the vibrating music of an organ, which was a part of the megaphone. These were the passages repeated by the instrument with a startling splendor of sound:
THE MESSAGE OF THE MEGAPHONE.
I
To define art is to define life.
II
Art is a language that describes the souls of things.
III
Art in nature is the expression of life; in art it is life itself.
IV
Art is too subtle a quality to be defined by the formula of the critic. It is greater than all of the definitions that have tried to grasp it.
V
Art is the glowing focus from which radiate thought, imagination and feeling, gifted with the power of utterance.
VI
True art is generous, passionate, earnest, vivid, enthusiastic. So also is the true artist.
VII
To satisfy the far-reaching longing of the spirit, art makes things more glorious than they are. It is the perfect expression of a perfect environment.
VIII
To mould his symbols with the same life that fills his conception of the idea is the supreme effort of the artist.
IX
As nature from the coarse soil produces flowers, so also the artist from every-day life produces the subtle sweets of art.
X
Art that is simply utility is not sufficiently decorative to delight every nerve of feeling in the soul. To feed these, many flavors of form and color are necessary, and hence the necessity of art.
XI
Where do emotion and imagination begin in art? Where do spirit and flesh unite in a living creature?
XII
The artist is a creator. He breathes into dull matter the breath of art, and it thenceforth contains a living soul.
XIII
Poetry and art make life splendid without science, which is the cold investigation of that which was once thrilled with the passion of life. Invention makes life splendid without poetry and art. By whom will the glorious union of art and science be consummated?
XIV
What is the world we live in? It is for the most part a collection of souls hidebound with treachery and selfishness; of souls covered with a slag from which have departed the fires of love and passion and delight. Such incinerated aliases of their former selves are your judges, oh, artists!
XV
Art is a green oasis in an arid and mechanical civilization. It creates an earthly home for the soul, for those wounded by the riot of trade, the weariness of labor, the fierce struggle for gold, and the deadly environment of rushing travel, blasted pavements and the withering disappointments of life.
XVI
Where is that artist that can sway imagination, create emotion, lift the banner of a high ideal, give the soul a keener appreciation of beauty, add to the mind, strength and grace, cause the brain to develop new nerves of feeling and newer cells of thought, that we may salute him as genius?
XVII
Art is the emotion within made splendid by imagination that clothes everything with perfection. Like color it dwells only in the soul, but the cause of the sensation is without. In all art, the artist seeks to reproduce the cause of his ecstasy, that he may communicate to others a similar delight. He is like a god, he always gives but never receives, for fame, not money, is his recompense.
XVIII
Given a soul that can feel sublimely, that can respond to beauty and feel thrilled with the joy of existence, that can feel the burden of anguish, that can appreciate the humors and absurdities of life, and given the power to adequately represent the knowledge, truth, understanding and conviction of these impressions in fitting symbols, vitalized by imagination and emotion, then have we both poet and artist.
XIX
The soul in such inspired moments takes the form of sculptured arabesques, or flowers, or resembles the refluent sea, full of incredible shapes and symbols. It accompanies the march of thought, the profusive swell of emotion, is capable of pain and ecstasy, and seeks to be fed with those delightful symbols of its life which we call art, the most priceless of earthly possessions.
XX
Four things are necessary for art, viz.: idea, sentiment, imagination and manipulative skill. After these comes prestige, or the applause of the world, to crown the work.
XXI
The art decorator is a type of all art workmen. See him about to manipulate a plastic ornament on the wall. The plaster resembles his idea; its plastic qualities his sentiment, or emotion; the style of ornament into which it is to be moulded resembles his imagination, and the power of the artist to successfully and triumphantly embody in the finished ornament the living, breathing idea that fills him is his manipulative skill. Any work of art, if perfect in itself, still remains unfinished until the world comes along and applauds.
XXII
The age wants the artist. It wants imagination, originality, inspiration, ideality. It requires fertile, dreaming souls, to create ideal breadth.
It requires an earthly Nirvana wherein one may escape a selfish, barbarous, pitiless world. There is a great dearth of the coinage of the soul. We want artists to explain the souls of things, not their mechanical construction, but the unseen secret of their purposes, their unspeakable existence. We want heart-expanding triumphs to counteract the withering influences of life. If a soul is entranced with man or nature, we also want to feel his fascination, to be penetrated with his rapture.
The megaphone ceased its musical vociferation, which formed a spiritual exercise for the souls assembled before us. I felt entranced and lifted up to a plane of splendid life hitherto unknown in my experience. I began to understand that art, after all, is the one thing in our terrestrial life worth striving for, in fact our only possession. For is it not the transmission of the soul to outer matter, whose savagery may be thus charmed and subdued to become a satisfactory spiritual environment?
Following the procession of artists came beautiful, wondrously-arrayed dancers, whose evolutions made the brain dizzy with delight. Fair priests and priestesses of art formed upon the floor of the palace decorative arabesques of scrolls and interlacements of living bodies, the color of their garments mingling in perfectly harmonious hues, beautiful beyond comparison. Their ceaseless evolutions were made to the measure of perfect music. Panels and bands of living decorations were framed and transformed like the magical changes of the kaleidoscope. At last Yermoul, the Lord of Art, waved his wand, and the dancers stood transfixed, a garden of ecstatic color like a Persian carpet, wonderfully designed and vividly emblazoned. It was a scene of royal magnificence. These priests and priestesses were the art workers of Gnaphisthasia, who had so finely exhibited their treasures.
Following the rhythmic movements of the art workers came poets, painters, sculptors, whose works lifted the soul to higher planes of being. These in their trophies of art recited or exhibited gave the soul imagination and sentiment, lifting it almost to the enraptured height of worship, adoration and love.
At the close of the ceremonies we were entertained by Yermoul, Lord of Art, at a banquet, at which music and song and the dancing of voluptuous priestesses made hearts thrill with delight. Bidding farewell at last to the Lord of Art and his priests and priestesses, his majesty, myself and our company returned by the sacred locomotive to Calnogor.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE JOURNEY TO THE BORMIDOPHIA
The palace bell announced the beginning of a new day in Calnogor. I had not slept during the hours of rest, excited as I was by our visit to Gnaphisthasia and the strange customs of Atvatabar.
Koshnili arrived soon after the bell had sounded to inform me that the king had commanded his royal army to be assembled in the great square beyond the palace walls to escort us to the Bormidophia, where a solemn act of worship would be performed before the throne of the gods. This was a most delightful message, as nothing on earth could please me better than to witness the glories of the Bormidophia.
The army under the command of Prince Coltonobory, the brother of the king, commander-in-chief, consisted of 250,000 wayleals, or flying soldiers, and 50,000 bockhockids, or flying cavalry. There was also a detachment of 10,000 fletyemings, or sailors of the royal navy. These were drawn up in review in a vast square before the royal palace.
Superb bockhockids conveyed us the four miles to the Bormidophia in the centre of the city.
The king and queen, both of whom wore crowns blazing with jewels, sat with Koshnili and myself in the first palanquin of bockhockids. The high officers of the government and nobles of the Borodemy, together with the officers and sailors of the Polar King, were distributed among the other stately litters.
The route to the pantheon was lined with palaces. An immense population thronged either side of the roadway. A review of the army took place en route. The wayleals first rose into an enormous flying column, which subsided into whirling domes and afterward broke up into a dozen living globes, that appeared to roll one after another on the ground. These were dissolved into a solid army marching on foot for a time. Then as if by magic the entire mass of men rose into spiral columns which dissolved into vast rings inextricably involved with each other. It was a sight unique and bewildering.
Behind the wayleals, fifty thousand bockhockids kept up their steady march. The people shouted with enthusiasm.
A mimic battle took place in the air above us. Ten thousand wayleals fought on either side, brilliant in many-colored uniforms. Finally, a rainbow arch of flying men spanned the entrance to the great square of the Bormidophia, or pantheon. Amid the thunder of guns and music, the entire company alighted at the doors of the pantheon, which consisted of an immense circular pile of buildings over a mile in circumference. The interior revealed a scene of surpassing magnificence. Endless tiers of seats were arranged in terraces that, rising above each other, traversed the wide sweep of the amphitheatre. The entire pantheon with its adjacent palaces and colonnades was sculptured out of a hill of green marble. The exterior walls, rising 200 feet, were crowned with a lofty dome of enamelled glass, through which the light of the sun streamed in myriad colors on the sea of worshippers beneath. The walls of the pantheon, both exteriorly and interiorly, were sculptured with immense reliefs, the trophies of invention and art, as well as the magical symbols of spiritual forces.
The lowest circle of the amphitheatre reached down one hundred feet below the level of the outer pavement, and the royal seat was on a level with the ground and fifty feet below the top of the far-famed golden throne of the gods, that stood in the centre of the immense building.
Our entrance was the signal for welcoming music and a suppressed murmur of excitement from the myriads of worshippers that sat both above and below us. The amphitheatre contained not less than 50,000 people. The moment their majesties were seated, a roar of artillery shook the earth. The forthcoming grand act of worship was evidently instituted in our honor, for we were the observed of all eyes in that vast concourse of people.
A dozen choirs, possessed of all kinds of beautiful instruments, caressed the ear with their melodious songs. There was no dim religious light; everything was open-eyed beneath that splendid dome. Suddenly a cloud of flying priests and priestesses seated themselves on a pyramid formed of terraces of solid silver fifty feet in height that supported the miraculous throne. They at once began to sing with such force and pathos as to dissolve the multitude into a hush of breathless silence.
Then an immense bell of bronze filled the pantheon with a sonorous moan. Twelve thrilling tones made souls tremble and heads bow down. With the last vibration there rose from the crown of the throne of the gods a living woman, nude to the waist, having a broad belt of gold studded with gems clasping her figure, from which fell to her feet a garment of aquelium lace wrought with magical symbols.
She was a girl of peerless development; her arms were long and softly moulded, her breasts firm and splendid. The color of her complexion and flesh was of soft mat gold, like that of golden fruit, and a perceptible flush warmed her cheeks. Her profile was perfect, being both proud and tender in outline. Her hair was a heavy glossy mass, of a pale sapphire-blue color, that fell in a waving cloud around her shoulders. Her whole figure bore an infinitely gracious expression, the result of possessing a tender and sympathetic soul.
On her head was a tiara of terrelium, the vermilion metal, studded with gems, on her neck she wore a necklace of emerald-green sapphires, while on either wrist were broad gold bracelets, having a magnificent blue sapphire on each.
She was Lyone, the Supreme Goddess of Atvatabar, the representative of Harikar, the Holy Soul; Queen of Magicians; Mother of Sorcerers, and Princess of Arjeels.
Standing erect for a moment, as if to assure the vast congregation of her presence, she then slowly sat down on a broad divan of aloe-green silk velvet, holding in her right hand the terrelium sceptre of spiritual sovereignty, whose head bore two hearts formed of flaming rubies.
I was entranced with the appearance of the divine girl, the object of the adoration of Atvatabar. Every feature of her face was carved with a full and ripe roundness, exhibiting repose and power. Her eyes, large and blue and lustrous, were sorcery itself. There was in them an unutterable tenderness, a divine hospitality, the result of vast pride and still vaster sympathy.
All at once she gazed at me! I felt filled with a fever of delicious delight, of intoxicating adoration. I could then understand the devotion of Atvatabar, of hearts slain by eyes that were conquering swords.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE THRONE OF THE GODS, CALNOGOR
The throne of the gods was the most famous institution in Atvatabar. It was the cynosure of every eye, the object of all adoration, the tabernacle of all that was splendid in art, science and spiritual perfection. The great institutions of Egyplosis, the college of ten thousand soul-worshippers, the palace of Gnaphisthasia, with its five thousand poets, artists, musicians, dancers, architects, and weavers of glorious cloths, and the establishments for training the youth of the country in mechanical skill, were but the outlying powers that lent glory to the throne itself. It was the standard of virtue, of soul, of genius, skill and art. It was the triune symbol of body, mind and spirit. It was the undying voice of Atvatabar proclaiming the grandeur of soul development; that pleasure, rightly guarded, may be virtue. The religion of Harikar in a word was this, that the Nirvana, or blessedness promised the followers of the supernatural creeds of the outer world, after death was to be enjoyed in the body in earthly life without the trouble of dying to gain it. This was a comfortable state of things, if only possible of accomplishment, and such a creed of necessity included the doctrine that the physical death of the body was the end of all individuality, the soul thereafter losing all personality in the great ocean of existence.
The throne of the gods was a cone of solid gold one hundred feet in height, divided into three parts for the various castes of gods, or symbols of science, art and spirituality. The structure was a circular solid cone of gold, shaped somewhat in the form of a heart. It was indeed the golden heart of Atvatabar, proclaiming that sentiment and science should go hand in hand; that in all affairs of life the heart should be an important factor. The lower section, or scientific pantheon, possessed bas-reliefs of models or symbols of the more important inventions. This section was forty feet in height and seventy-two feet in diameter.
The images of the gods themselves surmounting the lowest part of the throne were in reality composite man-gods, that is to say, each figure was a statue, life size, of the resultant of the statues of all the important developers of each invention and was thus obtained:
As soon as any prominent inventor or developer of an invention died, the government secured a plaster cast of his body, if such had not been made prior to death, and this was preserved for years in a special museum. When twenty or more casts of various developers of any one invention had been accumulated these were placed on a horizontal wheel, which revolved in front of a photographic camera, and thus the composite outline of the future god was obtained. As many outlines were procured as there were eighths of inches in the circumference of the largest cast, and from the collective pictures the ideal cast was made by the sculptor. The cast once perfected, and afterward draped, was reproduced in solid gold and placed with appropriate ceremonies on a pedestal on the throne itself. In like manner the gods of the arts, poetry, painting, etc., were created, as also the priests of Harikar, the Holy Soul.
The reliefs, or symbols of mechanical art, were originally cast on the throne itself. These included the electric engine and locomotive, electric healer, telephone, telegraph, the electric ship, elevator, printing press, cotton gin, weaving loom, typesetting machine, well-boring apparatus, telescope, flying machines (individual and collective), bockhockid, sewing machine, photographic camera, reaping machine, paper-making and wall-paper printing machine, phonograph, etc., etc.
This department of the throne being the largest, was significant of the material supremacy of the mechanical arts in the nation. Science itself was a god named Triporus, fashioned like a winged snake, so called because it was said he could worm his way through the pores of matter so as to discover the secrets therein. This god seemed a compound of our ancient Sphinx, or science, and Dædalus, or mechanical skill, but with an entirely new meaning added to both.
The second or intermediate section of the throne was devoted to the gods of art and their attributes. It was sixty feet in its largest diameter, and twenty-four feet in height. It possessed also two sections, the upper containing the statues of Aidblis, or Poetry; Dimborne, or Painting; Brecdil, or Sculpture; Swengé, or Music; Tilono, or Drama; Timpango, or Dancing; Olshodesdil, or Architecture, etc., etc. In the lower section there were tableaux cast in high relief illustrating the qualities of the soul developed by art, viz.: Omodrilon, or Imagination; Diandarn, or Emotion; Samadoan, or Conscience; Voedli, or Faith; Lentilmid, or Tenderness; Delidoa, or Truth, etc.
The final section or tapering apex of the throne was thirty feet in greatest width and thirty-six feet in height. It contained a throne and three divisions. The lowest division contained the gods Hielano, or Magic; Bishano, or Sorcery; Nidialano, or Astrology; Padomano, or Soothsaying, etc.
The intermediate division contained the gods Niano, or Witchcraft; Redohano, or Wizardry; Oxemano, or Diablerie; Biccano, or the Oracle; Amano, or Seership; Kielano, or Augury; Tocderano, or Prophecy; Jiracano, or Geomancy; Jocdilano, or Necromancy, etc.
The third division contained the gods Orphitano, or Conjuration; Orielano, or Divination; Pridano, or Clairvoyance; Cideshano, or Electro-biology; Omdohlopano, or Theosophy; Bischanamano, or Spiritualism, etc.
The climax of all was the throne of the goddess. It was a seat of aloe-green velvet that, revolving slowly in the centre of the supporting throne, presented the goddess to every section of the vast audience. Thus seated, the goddess radiated an Orient splendor, herself a blaze of beauty and the focus of every eye. The music of an introductory opera warbled its soft strains with breathless execution. It seemed the carolling of a thousand nightingales, mingling with the musical crying of silver trumpets and the clear electric chiming of golden bells.