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The Temptation of St. Anthony
"Male and female, complaisant to all, I abandon myself to you, Bacchantes! I abandon myself to you, Bacchanalians! – and the vine shall twine herself about the tree-trunks! Howl! dance! writhe! Loosen the tiger and the slave! – rend flesh with ferocious bitings!"
(And Pan, Silenus, the Bacchantes, the Mimalonæides, and the Mænads, – with their serpents, torches, sable masks, – cast flowers at each other … shake their tympanums, strike their thyrsi, pelt each other with shells, devour grapes, strangle a goat, and tear Bacchus asunder.)
Apollo (furiously whipping his coursers, while his blanching locks are falling from his head):
"I have left far behind me stony Delos, so pure that all now there seems dead; and I must strive to reach Delphi ere its inspiring vapour be wholly lost. The mules browse in its laurel groves. The Pythoness has wandered away, and cannot be found.
"By a stronger concentration of my power, I will obtain sublime hymns, eternal monuments; and all matter will be penetrated by the vibrations of my cithara!"
(He strikes the strings of the instrument. They burst, lashing his face with their broken ends. He flings the cithara away; and furiously whipping his quadriga, cries):
"No! enough of forms! – Further, higher! – to the very summit! – to the realm of pure thought!"
(But the horses back, rear, dash the chariot to pieces. Entangled by the harness, caught by the fragments of the broken pole, he falls head foremost into the abyss.
The sky is darkened.)
Venus (blue with cold, shivering):
"Once with my girdle I made all the horizon of Hellas.
"Her fields glowed with the roses of my cheeks; her shores were outlined after the fashion of my lips; and her mountains, whiter than my doves, palpitated beneath the hands of the statuaries. My spirit's manifestation was found in the ordinances of the festivals, in the arrangement of coiffures, in the dialogues of philosophers, in the constitution of republics. But I have doted too much upon men! It is Love that has dishonoured me!"
(She casts herself back weeping):
"This world is abominable; – there is no air for me to breathe!
"O Mercury, inventor of the lyre, conductor of souls, take me away!"
(She places one finger upon her lips, and describing an immense parabola, falls into the abyss.
Nothing is now visible. The darkness is complete.
Only, that from the eyes of Hilarion escape two flashes, two rays of lurid light.)
Anthony (begins at last to notice his immense stature):
"Already several times, while thou wert speaking, it seemed to me thou wert growing taller; and it was no illusion! How? Explain to me … Thy aspect terrifies me!"
(Footsteps are heard approaching.)
"What is that?"
Hilarion (extending his arm):
"Look!"
(Then, under a pale beam of moonlight, Anthony distinguishes an interminable caravan defiling over the summit of the rocks; – and each voyager, one after the other, falls from the cliff into the gulf below.
First comes the three great gods of Samothrace, – Axieros, Axiokeros, Axiokersa, —united together as in a fascia, purple-masked, all with hands uplifted.
Æsculapius advances with a melancholy air, not even perceiving Samos and Telesphorus, who question him with gestures of anguish. Elean Sosipolis, of python-form, rolls his coils toward the abyss. Dosipoena, becomes dizzy, leaps in of her own accord. Britomartis, shrieking with fear, clutches fast the meshes of her net. The Centaurs come at a wild gallop, and roll pell-mell into the black gulf.
Behind them, all limping, advance the bands of the mourning Nymphs. Those of the meadows are covered with dust; those of the woods moan and bleed; wounded by the axes of the woodcutters.
The Gelludes, the Strygii, the Empusæ, all the infernal goddesses, form one pyramid of blended fangs, vipers, and torches; – and seated upon a vulture-skin at its summit, Eurynome, blue as the flies that corrupt meat, devours her own arms.
Then in one great whirl simultaneously disappear the bloody Orthia, Hymina of Orchomenus, the Laphria of the Patræns, Aphia of Agina, Bendis of Thrace, Stymphalia with thighs like a bird's. Triopas, in lieu of three eyes, has now but three empty orbits. Erichthonius, his legs paralysed, crawls upon his hands like a cripple.)
Hilarion. "What a pleasure, is it not! – to see them all in the abjection of their death-agony! Climb up here beside me, on this rock; and thou shalt be even as Xerxes, reviewing his army.
"Beyond there, very far, dost thou behold that fair-bearded giant, who even now lets fall his sword crimsoned with blood? – that is the Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets, – Artimpasa, Venus, and Orsiloche, the Moon.
"Still further away, now emerging from pallid clouds, are the gods whom the Cimmerians adore, even beyond Thule.
"Their huge halls were warm, and by the gleam of swords that tapestried the vault, they drank their hydromel from horns of ivory. They ate the liver of the whale in dishes of brass wrought by the hammers of demons; or, betimes, they listened to captive sorcerers whose fingers played upon harps of stone.
"They are feeble! They are cold! The snow makes heavy their bearskins; and their feet show through the rents in their sandals.
"They weep for the vast fields upon whose grassy knolls they were wont to draw breath in pauses of battle; they weep for the long ships whose prows forced a way through the mountains of ice; – and the skates wherewith they followed the orb of the poles, upbearing at the length of their mighty arms all the firmament that turned with them."
(A gust of frosty wind carries them off. Anthony turns his eyes another way. And he perceives – outlined in blade against a red background – certain strange personages, with chinbands and gauntlets, who throw balls at one another, leap over each other's heads, make grimaces, dance a frenzied dance.)
Hilarion. "Those are the divinities of Etruria, the innumerable Æsars.
"There is Tages, by whom augury was invented. With one hand he seeks to augment the divisions of the sky; with the other he supports himself upon the earth: let him sink therein!
"Nortia gazes at the wall into which she drave nails to mark the number of the passing years. Its whole surface is now covered; and the period is accomplished.
"Like two travellers overtaken by a storm, Kastur and Pulutuk, trembling, seek to shelter themselves beneath the same mantle."
Anthony (closes his eyes):
"Enough! Enough!"
(But with a mighty noise of wings, all the Victories of the Capitol pass through the air, – hiding their faces with their hands, dropping the trophies hanging upon their arms.
Janus, – lord of crepuscules, – flees upon a black ram; and one of his two faces is already putrified; the other slumbers with fatigue.
Summanus, the headless god of the dark heavens, presses against his heart an odd cake shaped like a wheel.
Vesta, beneath a ruined cupola, tries to relight her extinguished lamp.
Bellona gashes her cheeks, – without being able to make that blood flow by which her devotees were purified.)
Anthony. "Mercy! – they weary me!"
Hilarion. "Before, they amused thee!"
(And he shows him in a grove of bean-trees, A Woman, naked … and a black man, holding in each hand a torch.24)
"It is the goddess of Aricia, with the demon Virbius. Her sacerdote, the King of the grove, had to be an assassin;25 and the fugitive slaves, the despoilers of corpses, the brigands of the Via Salaria, the cripples of the Pons Sublicius, all the human vermin of the Suburra worshipped no deities so fervently.
"In the time of Marcus Antonius the patrician women preferred Libitina."
(And he shows him under the shadow of cypresses and rose-trees, Another Woman, clad in gauze. Around her lie spades, litters, black hangings, all the paraphernalia of funerals. She smiles. Her diamonds shine afar off through spiders' webs. The Larvæ, like skeletons, show their bones through the branches; and the Lemures, who are phantoms, extend their bat-like wings.
At the end of a field lies the god Terminus, uprooted, and covered with ordures.
In the centre of a furrow, the great corpse of Vertumnus is being devoured by red dogs.
The rustic deities all depart, weeping: – Sartor, Sarrator, Vervactor, Collina, Vallona, Hostilinus – all wearing little hooded mantles, and carrying either a hoe, a pitchfork, a hurdle, or a boar-spear.)
Hilarion. "Their spirits made prosperous the villa, – with its dovecots, its parks of dormice, its poultry-yards protected by nets, its warm stables fragrant with odours of cedar.
"Also they protected all the wretched population who dragged the irons upon their legs over the flinty ways of the Sabine country, – those who called the swine together by sound of horn, – those who were wont to gather the bunches at the very summits of the elms, – those who drove the asses, laden with manure, over the winding bypaths. The panting labourer, leaning over the handle of his plough, prayed them to give strength to his arms; and under the shade of the lindens, beside calabashes filled with milk, the cow-herds were wont, in turn, to sound their praises upon flutes of reed."
Anthony (sighs.)
(And in the centre of a chamber, upon a lofty estrade, an ivory bed is visible, surrounded by persons bearing torches of pine.)
"Those are the deities of marriage. They await the coming of the bride.
"Domiduca should lead her in, – Virgo unfasten her girdle, – Subigo place her in the bed, – and Præma open her arms, and whisper sweet words into her ear.
"But she will not come! – and they dismiss the others: – Nona and Decima who watch by sick-beds; the three Nixii who preside over child-birth; the two nurses, Educa and Potina; and Carna, guardian of the cradle, whose bouquet of hawthorne keeps evil dreams from the child.
"Afterwards, Ossipago should strengthen his knees; – Barbatus give him his first beard; Stimula inspire his first desires; Volupia grant him his first enjoyment; Fabulimus should have taught him to speak, Numera to count, Camœna to sing, Consus to reflect."
(This chamber is empty; and there remains only the centenarian Nænia beside the bed, – muttering to herself the dirge she was wont to howl at the funerals of aged men.
But her voice is soon drowned by sharp cries. These are uttered by—
The Lares Domestici, crouching at the further end of the atrium, clad in dog-skins, with flowers wreathed about their bodies, – pressing their clenched hands against their cheeks, and weeping as loudly as they can.)
"Where is the portion of food we received at each repast, the kindly care of the maid-servant, the smile of the matron, the merriment of the little boys playing at knuckle-bones on the mosaic pavement of the court-yard? When grown up, they used to hang about our necks their bullæ of gold or leather!
"What happiness it was, when on the evening of a triumph, the master, entering, turned his humid eyes upon us! He would recount his combats; and the little house would be prouder than a palace; sacred as a temple!
"How sweet were the family repasts, above all on the morrow of the Feralia! Tenderness for the dead appeased all discords; all kissed each other, while drinking to the glories of the past, and the hopes of the future.
"But the ancestors, of painted wax, locked up behind us, are slowly becoming covered with mold. The new races, visiting their own deceptions upon us, have shattered our jaws; our wooden bodies are disappearing piece-meal under the teeth of rats."
(And the innumerable gods, watching over doors, kitchens, cellars, baths, disperse in every direction – under the form of enormous ants running over the pavement, or great butterflies soaring away.
Then a roll of thunder is heard.)
A Voice:
"I was the God of Armies, the Lord, the Lord God! I pitched the tents of Jacob on the hills; and in the midst of the sands I nourished my chosen people in their flight.
"It was I who consumed the city of Sodom with fire! It was I who overwhelmed the world with the waters of the Deluge! It was I that drowned Pharaoh, with all the princes, sons of Kings, – making the sea to swallow up his chariots of war, and his charioteers!
"I, the Jealous God, held all other gods in abomination. I brayed the impure in my anger; the mighty I cast down; and swiftly the desolation of my wrath ran to the right and to the left, like a dromedary loosened in a field of maize.
"I chose the humble to deliver Israel. Angels, flame-winged, spake to them from out the bashes.
"Perfumed with spikenard, with cinnamon and myrrh, clad in transparent robes, and shod with high-heeled sandals, – women of valiant heart went forth to slay captains. The passing wind carried my prophets with it.
"My law I graved upon tables of stone. Within that law my people were enclosed, as within a strong citadel. They were my people. I was their God! The land was mine; the men also belonged to me, together with their every thought, and all their works, and the tools they wrought with, and their prosperity.
"My ark reposed within a triple sanctuary, – surrounded by curtains of purple and lighted candelabra. I had a whole tribe to serve me as servants, swinging censers; and the high-priest, robed in robes of hyacinth, wore upon his breast precious stones disposed in symmetrical order.
"Woe! Woe! the Holy of Holies is open, the veil is rent, the perfumes of the holocaust are dissipated by all the winds of heaven! The jackal whines in the sepulchres; my temple is destroyed; my people dispersed!
"The priests have been strangled with the girdles of their robes. The women languish in captivity; the holy vessels have all been melted!"
(The voice, becoming more distant):
"I was the God of Armies; the Lord, the Lord God!"
(An enormous silence follows, – and deepest night.)
Anthony. "All have passed away!"
Some One (replies):
"I remain!"
(And Hilarion stands before him – but transfigured wholly, – beautiful as an archangel, luminous as a sun, and so lofty that in order to behold his face—
Anthony is compelled to throw back his head, to look up as though gazing as a star):
"Who art thou?"
Hilarion. "My kingdom is vast as the universe; and my desire knows no limits. I go on forever, – freeing minds, weighing worlds, – without hatred, without fear, without pity, without love, and without God. Men call me Science!"
Anthony (recoiling from him):
"Say, rather, that thou art … the Devil!"
Hilarion (fixing his eyes upon him:)
"Wouldst thou behold him?"
Anthony (cannot detach his eyes from that mighty gaze: – the curiosity of the Devil comes upon him. His terror augments; yet his wish grows even to boundlessness):
"Yet if I should see him … if I were to see him!"
(Then in a sudden spasm of wrath):
"The horror that I have of him will free me from his presence forever!.. Yes!"
(A cloven foot appears. Anthony regrets his wish.
But the Devil flings him upon his horns and bears him away.)
VI
(He flies beneath him, outstretched like a swimmer; his vast-spreading wings, wholly concealing him, seem like one huge cloud.)
Anthony. "Whither do I go? But a little while ago I beheld in a glimpse the form of the Accurst. Nay! – 'tis a cloud that upbears me! Perhaps I am dead, and am ascending to God…
"How freely I respire. The immaculate air seems to vivify my soul. No sense of weight! – no more suffering.
"Far below me the lightning breaks, – the horizon broadens, widens, – the rivers cross each other. That blond-bright spot is the desert; that pool of water the ocean!
"And other oceans appear! – vast regions of which I knew nothing! There are the countries of the blacks, which seem to smoke like brasiers! – then is the zone of snows always made dim by fog! Would I might behold those mountains where the sun, each evening, sinks to rest!"
The Devil. "The sun never sinks to rest; the sun never rests!"
(Anthony is not surprised at this voice. It seems to him an echo of his own thought – a response made by his own memory.
Meanwhile the earth gradually assumes the shape of a ball; and he beholds it in the midst of the azure, turning upon its poles, and revolving with the sun.)
The Devil. "So it does not form the centre of the universe! Pride of man! humiliate thyself!"
Anthony. "Now I can scarcely distinguish it. It mingles confusedly with other glowing worlds. The firmament itself is but one tissue of stars."
(And they still rise.)
"No sound! – not even the hoarse cry of eagles! Nothing? I listen for the harmony of the spheres."
The Devil. "Thou wilt not hear them! Nor wilt thou behold the antichtonus of Plato, – or the central furnace of Philolaüs, – or the spheres of Aristotle, or the seven heavens of the Jews, with the great waters above the vault of crystal!"
Anthony. "Yet from below the vault seemed solid as a wall! – on the contrary I penetrate it, I lose myself in it!"
(And he beholds the moon, – like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.)
The Devil. "Formerly it was the sojourn of souls! Even the good Pythagoras adorned it with magnificent flowers, populated it with birds!"
Anthony. "I can see only desolate plains there, with extinct craters yawning under a black sky!
"Let us go towards those milder-beaming stars, that we may contemplate the angels who uphold them at arms' length, like torches!"
The Devil (bears him into the midst of the stars):
"They attract at the same time that they repel each other. The action of each one results from that of others, and contributes thereunto, – without the aid of any auxiliary, by the force of a law, the virtue of order alone!"
Anthony. "Yes!.. yes! My intelligence grasps the great truth! It is a joy greater than all tender pleasures! Breathless I find myself with astonishment at the enormity of God!"
The Devil. "Even as the firmament ever rises as thou dost ascend, so with the expansion of thy thought will He become greater to thee; and after this discovery of the universe thou wilt feel thy joy augment with the broadening and deepening of the infinite."
Anthony. "Ah! higher! – higher still! – forever higher!"
(Then the stars multiply, scintillate. The Milky Way develops in the zenith like a monstrous belt, with holes at intervals; through these rents in its brightness stretches of prolonged darkness are visible. There are rains of stars, long trains of golden dust, luminous vapours that float and dissolve.
At times a comet suddenly passes by; then the tranquillity of innumerable lights recommences.
Anthony, with outstretched arms, supports himself upon the Devil's horns, and thus occupies all the space between them.
He remembers with disdain the ignorance of other days, the mediocrity of his dreams. And now those luminous globes he was wont to gaze upon from below, are close to him. He distinguishes the intercrossing of the lines of their orbits, the complexity of their courses. He beholds them coming from afar, – and, like stones suspended in a sling, describe their circles, form their hyperbolas.
He perceives, all within the field of his vision at once, the Southern Cross and the Great Bear, the Lynx and the Centaur, the nebula of Dorado, the six suns in the constellation of Orion, Jupiter with his four satellites, and the triple ring of the monstrous Saturn! – all the planets, all the stars that men will discover in the future. He fills his eyes with their light; he over-burthens his mind with calculation of their distances: then, bowing his head, he murmurs):
"What is the purpose of all that?"
The Devil. "There is no purpose. How could God have a purpose? What experience could have instructed him? – what reflection determined him?
"Before the beginning he could not have acted; – and now his action would be useless."
Anthony. "Yet he created the world, at one time, by his word only."
The Devil. "But the beings that people the earth come upon it successively. So also, in heaven, new stars arise – different effects of varying causes."
Anthony. "The varying of causes is the will of God!"
The Devil. "But to admit several acts of will in God is to admit various causes, and therefore to deny his unity.
"His will is inseparable from his essence. He can have but one will, having but one essence; and inasmuch as he externally exists, he acts eternally.
"Contemplate the sun! From its surface leap vast jets of flame, casting forth sparks that disperse beyond to become worlds here-after; – and further than the last, far beyond those deeps where thou seest only night, whirl other suns, – and behind them others again, and beyond those yet others … without end!"
Anthony. "Enough! Enough! I fear! – I will fall into the abyss!"
The Devil (pauses, and rocks Anthony gently in the midst of space).
"Nothingness is – not – there is no void! Everywhere and forever bodies move upon the immovable deeps of space! Were there boundaries to space, it would not be space, but a body only: it is limitless!"
Anthony (stupefied by wonder):
"Limitless!"
The Devil. "Ascend skyward forever and forever, – yet thou wilt not attain the summit. Descend below the earth for billions of billions of centuries: never wilt thou reach the bottom. For there is no summit, there is no bottom; there is no Above, no Below – nor height, nor depth as signified by the terms of human utterance. And Space itself is comprised in God, who is not a portion thereof of such or such a size, – but is Immensity itself!"
Anthony (slowly):
"Matter… then… must be a part of God?"
The Devil. "Why not? Canst thou know the end of God?"
Anthony. "Nay: on the contrary, I prostrate, I crush myself beneath his mightiness!"
The Devil. "And yet thou dost pretend to move him! Thou dost speak to him, – thou dost even adorn him with virtues, – with goodness, justice, mercy, – in lieu of recognising that all perfections are his!
"To conceive aught beyond him is to conceive God above God, the Being above the Being. For He is the only being, the only substance.
"If the Substance could be divided, it would not be the Substance, it would lose its nature: God could not exist. He is therefore indivisible as infinite; – and if he had a body, he would be composed of parts, he would not be One – he would not be infinite. Therefore he is not a Person!"
Anthony. "What? my prayers, my sobs, my groans, the sufferings of my flesh, the transports of my love, – have all these things gone out to a lie, – to emptiness, unavailingly – like the cry of a bird, like a whirl of dead leaves?"
(Weeping):
"Oh, no! – there is Some One above all things, – a great Soul, a Lord, a Father whom my heart adores and who must love me!"
The Devil. "Thou dost desire that God were not God; – for did he feel love, or anger, or pity, – he would abandon his perfection for a greater or a lesser perfection. He can stoop to no sentiment, nor be contained in any form."
Anthony. "One day, nevertheless, I shall see him!"
The Devil. "With the blessed, is it not? – when the finite shall enjoy the infinite in some restricted place, containing the Absolute!"
Anthony. "Matters not! – there must be a paradise for the good, as there is a hell for the wicked."
The Devil. "Can the desire of thy mind create the law of the universe? Without doubt evil is indifferent to God, – forasmuch as the Earth is covered with it!
"Is it through impotence that he endures it, or through cruelty that he maintains it?
"Dost thou fancy that he is eternally readjusting the world, like an imperfect machine? – that he is forever watching the movements of all beings, from the flight of a butterfly to the thought of a man?
"If he have created the universe, his providence is superfluous. If Providence exists, then creation is defective.
"But evil and good concern only thee – even like night and day, pleasure and pain, death and birth, which are relative only to one corner of space, to a special centre, to a particular interest. Since the Infinite is permanent, the Infinite is; – and that is all."
(The Devil's wings have been gradually expanding: now they cover all space.)
Anthony (now perceives nothing: a great faintness comes upon him):
"A hideous cold freezes me, even to the depths of my soul! This is beyond the extreme of pain! It is like a death that is deeper than death! I roll in the immensity of darkness; and the darkness itself enters within me. My consciousness bursts beneath this dilation of nothingness!"
The Devil. "Yet the knowledge of things comes to thee only through the medium of thy mind. Even as a concave mirror, it deforms the objects it reflects; and thou hast no means whatever of verifying their exactitude."
"Never canst thou know the universe in all its vastness; consequently it will never be possible for thee to obtain an idea of its cause, to have a just notion of God, nor even to say that the universe is infinite, – for thou must first be able to know what the Infinite is!"
"May not Form be, perhaps, an error of thy senses, – Substance a figment of thy imagination?"
"Unless, indeed, that the world being a perpetual flux26 of things, appearance, on the contrary, be wholly true; illusion the only reality."
"But art thou sure thou dost see? – art thou even sure thou dost live? Perhaps nothing exists!"
(The Devil has seized Anthony, and, holding him at arms' length, glares at him with mouth yawning as though to devour him):
"Adore me, then! – and curse the phantom thou callest God!"
(Anthony lifts his eyes with a last effort of hope.
The Devil abandons him.)