A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Hyperion

H >> Henry Wadsworth Longfellow >> Hyperion




"Kyrie Eleëson!"

"Well, abuse my figures of speech as much as you please. What I
insist upon is, that you shall not abuse the lady. When did you ever
hear me breathe a whisper against her?"

"Oho! Now you speak like Launce to his dog!"

Their conversation, which had begun so merrily, was here suddenly
interrupted by a rattling peal of thunder, that announced a
near-approaching storm. It was late in the afternoon, and the whole
heaven black with low, trailing clouds. Still blacker the storm came
sailing up majestically from the southwest, with almost unbroken
volleys of distant thunder. The wind seemed to be storming a cloud
redoubt; and marched onward with dust, and the green banners of the
trees flapping in the air, and heavy cannonading, and occasionally
an explosion, like the blowing up of a powder-wagon. Mingled with
this was the sound of thunder-bells from a village not far off. They
were all ringing dolefully to ward off the thunderbolt. At the
entrance of the village stood a large wooden crucifix; around which
was a crowd of priests and peasants, kneeling in the wet grass, by
the roadside, with their hands and eyes lifted toheaven, and praying
for rain. Their prayer was soon answered.

The travellers drove on with the driving wind and rain. They had
come from Landeck, and hoped to reach Innsbruck before midnight.
Night closed in, and Flemming fell asleep with the loud storm
overhead, and at his feet the roaring Inn, a mountain torrent
leaping onward as wild and restless, as when it first sprang from
its cradle in the solitudes of Engaddin; meet emblem of himself,
thus rushing through the night. His slumber was long, but broken;
and at length he awoke in terror; for he heard a voice pronounce in
his ear distinctly these words;

"They have brought the dead body."

They were driving by a churchyard at the entrance of a town; and
among the tombs a dim lamp was burning before an image of the
Virgin. It had a most unearthly appearance. Flemming almost feared
to see the congregation of the dead go into the church and sing
their midnight mass. He spoke to Berkley; but received no answer; he
was in a deep sleep.

"Then it was only a dream," said he to himself; "yet how distinct
the voice was! O, if we had spiritual organs, to see and hear things
now invisible and inaudible to us, we should behold the whole air
filled with the departing souls of that vast multitude which every
moment dies,--should behold them streaming up like thin vapors
heaven-ward, and hear the startling blast of the archangel's trump
sounding incessant through the universe and proclaiming the awful
judgment day. Truly the soul departs not alone on its last journey,
but spirits of its kind attend it, when not ministering angels; and
they go in families to the unknown land! Neither in life nor in
death are we alone."

He slept again at intervals; and at length, though long after
midnight, reached Innsbruck between sleeping and waking; his mind
filled with dim recollections of the unspeakably dismal
night-journey;--the climbing of hills, and plunging into dark
ravines;--the momentary rattling of the wheels over paved streets of
towns, and the succeeding hollow rolling and tramping on the
wetearth;--the blackness of the night;--the thunder and lightning
and rain; the roar of waters, leaping through deep chasms by the
road-side, and the wind through the mountain-passes, sounding loud
and long, like the irrepressible laughter of the gods.

The travellers on the morrow lingered not long in Innsbruck. They
did not fail, however, to visit the tomb of Maximilian in the
Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, and gaze with some admiration
upon the twenty-eight gigantic bronze statues of Godfrey of
Bouillon, and King Arthur and Ernest the Iron-man, and Frederick of
the Empty Pockets, kings and heroes, and others, which stand leaning
on their swords between the columns of the church, as if guarding
the tomb of the dead. These statues reminded Flemming of the bronze
giants, which strike the hours on the belfry of San Basso, in
Venice, and of the flail-armed monsters, that guarded the gateway of
Angulaffer's castle in Oberon. After gazing awhile at these
motionless sentinels, they went forth, and strolled throughthe
public gardens, with the jagged mountains right over their heads,
and all around them tall, melancholy pines, like Tyrolese peasants,
with shaggy hair; and at their feet the mad torrent of the Inn,
sweeping with turbid waves through the midst of the town. In the
afternoon they drove on towards Salzburg through the magnificent
mountain-passes of Waidering and Unken.




CHAPTER III. SHADOWS ON THE WALL.



On the following morning Flemming awoke in a chamber of the
Golden Ship at Salzburg, just as the clock in the Dome-church
opposite was striking ten. The window-shutters were closed, and the
room nearly dark. He was lying on his back, with his hands crossed
upon his breast, and his eyes looking up at the white curtains
overhead. He thought them the white marble canopy of a tomb, and
himself the marble statue, lying beneath. When the clock ceased
striking, the eight and twenty gigantic bronze statues from the
Church of Holy Rood in Innsbruck stalked into the chamber, and
arranged themselves along the walls, which spread into dimly-lighted
aisles and arches. On the painted windows he saw Interlachen,
withits Franciscan cloister, and the Square Tower of the ruins. In a
pendent, overhead, stood the German student, as Saint Vitus; and on
a lavatory, or basin of holy-water, below, sat a cherub, with the
form and features of Berkley. Then the organ-pipes began to blow,
and he heard the voices of an invisible choir chanting. And anon the
gilded gates in the bronze screen before the chancel opened, and a
bridal procession passed through. The bride was clothed in the garb
of the Middle Ages; and held a book in her hand, with velvet covers,
and golden clasps. It was Mary Ashburton. She looked at him as she
passed. Her face was pale; and there were tears in her sweet eyes.
Then the gates closed again; and one of the oaken poppy-heads over a
carved stall, in the shape of an owl, flapped its broad wings, and
hooted, "Towhit! to-whoo!" Then the whole scene changed; and he
thought himself a monk's-head on a gutterspout; and it rained
dismally; and Berkley was standing under with an umbrella,
laughing!

In other words, Flemming was in a ragingfever, and delirious. He
remained in this state for a week. The first thing he was conscious
of was hearing the doctor say to Berkley;

"The crisis is passed. I now consider him out of danger."

He then fell into a sweet sleep; the wild fever had swept away
like an angry, red cloud, and the refreshing summer rain began to
fall like dew upon the parched earth. Still another week; and
Flemming was, "sitting clothed, and in his right mind." Berkley had
been reading to him; and still held the book in his hand, with his
fore-finger between the leaves. It was a volume of Hoffmann's
writings.

"How very strange it is," said he, "that you can hardly open the
biography of any German author, but you will find it begin with an
account of his grandfather. It will tell you how the venerable old
man walked up and down the garden among the gay flowers, wrapped in
his morning gown, which is likewise covered with flowers, and
perhaps wearing on his head a little velvet cap. Oryou will find him
sitting by the chimney-corner in the great chair, smoking his
ancestral pipe, with shaggy eyebrows and eyes like birdsnests under
the eaves of a house, and a mouth like a Nuremberg nutcracker's. The
future poet climbs upon the old man's knees. His genius is not
recognised yet. He is thought for the most part a dull boy. His
father is an austere man, or perhaps dead. But the mother is still
there, a sickly, saint-like woman, with knitting-work, and an elder
sister, who has already been in love, and wears rings on her
fingers;--

'Death's heads, and such mementos,

Her grandmother and worm-eaten aunts left to her,

To tell her what her beauty must arrive at.'"

"But this is not the case with the life of Hoffmann, if I
recollect right."

"No, not precisely. Instead of the grandfather we have the
grandmother, a stately dame, who has long since shaken hands with
the vanities of life. The mother, separated from her husband, is
sick in mind and body, and flits to and fro, like a shadow. Then
there is an affectionate maiden aunt; and an uncle, a retired judge,
the terror of little boys,--the Giant Despair of this Doubting
Castle in Koenigsberg; and occasionally the benign countenance of a
venerable grand-uncle, whom Lamotte Fouqué called a hero of the
olden time in morning gown and slippers, looks in at the door and
smiles. In the upper story of the same house lived a poor boy with
his mother, who was so far crazed as to believe herself to be the
Virgin Mary, and her son the Saviour of the world. Wild fancies,
likewise, were to sweep through the brain of that child. He was to
meet Hoffmann elsewhere and be his friend in after years, though as
yet they knew nothing of each other. This was Werner, who has made
some noise in German literature as the author of many wild
Destiny-Dramas."

"Hoffmann died, I believe, in Berlin."

"Yes. He left Koenigsberg at twenty years of age, and passed the
next eight years of his life in the Prussian-Polish Provinces, where
he held some petty office under government; and took to himselfmany
bad habits and a Polish wife. After this he was Music-Director at
various German theatres, and led a wandering, wretched life for ten
years. He then went to Berlin as Clerk of the Exchange, and there
remained till his death, which took place some seven or eight years
afterward."

"Did you ever see him?"

"I was in Berlin during his lifetime, and saw him frequently. I
shall never forget the first time. It was at one of the æsthetic
Teas, given by a literary lady Unter den Linden, where the lions
were fed with convenient food, from tea and bread and butter, up to
oysters and Rhine-wine. During the evening my attention was arrested
by the entrance of a strange little figure, with a wild head of
brown hair. His eyes were bright gray; and his thin lips closely
pressed together with an expression of not unpleasing irony. This
strangelooking personage began to bow his way through the crowd,
with quick, nervous, hinge-like motions, much resembling those of a
marionette. He had a hoarse voice, and such a rapid utterance, that
although I understood German well enough for ordinary purposes, I
could not understand one half he said. Ere long he had seated
himself at the piano-forte, and was improvising such wild, sweet
fancies, that the music of one's dreams is not more sweet and wild.
Then suddenly some painful thought seemed to pass over his mind, as
if he imagined, that he was there to amuse the company. He rose from
the piano-forte, and seated himself in another part of the room;
where he began to make grimaces, and talk loud while others were
singing. Finally he disappeared, like a hobgoblin, laughing, 'Ho!
ho! ho!' I asked a person beside me who this strange being was.
'That was Hoffmann,' was the answer. 'The Devil!' said I. 'Yes,'
continued my informant; 'and if you should follow him now, you would
see him plunge into an obscure and unfrequented wine-cellar, and
there, amid boon companions, with wine and tobacco-smoke, and quirks
and quibbles, and quaint, witty sayings, turn the dim night into
glorious day.'"

"What a strange being!"

"I once saw him at one of his night-carouses. He was sitting in
his glory, at the head of the table; not stupidly drunk, but warmed
with wine, which made him madly eloquent, as the Devil's Elixir did
the Monk Medardus. There, in the full tide of witty discourse, or,
if silent, his gray, hawk eye flashing from beneath his matted hair,
and taking note of all that was grotesque in the company round him,
sat this unfortunate genius, till the day began to dawn. Then he
found his way homeward, having, like the souls of the envious in
Purgatory, his eyelids sewed together with iron wire;--though his
was from champagne bottles. At such hours he wrote his wild,
fantastic tales. To his excited fancy everything assumed a spectral
look. The shadows of familiar things about him stalked like ghosts
through the haunted chambers of his soul; and the old portraits on
the walls winked at him, and seemed stepping down from their frames;
till, aghast at the spectral throng about him, he would call his
wife from her bed, to sit by him while he wrote."

"No wonder he died in the prime of life!"

"No. The only wonder is, that he could have followed this course
of life for six years. I am astonished that it did not kill him
sooner."

"But death came at last in an appalling shape."

"Yes; his forty-sixth birth day found him sitting at home in his
arm-chair, with his friends around him. But the rare old wine,--he
always drank the best,--touched not the sick-man's lips that night.
His wonted humor was gone. Of all his 'jibes, his gambols, his
songs, his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on
a roar, not one now, to mock his own grinning!--quite
chap-fallen.'--The conversation was of death and the grave. And when
one of his friends said, that life was not the highest good,
Hoffmann interrupted him, exclaiming with a startling earnestness;
'No, no! Life, life, only life! on any condition whatsoever!' Five
months after this he had ceased to suffer, because he had ceased to
live. He died piecemeal. His feet and hands, his legs and arms,
gradually, and in succession, became motionless, dead. But his
spirit was not dead, nor motionless; and, through the solitary day
or sleepless night, lying in his bed, he dictated to an amanuensis
his last stories. Strange stories, indeed, were they for a dying man
to write! Yet such delight did he take in dictating them, that he
said to his friend Hitzig, that, upon the whole, he was willing to
give up forever the use of his hands, if he could but preserve the
power of writing by dictation. Such was his love of life,--of what
he called the sweet habitude of being!"

"Was it not he, who in his last hours expressed such a longing to
behold the green fields once more; and exclaimed; 'Heaven! it is
already summer, and I have not yet seen a single green tree!'"

"Yes, that was Hoffmann. Soon afterwards he died. The closing
scene was striking. He gradually lost all sensation, though his mind
remained vigorous. Feeling no more pain, he said to his physician;
'It will soon be over now. I feel no more pain.' He thought himself
well again; but the physician knew that he was dying, and said;
'Yes, it will soon be over!' The next morning he called his wife to
his bed-side; and begged her to fold his motionless hands together.
Then, as he raised his eyes to heaven, she heard him say, 'We must,
then, think of God, also!' More sorrowful words than these have
seldom fallen from the lips of man. Shortly afterwards the flame of
life glared up within him; he said he was well again; that in the
evening he should go on with the story he was writing; and wished
that the last sentence might be read over to him. Shortly after this
they turned his face to the wall, and he died."

"And thus passed to its account a human soul, after much
self-inflicted suffering. Let us tread lightly upon the poet's
ashes. For my part, I confess, that I have not the heart to take him
from the general crowd of erring, sinful men, and judge him harshly.
The little I have seen of the world, and know of the history of
mankind, teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not
inanger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned
and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations
it has passed,--the brief pulsations of joy,--the feverish
inquie-tude of hope and fear,--the tears of regret,--the feebleness
of purpose,--the pressure of want,--the desertion of friends,--the
scorn of a world that has little charity,--the desolation of the
soul's sanctuary,--and threatening voices within,--health
gone,--happiness gone,--even hope, that stays longest with us,
gone,--I have little heart for aught else than thankfulness, that it
is not so with me, and would fain leave the erring soul of my
fellow-man with Him, from whose hands it came,

'even as a little child,

Weeping and laughing in its childish sport.'"

"You are right. And it is worth a student's while to observe
calmly how tobacco, wine, and midnight did their work like fiends
upon the delicate frame of Hoffmann; and no less thoroughly upon his
delicate mind. He who drinks beer, thinks beer; and he who drinks
wine, thinks wine;--and he who drinks midnight, thinks midnight. He
was a man of rare intellect. He was endowed with racy humor and
sarcastic wit, and a glorious imagination. But the fire of his
genius burned not peacefully, and with a steady flame, upon the
hearth of his home. It was a glaring and irregular flame;--for the
branches that he fed it with, were not branches from the Tree of
Life,--but from another tree that grew in Paradise,--and they were
wet with the unhealthy dews of night, and more unhealthy wine; and
thus, amid smoke and ashes the fire burned fitfully, and went out
with a glare, which leaves the beholder blind."

"This fire within him was a Meleager's fire-brand; and, when it
burned out, he died. And, as you say, marks of all this are clearly
visible in Hoffmann's writings. Indeed, when I read his strange
fancies, it is with me, as when in the summer night I hear the
rising wind among the trees, and the branches bow, and beckon with
their long fingers, and voices go gibbering and mockingthrough the
air. A feeling of awe and mysterious dread comes over me. I wish to
hear the sound of living voice or footstep near me,--to see a
friendly and familiar face. In truth, if it be late at night, the
reader as well as the writer of these unearthly fancies, would fain
have a patient, meek-eyed wife, with her knitting-work, at his
elbow."

Berkley smiled; but Flemming continued without noticing the
smile, though he knew what was passing in the mind of his
friend;

"The life and writings of this singular being interest me in a
high degree. Oftentimes one may learn more from a man's errors, than
from his virtues. Moreover, from the common sympathies of our
nature, souls that have struggled and suffered are dear to me.
Willingly do I recognise their brotherhood. Scars upon their
foreheads do not so deform them, that they cease to interest. They
are always signs of struggle; though alas! too often, likewise, of
defeat. Seasons of unhealthy, dreamy, vague delight, are followed by
seasons ofweariness and darkness. Where are then the bright fancies,
that, amid the great stillness of the night, arise like stars in the
firmament of our souls? The morning dawns, the light of common day
shines in upon us, and the heavens are without a star! From the
lives of such men we learn, that mere pleasant sensations are not
happiness;--that sensual pleasures are to be drunk sparingly, and,
as it were, from the palm of the hand; and that those who bow down
upon their knees to drink of these bright streams that water life,
are not chosen of God either to overthrow or to overcome!"

"I think you are very lenient in your judgment. This is not the
usual defect of critics. Like Shakspeare's samphire-gatherer, they
have a dreadful trade! and, to make the simile complete, they ought
to hang for it!"

"Methinks it would be hard to hang a man for the sake of a
simile. But which of Hoffmann's works is it, that you have in your
hand?"

"His Phatasy-Pieces in Callot's manner. Who was this Callot?"

"He was a Lorrain painter of the seventeenth century, celebrated
for his wild and grotesque conceptions. These sketches of Hoffmann
are imitations of his style. They are full of humor, poetry, and
brilliant imagination."

"And which of them shall I read to you? The Ritter Glück; or the
Musical Sufferings of John Kreisler; or that very exquisite story of
the Golden Jar, wherein is depicted the life of Poesy, in this
common-place world of ours?"

"Read the shortest. Read Kreisler. That will amuse me. It is a
picture of his own sufferings at the æsthetic Teas in Berlin,
supposed to be written in pencil on the blank leaves of a
music-book."

Thereupon Berkley leaned back in his easychair, and read as
follows.




CHAPTER IV. MUSICAL



SUFFERINGS OF JOHN KREISLER.

"They are all gone! I might have known it by the whispering,
shuffling, coughing, buzzing through all the notes of the gamut. It
was a true swarm of bees, leaving the old hive. Gottlieb has lighted
fresh candles for me, and placed a bottle of Burgundy on the
piano-forte. I can play no more, I am perfectly exhausted. My
glorious old friend here on the music-stand is to blame for that.
Again he has borne me away through the air, as Mephistopheles did
Faust, and so high, that I took not the slightest notice of the
little men under me, though I dare say they made noise enough. A
rascally, worthless, wasted evening! But now I am well and merry!
However, while I was playing, I took out my pencil, and on
pagesixty-three, under the last system, noted down a couple of good
flourishes in cipher with my right hand, while the left was
struggling away in the torrent of sweet sounds. Upon the blank page
at the end I go on writing. I leave all ciphers and sweet tones, and
with true delight, like a sick man restored to health, who can never
stop relating what he has suffered, I note down here
circumstantially the dire agonies of this evening's tea-party. And
not for myself alone, but likewise for all those who from time to
time may amuse and edify themselves with my copy of John Sebastian
Bach's Variations for the Piano-forte, published by Nägeli in
Zürich, and who find my marks at the end of the thirtieth variation,
and, led on by the great Latin Verte, (I will write it down the
moment I get through this doleful statement of grievances,) turn
over the leaf and read.

"They will at once see the connexion. They know, that the
Geheimerath Rödelein's house is a charming house to visit in, and
that he has two daughters, of whom the whole fashionable world
proclaims with enthusiasm, that they dance like goddesses, speak
French like angels, and play and sing and draw like the Muses. The
Geheimerath Rödelein is a rich man. At his quarterly dinners he
brings on the most delicious wines and richest dishes. All is
established on a footing of the greatest elegance; and whoever at
his tea-parties does not amuse himself heavenly, has no ton, no
esprit, and particularly no taste for the fine arts. It is with an
eye to these, that, with the tea, punch, wine, ice-creams, etc., a
little music is always served up, which, like the other
refreshments, is very quietly swallowed by the fashionable world.

"The arrangements are as follows.--After every guest has had time
enough to drink as many cups of tea as he may wish, and punch and
ices have been handed round twice, the servants wheel out the
card-tables for the elder and more solid part of the company, who
had rather play cards than any musical instrument; and, to tell the
truth, this kind of playing does not make such a useless noise as
others, and you hear only the clink of money.

"This is a hint for the younger part of the company to pounce
upon the Misses Rödelein. A great tumult ensues; in the midst of
which you can distinguish these words,--

"'Schönes Fräulein! do not refuse us the gratification of your
heavenly talent! O, sing something! that's a good
dear!--impossible,--bad cold,--the last ball! have not practised
anything,--oh, do, do, we beg of you,' etc.

"Meanwhile Gottlieb has opened the piano-forte, and placed the
well-known music-book on the stand; and from the card-table cries
the respectable mamma,--

" 'Chantez donc, mes enfans!'

"That is the cue of my part. I place myself at the piano-forte,
and the Rödeleins are led up to the instrument in triumph.

"And now another difficulty arises. Neither wishes to sing
first.

"'You know, dear Nanette, how dreadful hoarse I am.'

"'Why, my dear Marie, I am as hoarse as you are.'

"'I sing so badly!--'

"'O, my dear child; do begin!'

"My suggestion, (I always make the same!) that they should both
begin together with a duet, is loudly applauded;--the music-book is
thumbed over, and the leaf, carefully folded down, is at length
found, and away we go with Dolce dell' anima, etc.

"To tell the truth, the talent of the Misses Rödelein is not the
smallest. I have been an instructer here only five years, and little
short of two years in the Rödelein family. In this short time,
Fräulein Nanette has made such progress, that a tune, which she has
heard at the theatre only ten times, and has played on the
piano-forte, at farthest, ten times more, she will sing right off,
so that you know in a moment what it is. Fräulein Marie catches it
at the eighth time; and if she is sometimes a quarter of a note
lower than the piano-forte, after all it is very tolerable,
considering her pretty little doll-face, and very passable
rosy-lips.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.