Hyperion Page 11

  Yet I feel as if it were scarcely yesterday, that magical evening when the holy stranger first encountered me, when he, like a mourning genius, shone into the shadows of the forest where the carefree maiden sat in the dream of youth – in the May air he came, in Ionia’s magical May air, and it made him bloom more for me, it waved his hair, opened his lips like flowers, dissolved melancholy in smiles, and O you rays of heaven! how you shone upon me from those eyes, from those intoxicating wellsprings where, in the shadow of sheltering arches, eternal life shimmers and surges! –

  Good gods! how beautiful he became with his gaze upon me! how the whole youth, grown a span taller, stood there in easy vigor but for his dear arms that sank down humbly as if they were nothing! and how he then looked up in enchantment, as if I had flown toward the heavens and were no longer there, O! how he then smiled and blushed in all the grace of his heart when he again became aware of me and his Phoebus eye shone through the darkening tears to ask: Is it you? is it really you?

  And why did he encounter me so piously, so full of dear superstition? why did he first bow his head, why was the divine youth so full of longing and mourning? His genius was too blessed to remain alone, and the world too poor to comprehend him. O it was a dear image, woven of greatness and suffering! But now it is different! the suffering is over! He has been given something to do, he is the sick man no longer! –

  I was full of sighs when I began to write to you, my beloved! Now I am full of pure joy. Thus one speaks of you and becomes happy. And see! so shall it also remain. Farewell!

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  We have still celebrated your festival to a favorable end, beautiful life! before the clamor begins. It was a heavenly day. The lovely springtime wafted and shone from the Orient, elicited your name from us as it elicits blossoms from the trees, and all blessed secrets of love took my breath away. A love like ours had never appeared to my friend, and it was enchanting how the proud man paid heed, and how his eye and spirit glowed as they grasped your image, your being.

  O, he cried finally, it is probably worth the effort to fight for our Greece when it still bears such plants!

  Yes indeed, my Alabanda, I said; when our spirit is rejuvenated by the image of such natures, then we go cheerfully into battle, then heavenly fire drives us to deeds, and we do not run toward a lesser goal, are not concerned with this and that and do not fabricate outwardly, heedless of the spirit, and drink the wine for the sake of the chalice; then we will not rest, Alabanda, until the bliss of the Genius is no longer a secret, until all eyes are transformed into triumphal arches where the long absent human spirit shines forth from the errors and sorrows and greets the fatherly ether in the joy of victory. – Ha! by the flag alone, no one shall recognize our future people; all must rejuvenate itself, must be changed from the ground up; pleasure must be full of seriousness and all work cheerful! nothing, not the smallest, most everyday thing may be without spirit and the gods! Love and hate and every sound from us must astound the more common world and not even one instant may remind us of the insipid past.

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  The volcano is erupting. In Koroni and Modon the Turks are besieged, and we press upward with our mountain people against the Peloponnese.

  Now all the melancholy has come to an end, Diotima, and my spirit is firmer and swifter since I am engaged in living work, and see! I now also have a daily schedule.

  I begin with the sun. I go outside where my soldiers lie in the shade of the forest, and I greet the thousand bright eyes that now open up before me with wild amiability. An awakening army! I know nothing like it, and all life in cities and towns is like a swarm of bees in comparison.

  Man cannot deny that he was once as happy as the deer of the forest, and after countless years the longing still rises in us for the days of the primal world when each man roamed the earth like a god, before I know not what tamed man, and instead of walls and dead wood, the soul of the world, the holy air, still surrounded him in its omnipresence.

  Diotima! I often marvel when I walk among my carefree people and, as if sprouted from the earth, one after another stands up and stretches toward the morning light, and among the troops of men the crackling flame rises, where the mother sits with the freezing small child, where the refreshing meal cooks while the horses, scenting the day, snort and neigh, and the forest resounds with all-convulsing war music, and all around weapons shimmer and swish – but these are words, and the peculiar pleasure of such a life cannot be told.

  Then my troop gathers eagerly about me, and it is wonderful how even the oldest and most defiant honor me in all my youth. We become more intimate, and many tell me how they fared in their lives, and my heart often swells with various fates. Then I begin to speak of better days, and their eyes widen and shine when they think of the union that shall join us, and the proud image of the nascent free state dawns before them.

  All for one and one for all! There is a joyful spirit in the words, and, like a divine command, it always seizes my men. O Diotima! to see thus how rigid nature is softened by hopes, and all their pulses beat more powerfully, and the darkened brow is smoothed and brightened by projects, to stand thus in a sphere of men, surrounded by faith and pleasure – that is more than seeing earth and sky and sea in all their glory.

  Then I train them in weapons and marching until midday. The joyful mood makes them quick and eager pupils as it makes me into the master. Soon they stand close together in a Macedonian phalanx and move only their arms, then they fly apart like rays to bolder battle in separate troops, where their lithe strength changes in every position and each is his own commander, and then they gather again at a safe point – and always, wherever they go and stand in such a dance of weapons, the image of those who serve the tyrant and the more serious battlefield hovers before their eyes and mine.

  Afterward, when the sun shines hotter, counsel is held deep within the forest, and it is a joy thus to rule over the great future with quiet minds. We rob chance of its strength, we master destiny. We let resistance emerge at our will, we lure the adversary to that for which we are prepared. Or we watch and appear fearful and let him come nearer until he offers his head to our blow, we also throw him off balance with speed, and that is my panacea. Yet the more experienced doctors think nothing of such a cure-all.

  How good I then feel in the evening with my Alabanda, when we roam about the sun-red hills for pleasure on lively horses, and on the summits where we linger the breeze plays in the manes of our animals, and the friendly rustle mingles with our conversation, while we gaze out into the distances of Sparta, which are our battle prize! and when we have returned and sit together in the lovely coolness of the night, when the cup gives off its fragrance and the moonlight shines on our sparse meal, and in the midst of our smiling silence the history of the ancients rises like a cloud from the holy ground that bears us, how blissful it is in such moments to take each other’s hands!

  Then Alabanda perhaps speaks of many whom the boredom of the century torments, of so many strange, crooked paths that life forges for itself ever since its straight path has been obstructed; then my Adamas, too, springs to my mind with his journeys, his peculiar longing to penetrate inner Asia – these are only makeshifts, good old friend! I would like to call to him, come! and build your world! with us! for our world is also yours.

  And yours, too, Diotima, for it is a copy of you. O you, with your Elysian silence, if only we could create that which you are!

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  We have now triumphed in three small battles in succession, in which the combatants nonetheless converged like lightning bolts, and all was one consuming flame. Navarin is ours, and we stand now before the fortress of Mistra, the remains of ancient Sparta. I have planted the flag, which I snatched from an Albanian horde, upon a ruin that lies before the city, and in my joy I have flung my Turkish turban into the Eurotas and since then wear the Greek helmet.

  And now I would like to see you, O maiden! to see y
ou and take your hands and press them to my heart, for which the joy will soon perhaps be too great! soon! in a week perhaps it will be liberated, the ancient, noble, holy Peloponnese.

  O then, you dear maiden! teach me to be pious! then teach my overflowing heart a prayer! I should fall silent, for what have I done? and had I done something of which I might speak, how much nonetheless remains to be done? But how can I help it if my thought is swifter than time? I wish so much that it were the reverse, and time and the deed flew beyond the thought, and winged triumph hastened beyond the hope itself.

  My Alabanda blooms like a bridegroom. From every one of his glances the coming world smiles at me, and with that I still allay the impatience somewhat.

  Diotima! I would not exchange this nascent happiness for the most beautiful lifetime of ancient Greece, and the smallest of our victories is dearer to me than Marathon and Thermopylae and Plataea. Is it not true? Is not convalescing life worth more to the heart than the pure life that does not yet know sickness? Not until youth is gone do we love it, and then not until lost youth returns does it delight all the depths of the soul.

  My tent stands by the Eurotas, and when I awaken after midnight, the ancient river god roars admonishingly past me, and smiling, I take the flowers of the bank and scatter them in his shining surge, and say to him: Take it as a sign, you lonely one! soon the ancient life will bloom around you again.

  DIOTIMA TO HYPERION

  I have received the letters, my Hyperion, that you wrote to me along your way. You move me powerfully with all that you tell me, and in the midst of my love, I often shudder to see the gentle youth who wept at my feet transformed into this robust being.

  Will you not forget how to love?

  But change onward! I will follow you. I believe that if you could hate me, I would also strive to share your feelings even in that, would make an effort to hate you, and thus our souls would remain alike, and this is no idle exaggeration, Hyperion.

  I am myself also entirely different than I once was. I lack the cheerful view of the world and the free pleasure in all living things. Only the field of the stars still attracts my eye. On the other hand, I think all the more fondly of the great spirits of the ancient world and how they ended on earth, and the exalted Spartan women have won my heart. I do not thereby forget the new combatants, the strong whose hour has come, often I hear their triumphant uproar booming up through the Peloponnese nearer and nearer to me, often I see them surging down like a cataract through the Epidaurian woods, and their weapons glisten far off in the sunlight that guides them like a herald, O my Hyperion! and you come swiftly across to Calaurea and greet the quiet woods of our love, greet me, and then fly back to your work; – and do you think I fear the outcome? Dearest! at times it nearly assails me, but my nobler thoughts, like flames, hold off the frost. –

  Farewell! accomplish what the spirit commands you! and do not let the war last too long, for the sake of peace, Hyperion, for the sake of the beautiful, new, golden peace when, as you said, one day the laws of nature will be inscribed in our statute book, and when life itself, when divine nature, which can be written in no book, will be in the heart of the community. Farewell.

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  You should have soothed me, my Diotima! should have said that I ought not be overhasty, ought not extort victory from destiny little by little like a sum of money from penurious debtors. O maiden! to stand still is worst of all. The blood dries in my veins, so intensely do I thirst to go onward, and must stand here idly, must besiege and besiege one day after another. Our soldiers want to storm, but that would heat their excited feelings to frenzy, and woe then to our hopes, if their savage being seethes up and ruptures discipline and love.

  I do not know, it can only last a few more days before Mistra must surrender, but I wish that we were farther onward. Here in the camp, I feel as if I were in stormy air. I am impatient, even my people displease me. There is a terrible wantonness among them.

  But it is not wise of me to make so much of my mood. And a little worry is well worth suffering for ancient Lacedaemon before one has it.

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  It is over, Diotima! our people have plundered, murdered, without discrimination, even our brothers, the Greeks in Mistra, the innocent, have been slain, or they wander helplessly about and their dead, wretched countenances call heaven and earth to revenge against the barbarians at whose head I stood.

  Now I can go forth and preach my good cause. O now all hearts fly to me!

  But I did it shrewdly. I knew my people. Yes, indeed! it was an extraordinary project, to plant my Elysium with a band of robbers.

  No! by holy Nemesis! It served me right, and I will bear it, bear it until the pain obliterates my last consciousness.

  Do you think that I am raving? I have an honorable wound that one of my loyal followers dealt me while I warded off the horror. If I were raving, then I would tear the bandage from it, and thus my blood would run into this mourning earth, where it belongs.

  This mourning earth! the naked earth! that I wanted to clothe in holy groves, that I wanted to adorn with all the flowers of Greek life!

  O it would have been beautiful, my Diotima.

  Do you call me dispirited? Dear maiden! there is too much catastrophe. Furious crowds burst in on all sides; rapacity rages in Morea like a plague, and he who does not seize the sword is hunted down, slaughtered, and the raving men say that they thereby fight for our freedom. Others of these coarse people are commissioned by the Sultan and do the same.

  I have just heard that our dishonorable army is now scattered. The cowards encountered an Albanian troop of half as many men at Tripolis. But since there was nothing to plunder, the wretches all ran away. Only the Russians who risked the campaign with us, forty brave men, resisted, and all found death.

  And so I am now alone again with my Alabanda, as before. Ever since the faithful friend saw me fall and bleed in Mistra, he has forgotten all else, his hopes, his lust for victory, his despair. The enraged man who descended upon the plunderers like a punishing god then led me so gently out of the tumult, and his tears wet my clothes. He also stayed with me in the hut where I have since lain, and only now am I pleased about that. For had he gone onward with the others, he would now lie in the dust at Tripolis.

  What shall come, I do not know. Destiny thrusts me out into uncertainty, and I deserve it; my own shame banishes me from you, and who knows for how long?

  O! I have promised you a Greece, and instead you now receive an elegy. Be your own consolation!

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  I can barely bring myself to speak.

  Men enjoy speaking, to be sure, they chatter like the birds so long as the world, like May air, wafts upon them; but between midday and evening this can change, and what is lost in the end?

  Believe me, and consider that I say it to you from the depths of my soul: language is a great superfluity. The best always remains for itself and reposes in its depths like the pearl at the bottom of the sea. – Yet what I actually wanted to write to you is that, since the painting must have its frame and the man his day’s work, I will take service for a time with the Russian fleet; for I have nothing more to do with the Greeks.

  O dear maiden! It has become very dark around me!

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  I have hesitated, struggled. Yet finally it must be.

  I see what is necessary, and because I see it, it shall come to pass. Do not misconstrue me! do not condemn me! I must advise you to forsake me, my Diotima!

  I am nothing more for you, lovely being! This heart has run dry for you, and my eyes no longer see the living. O my lips have withered; love’s sweet breath wells up in my bosom no more.

  One day has robbed all youth from me; by the Eurotas my life wept itself weary, O! by the Eurotas, which, in irremediable disgrace, wails with all its waves past Lacedaemon’s rubble. There, there destiny finished reaping me. – Shall I possess your love like alms? – I am as utt
erly nothing, as inglorious as the poorest serf. I am banished, cursed like a common rebel, and many Greeks in Morea will henceforth recount our heroic deeds to their children’s children as a tale of thieves.

  O! and I have long kept one thing from you. My father solemnly disowned me, banished me without hope of return from the house of my youth, will never see me again, neither in this nor in the next life, as he says. Thus reads the reply to the letter in which I wrote to him of my enterprise.

  Never let pity lead you astray. Believe me, one joy remains for us everywhere. True pain inspires. He who steps on his misery stands higher. And it is glorious that in suffering we feel the soul’s freedom more than ever. Freedom! whoever understands the word – it is a deep word, Diotima. I am so profoundly troubled, so extraordinarily hurt, am without hope, without a goal, am utterly dishonored, and yet a power is in me, something impregnable that sends sweet shudders through my bones whenever it stirs in me.

  And I still have my Alabanda. He has as little to gain as I do. I can keep him for myself without harm. O! the kingly youth would have deserved a better lot. He has become so gentle and so quiet that my heart often nearly breaks. But each of us sustains the other. We say nothing to each other; what should we say to each other? but there is a blessing nonetheless in many small labors of love that we perform for each other.