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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Tannhäuser, by Aleister Crowley
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
using this eBook.
Title: Tannhäuser
A Story of all time
Author: Aleister Crowley
Release Date: March 10, 2023 [eBook #70261]
Language: English
Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TANNHÄUSER ***
Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
Where double quotes have been repeated at the beginnings of
consecutive stanzas, they have been omitted for clarity.
TANNHÄUSER
XVI
One is incisive, corrosive;
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:
Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!
XVII
Now, they ply axes and crowbars;
Now, they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
XVIII
_Est fuga, volvitur rota._
On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import—
Show it us, Hughes of Saxe-Gotha!
R. BROWNING, _Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha_
TANNHÄUSER
A STORY OF ALL TIME
BY
ALEISTER CROWLEY
[Illustration]
_A New Edition
Price Fifteen Shillings
net to the trade_
SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF
RELIGIOUS TRUTH
BOLESKINE, FOYERS, INVERNESS
1907
_All Rights Reserved_
DEDICATION
I shall not tell thee that I love thee!
Nay! by the Star in Heaven burning,
Its ray to me at midnight turning
To tell me that it beams above thee—
Nay! though thou wert, as I am, yearning,
I should not tell thee that I love thee!
I know what secret thought once blossomed
Into a blush that seemed a kiss,
Some swift suppressed extreme of bliss
In thy most fearful sigh embosomed.
What oracle should prate of this?
I know the secret thought that blossomed!
Extol the truth of love’s disdain!
Love, daring by no glance to gladden
A heart that waits but that to madden
In purple pleasure plucked of pain.
Nay! let our tears, that fail to sadden,
Extol the truth of love’s disdain!
* * * * *
Let deeper silence shield the deeper rapture!
Hardly our eyes reveal the inward bliss,
Sealed by no speech and shadowed by no kiss.
Love is no wizard to elude recapture
In the strong prison of his silences!
Let deeper silence shield the deeper rapture!
Twin souls are we, to one Star bound in Heaven!
Twin souls on earth by earthly bars divided!
But, did thy spirit glide as mine has glided
Straight to That Star—no rose-leaves ask to leaven
The manna that the Moon of Love provided!
Twin souls are we, to one Star bound in Heaven!
Not to thy presence in the veil and vision
Of solemn lies that men miscall the world;
Not to thy mind the lightnings truthward hurled
I turn. I laugh dead distance to derision!—
Spirit to spirit: there our loves are curled,
Not to thy presence in the veil and vision!
Beyond the gold and glamour of Life’s lotus,
The flower that falls from this our stronger sight,
We dwell, eternal shapes of shadowy light.
Only the love on earth that shook and smote us
Begets new stars—truth’s flowers fallen through night
Beyond the gold and glamour of Life’s lotus!
Eternal bliss of Love in birthless bowers!
Light, the gemmed robes of Love! Life, lifted breath,
Ageless existence deifying death!
Love, the sole flower beyond these lesser flowers!—
In thee at last the live fruit quickeneth?
Eternal bliss of Love in birthless bowers!
* * * * *
There, secret! Know it! Now forget!
Betray not Wisdom unto Folly!
Less sweet is Joy than Melancholy!—
Why should our eyes for this be wet?
Enough: be silent and be holy!
There, secret! Know it! Now forget!
Now I have told thee that I love thee!
To me our Star in Heaven burning
Tells me thy heart as mine is yearning;
Tells me Love’s fragrance stolen above thee
Thy soul to mine at last is turning
Now I have told thee that I love thee!
PREFACE
As, after long observation and careful study, the biologist sees that
what at first seemed isolated and arbitrary acts are really part
of a series of regular changes, and presently has the life-history
of the being that he is examining clear from Alpha to Omega in his
mind; as, during a battle, the relative importance of its various
incidents is lost, the more so owing to the excitement and activity
of the combatant, and to the fact that he is himself involved in the
vicissitudes which he may have set himself to observe; while even
for the commander, though the smoke-pall may lift now and again to
show some brilliant charge or desperate hand-to-hand struggle, he may
fail to grasp its significance in his dispositions; or indeed find
it to be quite unexpected and foreign to his calculations; yet a few
years or months later the same battle may be lucidly, tersely, and
connectedly described, so that a child is able to follow its varying
fortunes with delight and comprehension: just so has my own observation
of a life-history more subtle, a battle more terrible, been at last
co-ordinated: I can view the long struggle from a standpoint altogether
complete, calm, and philosophical; and the result of this review is the
present story of Tannhäuser, just as the isolated and often apparently
contradictory incidents of the fight were recorded in that jungle
of chaotic emotions which I printed under the title of “The Soul of
Osiris,” calling it a history so that my readers might discover for
themselves (if they chose to take the trouble) the real continuity in
the apparent disjointedness.
The history of any man who seriously and desperately dares to force a
passage into the penetralia of nature; not with the calm philosophy
of the scientist, but with the burning conviction that his immortal
destiny is at stake; must be a strange one: to me at least strangely
attractive. The constant illusions; the many disappointments; the
bitter earnestness of the man amid the grim humour, or more often
sheer cacchination of his surroundings; all the bestial mockery of the
baffling fiends; the still more hideous mockery in which the Powers of
Good themselves seem to indulge; doubt of the reality of that which he
seeks; doubt even of the seeker; the irony of the whole strife: are
fascinating to me as they are, I make no doubt, to the majority of
mankind.
This is the subtler form of that mental bewilderment which the Greek
Tragedians were so fond of depicting; as subtle in effect, yet grosser
in its determining factors. For we are thus changed from the times of
Sophocles and Euripides; that the fixed ideas of morality and religion
which they employed as the motives of pathos or of horror are now
shattered. Ibsen, otherwise in spirit and style purely Greek,
and dealing as the Greeks did with the emotions of the soul, has
realised the changed and infinitely more complex conditions of life;
our self-appointed spiritual guides notwithstanding, or, rather,
withstanding in vain. Consequently it is impossible any more to
divine whether virtue or vice (as understood of old) will cause the
irreparable catastrophe which is the one element of drama which we may
still (in the work of a modern dramatist) await with any degree of
confidence.
I trust that I may be forgiven for adopting the idea that Tannhäuser
was one of those mysterious Germans whose reputed existence so
perturbed the Middle Ages; in short, a Rosicrucian. Some people may
be surprised that a Member of that illustrious but unhappy fraternity
should take cognizance of what my friend Bhikku Ananda Mîtriya calls
“hog-nosed Egyptian deities,” still more that he should show reverence
to symbols like the B. V. M. and the Holy Grail. But the most learned
and profound students of the Mysteries of the Rosy Cross assure me that
it was the special excellence of these mystics that they declined to
be bound down by any particular system in their sublime search for the
Eternal and the Real.
Under these circumstances I have not scrupled to subvert anything
that appeared to me to need subverting in the interests, always
identical, of beauty and of truth. Anachronism may be found piled upon
anachronism, and symbolism mixed with symbolism.
In one direction I have restrained myself. Nowhere does Tannhäuser
refer to the Vedas and Shastras or to the Dhamma of that blameless
hypochondriac, Gotama Buddha. I take all the blame for so important an
omission, not without a shrewd suspicion that the commination will take
the form of “For this relief much thanks!”
The particular object that I have in view in speaking both in Hebrew
and Egypto-Christian symbology is that by this means I may familiarise
my readers with the one thing of any importance that life, travel, and
study have taught me, to wit: the Origin of Religions.
I take it that there have always, or nearly always, been on the
earth those whom Councillor von Eckartshäusen, the Svámi Vivekánanda
and their like, call “great spiritual giants” (can there be any
etymological link between “yogi” and “ogre”?) and that such persons,
themselves perceiving Truth, have tried to “diminish the message
to the dog” for the benefit of less exalted minds, and hidden that
Truth (which, unveiled, would but blind men with its glory) in a mass
of symbology often perverted or grotesque, yet to the proper man
transparent; a “bait of falsehood to catch the carp of truth.” Now,
regarded in this light, all religions, quá religions, are equally
contemptible. The Hindu Gnanis say “That which can be thought is not
true.” As machineries for the exercise of spiritual and intellectual
powers innate or developed, certain sets of symbols may be more or less
convenient to a special trend of mind, reason, or imagination; no more:
I deny to any one religion the possession of any essential truth which
is not also formulated (though in a different language) in every other.
To this rule Buddhism appears a solitary exception. Whether it is truly
so I have hardly yet decided: the answer depends upon certain recondite
mathematical considerations, to discuss which would be foreign to
the scope of my present purpose, but which I hope to advance in a
subsequent volume.
If you do not accept my conclusion that all religions are the
expression of truth under different aspects, facets of the same
intolerable gem, you are forced back on the conclusions of those
unpleasing persons the Phallicists. But should you travel to the East,
and tell a Lingam-worshipping Sivite that his is a phallic worship he
will not be pleased with you. Compare on this point Arnold, “India
Revisited,” 1886, p. 112.
So much for the symbology of this, I fear, much-mangled drama. Drama
indeed is an altogether misleading term; monodrama is perhaps better.
It is really a series of introspective studies; not necessarily
a series in time, but in psychology, and that rather the morbid
psychology of the Adept than the gross mentality of the ordinary man.
It may help some of my readers if I say that my Tannhäuser is nearly
identical in scheme with the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Literary and
spiritual experts will however readily detect minor differences in the
treatment. It will be sufficient if I state that “the Unknown,” whether
minstrel, pilgrim, or Egyptian sage, represents Tannhäuser in his true
Self,—the “Only Being in an Abyss of Light!” The Tannhäuser who talks
is the “Only Being in an Abyss of Darkness,” the natural man ignorant
of his identity with the Supreme Being. The various other characters
are all little parts of Tannhäuser’s own consciousness and not real
persons at all: whether good or bad, all alike hinder and help (and
there is not one whose function is not thus double) the realisation
of his true unity with all life. This circumstance serves to explain,
though perhaps not to excuse, the lack of dramatic action in the story.
Love being throughout the symbol of his method, as Beauty of its
object, it is through Love, refined into Pity, that he at last attains
the Supreme Knowledge, or at least sufficient of it to put the last
straw on the back of his corporeal camel, and bring the story to a
fitting end.
To pass to more mundane affairs. I may mention for the benefit of those
who may not be read in certain classes of literature, and so think me
original when I am hardly even paraphrasing, that Tannhäuser’s songs in
Act IV. are partly adapted from the so-called “Oracles of Zoroaster,”
partly from the mysterious utterances of the great angel Avé, perhaps
equally spurious. Of course Bertram’s song is merely a rather free
adaptation of the two principal fragments of Sappho, which so many
people have failed to translate that one can feel no shame in making
yet another attempt. There may be one or two conscious plagiarisms
besides, for which I do not apologise. For any unconscious ones which
may have crept in owing to my prolonged absence from civilized parts,
and the consequent lack of opportunity for reference and comparison, I
emphatically do.
One word to the reviewers. It must not be taken as ungracious if
I so speak. From nearly all I have received the utmost justice,
kindness, and consideration: two or three only seem to take delight
in deliberately perverting the sense of my remarks: and to them, for
their own sake, I now address these words of elementary instruction.
You are perfectly welcome to do with my work in its entirety what
Laertes did with his allegiance and his vows: but do not pick out and
gloat over a few isolated passages from the Venusberg scenes and call
me a sensualist, nor from the Fourth Act and groan “Mysticism!”; do not
quote “Two is by shape the Coptic Aspirate” as a sample of my utmost
in lyrics; do not take the song of Wolfram as my best work in either
sentiment or melody. As a _quid pro quo_ I give you all full
permission to conclude your review of this book by quoting from Act
III. “Forget this nightmare!”
I must express my great sense of gratitude to Oscar Eckenstein, Gerald
Kelly, and Allan MacGregor, who have severally helped me in the work of
revision, which has extended over more than a year of time and nearly
twenty thousand miles of space. Some few of the very best lines were
partially or wholly suggested by themselves, and I have not scrupled
to incorporate these: if the book be but a Book, the actual authorship
seems to me immaterial.
I have written this preface in lighter vein, but I hope that no one
will be led to suppose that my purpose is anything but deadly serious.
This poem has been written in the blood of slain faith and hope; each
foolish utterance of Tannhäuser stings me with shame and memory of old
agony; each Ignis Fatuus that he so readily pursues, reminds me of
my own delusions. But, these follies and delusions being the common
property of mankind, I have thought them of sufficient interest,
dramatic and philosophical, to form the basis of a poem. Let no man
dare to reproach me with posing as the hero of my tale. I fall back
on the last utterance of Tannhäuser himself “I say, then, ‘I’: and
yet it is not ‘I’ Distinct, but ‘I’ incorporate in All.” Above all,
pray understand that I do not pose as a teacher. I am but an asker of
questions, such as may be found confronting those who have indeed freed
their minds from the conventional commonplaces of the platitudinous,
but have not yet dared to uproot the mass of their convictions, and to
examine the whole question of religion from its most fundamental source
in the consciousness of mankind. Such persons may find the reasoning of
Tannhäuser useful, if only to brace them to a more courageous attempt
to understand the “Great Arcanum,” and to attain at last, no matter at
what cost, to “true Wisdom and perfect Happiness.” So may all happen!
KANDY, CEYLON, _Sept._ 1901.
TANNHÄUSER
PERSONS CONCERNED
THE WORLD OF GODS.
ISIS.
HATHOÖR.
THE WORLD OF MEN.
TANNHÄUSER.
ELIZABETH.
AN UNKNOWN MINSTREL.
THE LANDGRAVE.
WOLFRAM, }
BERTRAM, } _At the Court of the Landgrave_.
HEINRICH, }
A SHEPHERD-BOY.
PILGRIMS, FORESTERS, COURTIERS, ETC.
THE WORLD OF DEMONS.
THE EVIL AND AVERSE HATHOÖR, CALLED VENUS.
ACT I.
“Therefore we are carefully to proceed in Magic, lest that Syrens
and other monsters deceive us, which likewise do desire the society
of the human soul.”
_Arbatel of Magic. Aphorism 35._
_A lonely and desolate plain. Tannhäuser riding towards a great
mountain._
TANNHÄUSER.
Six days. Creation took no longer! Yet
I wander eastward, and no light is found.
The stars their motion shirk, or else forget.
The sun—the moon? Imprisoned underground!
Where gnomes disport, and devils do abound.
Six days. I journey to the black unknown,
Always in hope the Infinite may rise
Some unexpected instant, as ’twere grown
A magic palace to enchanted eyes;
A wizard guerdon for a minstrel wise.
Perhaps I am a fool to think that here,
Merely by rending Nature’s hollow veil,
I may attain the Solitary Sphere,
Achieve the Path; or, haply, if I fail,
Gain the Elixir, or behold the Grail.
I seek the mystery of Life and Time,
The Key of all that is not and that is,
And that which—climb, imagination! climb!—
Transcends them both—the mystical abyss
Where Mind and Being marry, and are Bliss.
So have I journeyed—like a fool! Ah, well!
Let pass self-scorn, as love of self is past!
But—am I further forward? Who can tell?
God is the Complex as the Protoplast:
He is the First (not “was”), and is the Last
(Not “will be”). Then why travel? To what end?
What is the symbol I am set to find?
What is that burning heart of blood to spend
Caught in a sunset with the night behind,
The Grail of God? I would that I were blind!
I would that I were desolate and dumb,
Naked and poor! That He might manifest
A crimson glory subtly caught and come,
An opal crucible of Alkahest!
And yet—what gain of vital gold expressed?
This were my guerdon: to fade utterly
Into the rose-heart of that sanguine vase,
And lose my purpose in its silent sea,
And lose my life, and find my life, and pass
Up to the sea that is as molten glass.
I mind me of that old Egyptian,
Met where Aurora streamed her rainbow hair,
Who called me from the quest. An holy man!
A crown of light scintillant in the air
Shone over him: he bade me not despair.
“The Blood of the Osiris” was his word:
(Meaning the Christ?) “The life, the tears, the tomb!
The Love of Isis is its name!” (I heard
This for the love of Mary.) In her womb
Brews the Elixir, and the roses bloom.
For the Three Maries (so he said) were One:
Three aspects of the mystic spouse of God,
Isis! This pagan! “Look towards the Sun”
(Quoth he) “And seek a winepress to be trod;
With Beauty girdled, garlanded, and shod.”
“Thus,” riddled he, “thy heart shall know its Peace!”
Let be! I ride upon the sand instead,
Look to the Cross, whereon I take mine ease!
Let be! Just so the Roman soldier said.
Esaias? He is dead—as I am dead!
What was his symbol and his riddle’s key?
Go, seek the stars and count them and explore!
Go, sift the sands beyond a starless sea!
So, find an answer where the dismal shore
Of time beats back eternity! No more!
Let me ride on more hastily than this,
That so my body may be tired of me,
And fling me to the old forgetful kiss,
Sleep’s, when my mind goes, riderless and free,
Into some corner of eternity.
Alas! that mind returns from its abode
With newer problems, fiercer thoughts! But stay!
Suppose it came not? It must be with God!—
Then this dull house of gold and iron and clay
Is happy also—’tis an easy way!
So easy, I am fearful of mishap.
Some fatal argument the God must find
That linked us first. The dice are in His lap—
Let Him decide in His imperial mind!
My choice; to see entirely—and be blind!
Yet I bethink me of that holy man,
(Pagan albeit) my stirrup’s wisdom-share:
“Learn this from Thothmes the Egyptian.
Use only in thine uttermost despair!”
He whispered me a Word. “Beware! Beware!”
“Two voices are there in the sullen sea;
Two functions hath the inevitable fire;
Earthquake hath earth, and yet fertility:
See to thy purpose, and thy set desire!
Else, dire the fate—the ultimation dire!”
Vague threats and foolish words! Quite meaningless
The empty sounds he muttered in mine ear.
Why should their silly mystery impress
My thoughtful forehead with the lines of fear?
(This riding saps my courage as my cheer.)
Still, I must see his symbol of the Sun,
The Winepress, and the Beauty! Puerile
And pagan to that old mysterious one,
The awful Light and the anointed Vial,
The Dawning of the Blood, even as a smile:—
Even as a smile on Beauty’s burning cheek—
Ha! In a circle? As this journey is?
How vain is man’s imagining and weak!
Begod my lady, and my lady’s kiss?
Back swing we to the pitiful abyss.
Liken God’s being to the life of man.
So reason staggers. Angels, answer me!
Ye who have watched the far unfolding plan—
How is time shorter than eternity?
Prove it and weigh! By mind it cannot be.
All our divisions spring in our own brain.
See! As upsprings on the horizon there
A clefted hill contemptuous of the plain.
(Why, which is higher?) I am in despair.
Let me essay the Pharaoh and his prayer!
[_Tannhäuser speaks the Word of Double Power._
Oh God, Thy blinding beauty, and the light
Shed from Thy shoulders, and the golden night
Of mingling fire and stars and roses swart
In the long flame of hair that leaps athwart,
Live in each tingling gossamer! Dread eyes!
Each flings its arrow of sharp sacrifice,
Eating me up with poison! I am hurled
Far through the vaporous confines of the world
With agony of sundering sense, beholding
Thy mighty flower, blood-coloured death, unfolding!
Lithe limbs and supple shoulders and lips curled,
Curled out to draw me to their monstrous world!
Warm breasts that glow with light ephemeral
And move with passionate music to enthrall,
To charm, to enchant, to seal the entrancing breath.
I fall! Stop! Spare me!—Slay me!
[_Tannhäuser enters into an ecstasy._
This is death.
[_The evil and averse Hathoör, or Venus, who hath
arisen in the place of the Great Goddess, lifteth
up her voice and chanteth_:—
VENUS.
Isis am I, and from my life are fed
All showers and suns, all moons that wax and wane,
All stars and streams, the living and the dead,
The mystery of pleasure and of pain.
I am the mother! I the speaking sea!
I am the earth and its fertility!
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness, return to me—
To me!
Hathoör am I, and to my beauty drawn
All glories of the Universe bow down,
The blossom and the mountain and the dawn,
Fruit’s blush, and woman, our creation’s crown.
I am the priest, the sacrifice, the shrine,
I am the love and life of the divine!
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness are surely mine—
Are mine!
Venus am I, the love and light of earth,
The wealth of kisses, the delight of tears,
The barren pleasure never come to birth,
The endless, infinite desire of years.
I am the shrine at which thy long desire
Devoured thee with intolerable fire.
I was song, music, passion, death, upon thy lyre—
Thy lyre!
I am the Grail and I the Glory now:
I am the flame and fuel of thy breast;
I am the star of God upon thy brow;
I am thy queen, enraptured and possessed.
Hide thee, sweet river; welcome to the sea,
Ocean of love that shall encompass thee!
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness, return to me—
To me!
[_Tannhäuser perceives that he is in the palace of a
Great Queen._
Rise, rise, my knight! My king! My love, arise!
See the grave avenues of Paradise,
The dewy larches bending at my breath,
Portentous cedars prophesying death!
See the long vistas and the dancing sea,
The measured motion of fecundity!
Bright winds set swaying the soft-sounding flowers
(Here flowers have music) in my woven bowers,
Where sweet birds blossom, and in chorus quire
The rapt beginnings of immense desire.
Here is the light and rapture of the will:
We touch the stars—and they are tiny still!
O mighty thews! O godlike face and hair!
Rise up and take me; ay, and keep me there,
One tingle at thy touch from head to feet;
Lips that cling close, and never seem to meet,
Melting as sunlight melts in wine! Arise!
Shame! Has thy learning left thee overwise?
Thy lips sing fondly—to another tune.
Nay! ’twas my breathing beauty made thee swoon,
Dread forkéd fire across the cloven sky;
Stripped off thy body of mortality—
Nay, but on steeper slopes my love shall strive!
Our bodies perish and our hearts revive
Vainly, unless the shaking sense beware
The crested snakes shot trembling through our hair,
Their wisdom! But our souls leap, flash, unite,
One crownéd column of avenging light,
Fixed and yet floating, infinite, immense,
Caught in the meshes of the cruel sense,
Two kissing breaths of agony and pleasure,
Mixed, crowned, divided, beyond age or measure,
Time, thought, or being! Now thine eyes awake,
Droop at my kisses; the long lashes slake
Their sleek and silky thirst in tears of light!
Thine eyes! They burn me, even me! They smite
Me who am scatheless, and a flame of fire.
See, in our sorrow and intense desire
All worlds are caught and sealed! The stars are taken
In love’s weak web, and gathered up, and shaken!
Our word is mighty on the magic moon!
The sun resurges to our triple tune!
(See, it is done!) O chosen of the Christ!
My knight, and king, and lover, wast thou priced,
A portion in the all-pervading bliss,
Thou, whom I value at my ageless kiss?
Chosen of Me! Thou heart of hearts, thou mine,
Man! Stamping into dust the Soul Divine
By might of that mere Manhood! Sense and thought
Reel for the glory of thee kissed and caught
In the eternal circle of my arms!
Woven in vain are the mysterious charms
Endymion taught Diana! For one gaze;
One word of my unutterable praise;
And I was utterly and ever lost,
Lost in the whirlwind of thy love, and tossed
A wreck on its irremeable sea!
Life! Life! This kiss! Draw in thy breath! To me!
To me! [_Tannhäuser is lost._
ACT II.
“But a moment’s thought is passion’s passing bell.”
—KEATS, _Lamia_.
_In Venusberg._
VENUS.
Sweet, sweet are May and June, dear,
The loves of lambent spring,
Our lamp the drooping moon, dear,
Our roof, the stars that sing;
The bed, of moss and roses;
The night, as long as death!
Still, breath!
Life wakens and reposes,
Love ever quickeneth!
Sweet, sweet, when Lion and Maiden,
The motley months of gold,
Swoop down with sunlight laden,
And eyes are bright and bold.
Life-swelling breasts uncover
Their warm involving deep—
Love, sleep!—
And lover lies with lover
On air’s substantial steep.
TANNHÄUSER.
Ah! sweeter was September—
The amber rain of leaves,
The harvest to remember,
The load of sunny sheaves.
In gardens deeply scented,
In orchards heavily hung,
Love flung
Away the days demented
With lips that curled and clung.
Ah! Sweeter still October,
When russet leaves go grey,
And sombre loves and sober
Make twilight of the day.
Dark dreams and shadows tenser
Throb through the vital scroll,
Man’s soul,
Lift, shake the subtle censer
That hides the cruel coal!
Still sweeter when the Bowman
His silky shaft of frost
Lets loose on earth, that no man
May linger nor be lost.
The barren woods, deserted,
Lose echo of our sighs—
Love—dies?—
Love lives—in granite skirted,
And under oaken skies.
But best is grim December,
The Goatish God his power;
The Satyr blows the ember,
And pain is passion’s flower;
When blood drips over kisses,
And madness sobs through wine:—
Ah, mine!—
The snake starts up and hisses
And strikes and—I am thine!
VENUS.
Those are thy true joys? Cruelty for love?
TANNHÄUSER.
And death in kissing. How I have despised,
Riding through meadows of the rushing Rhine,
To watch the gentle foresters of spring
Crush dainty violets in their dalliance,
Laughing in chorus with the birds; and then
(Coming at harvest time upon my tracks)
See these same lovers in the golden sheaves
Under the sun. The same, the fuller fruit,
Say you? But somehow, nearer to the end,
Lost the old sense of mystery, and lost
That curious reverence in sacrilege
With Wonder—the child’s faculty! Less joy,
Less laughter, yes! that symptom I approve;
Yet is that subtle fading-out of smiles
Rather the coming of a dull despair,
And not at all that keen despair, that sharp
Maddening pain that should torment a man
With deadliest delight, the self-same hour
That he unveils the Isis of desire.
These little lovers strip their maidens bare,
And find them—naked! Poor and pitiful!
Look at our love instead! I raised Thy veil,
Nay, tore Thy vesture from Thee, and behold!
Then only did I see what mystery,
What ninefold forest, shade impassible,
Surrounds Thy heart, as with a core of light
Shut in the mystery of a dead world.
Thou formless sense of gloom and terror! Thou
Upas, new tree of life—by sinister
Cherubim with averted faces kept!
Nay! This one secret I suspect, and gloat
Over the solemn purport of the dream
With subtle shuddering of joy,—and that
Keener delight, a sense of deadly fear!
This secret: Thou art darkness in Thyself,
And evil wrapped in light, and ugliness
Vested in beauty! Therefore is my love
No petty passion like these country-folk’s:
No fertile glory (as the Love of God):
But vast and barren as the winter sea,
Holding I know not what enormous soul
In its salt bitter bosom, underneath
The iron waters and the serpent foam;
Below, where sight and sound are set no more,
But only the intolerable weight
Of its own gloomy selfhood. This am I:
This passion, lion-mouthed and adder-eyed.
A mass compressed, a glowing central core,
Like molten metal in the crucible!
Death’s secret is some sweetness ultimate,
Sweeter than poison. Ah! My very words,
Chance phrases, ravel out the tale for me—
Sweetness and death—poison and love. Consider
How this same striving to the Infinite,
Which I intend by “love,” is likest to
That journey’s wonder to the womb of death:
Because no soul of man has ever crossed
Again that River—the old fable’s wrong;
Æneas came never to the ghostly side!
Was not the boat weighed with his body still?
Felt he the keen emotions of the dead?
Could he, the mortal and the warrior,
Converse with Them, and understand? Believe!
No soul has crossed in utter sympathy
And yet returned; because of this decree:
No man can look upon the face of God!
Yet Moses looked upon His hinder parts,
And I—yes, goddess! in this passionate
Life in our secret mountain, well I know
Thy beauty, and Thy love, (although they be
Infinite, far beyond the mortal mind,
Body, or soul to touch, to comprehend,
And dwell in) that the utter intimate
Knowledge of Thee, if once I ravelled out
Thy secret, laid Thee naked to the bone—
Nay, to the marrow! were to come, aware,
Face to face full with deity itself.
And this I strive at! Therefore is my love
Wholly in tune with that concealed desire
Bred in each mortal, though he never know,
(Few do know) to transcend the bound of things,
And find in Death the purpose of this life.
VENUS.
Yes, there you tear one veil away from me!
Yet, am not I the willing one? Indeed
I feel the wonder of that same desire
From mine own side of the Impassible.
See then how equal God and man are made!
For I have clothed me in the veil of flesh,
And strive toward thy finite consciousness
As thou art reaching to my infinite,
Nurturing my Godhead at the breast of Sin
With milk of fleshly stings—even to pain:—
TANNHÄUSER.
I see, I see the Christian mystery!
That was the purpose of High God Himself,
Clothed in the Christ! Ah! Triumphed He at last?
Nay, not in death! The slave—He rose again!
Alas! Alas!
VENUS.
Alas indeed, my knight!
We love not! Being both enamoured of
Just the one thing that is impossible.
But in this carnal strife the Intimate
Achieves for one snatched swiftness. Kiss me, love!
TANNHÄUSER.
Ah, but the waking! As I sink to sleep
Pillowed in nuptial arms—so fresh and cool—
(Yet in their veins I know the fire that runs
Racing and maddening from the crown of flame,
The monolithic core of mystical
Red fury that is called a woman’s heart)
Sinking, I say, from the supreme embrace,
The Good-night kisses; sinking into sleep—
What dreams betoken the dread solitude?
VENUS.
What dreams? Ah, dreamest not of me, my knight?
Of vast caresses that include all worlds?
Of transmutation into molten steel
Fusing with my intolerable gold
In the red crucible of alchemy,
That is—of clay?
TANNHÄUSER.
I dream of no such thing.
But of Thy likeness have I often seen
The vast presentment—formless, palpable,
Breathing. Not breathing as we use the word,
When life and spirit mingle in one breath,
Slay passion in one kiss—breathing, I say,
Differently from Thee!
VENUS.
Explain, explain!
TANNHÄUSER.
As if were kindled into gold and fire
The East!
VENUS.
The East!
TANNHÄUSER.
As if a flowerless moss
Suddenly broke in passionate primroses!
VENUS.
Violets, violets!
TANNHÄUSER.
Or as if a man
Lay in the fairest garden of the world,
In the beginning: and grew suddenly
A living soul at that caressing wind!
VENUS.
A living soul!
TANNHÄUSER.
So is Thy shade to me
When sleep takes shape.
VENUS.
She is mine enemy
Hate her, O hate her, she will slay thy soul!
TANNHÄUSER.
And is my soul not slain within me now?
Yet, I do hate her—in these waking hours.
But in my sleep she grows upon the sense,
A solitary lotus that pales forth
In the wide seas of space and separateness.
That radiance!—Amber-scented voice of light,
Calling my name, ever, ever calling—
VENUS.
Answer that call—and thou art lost indeed!
Wake thou thy spirit in this hateful sleep,
Keeping the vision, rise, and spit on her!
TANNHÄUSER.
Spit on Thy likeness? I who love Thee so?
VENUS.
Yes, yes: obey me! She will leave thee then.
She hath assumed mine image! [_Thunder._
TANNHÄUSER.
What is that?
VENUS.
Mere thunder on the mountain top. Do this,
And I will come in sleep, in sleep renew
The carnal joys of day.
TANNHÄUSER.
Hast Thou forgot?
It is the fleshly I would flee!
VENUS.
Forget?
But I strive fleshwards. Let our sleep renew
The endless struggle—and perhaps, for thee,
For thee!—the veil may lift another fold.
TANNHÄUSER.
Why dost Thou hate this vision?
VENUS.
She would take
Thee from these arms!
TANNHÄUSER.
But she is beautiful
With Thine own beauty: yet as if the God
Cancelled its mortal comeliness, and came
More intimate than matter, closing in
Keen on my spirit; as if all I sought
In Thine own symbol, Beauty, were concealed
Under her brows—how wider than the air!
How deeper than the sea! How radiant
Beyond the fire!
VENUS.
O shun her devilish lures!
That Beauty is the sole detested fear
That can annul our conquests, and arouse
Our rapt dream-kisses.
TANNHÄUSER.
That is my intent.
It is the spiritual life of things
I seek—Thou knowest!
VENUS.
Oh, I did not mean!
Remember my dilemma! Hear me speak
The story of her. She is a wicked witch
That seeketh to delude thy sleepy sense