… O rebus meis
Non infideles arbitrae,
Nox, et Diana, quae silentium, regis,
Arcana cum fiunt sacra;
Nunc, nunc adeste…
Horace, Epodes, V.
(O faithful witnesses
of my works,
Night, and you, Diana,
who surrounds our sacred mysteries
with silence,
come now, come…)
I had just finished my studies at the school of philosophy in Athens and, curious to see the beauties of Greece, I was visiting Thessaly, praised in poetry. My slaves were awaiting me at Larissa in a palace made ready to receive me. The forest of Thessaly, with its long curtains of green trees that run along the banks of the Peneus, is famous for the deeds of its sorceresses, and I had wanted to traverse it alone, during the grandeur of the night. The deep shade that lay beneath the immense canopy of the woods barely allowed the tremulous ray of some pale, misty star to struggle through its branches, in a clearing perhaps opened by the woodman’s axe. Despite myself my heavy eyelids were drooping over eyes weary of seeking out the glimmering trace of the path as it vanished into the undergrowth, and I could no longer resist sleep except by concentrating upon the noise of my horse’s hooves as they whistled in the sand or sighed through the dry grass. If he stopped occasionally I, awakened by his stillness, would call out his name loudly, hastening his step, which had slowed in sympathy with my own weariness (but which was yet too slow for my impatience). Alarmed by some unknown obstacle, he would bound forward, neighing nervously, nostrils flaring, or rear up in terror, backing in even greater alarm at the sparks which the broken pebbles set flying against his feet…
‘Phlegon, Phlegon,’ I would say to him, my weary head falling upon his neck, which bristled in fright, ‘O my dear Phlegon! We are nearly at Larissa, where pleasure, and above all sweet sleep, await us! One more moment’s courage, and you shall bed down upon choice flowers; for the golden straw gathered for the oxen of Ceres is not cool enough for you!’ ‘Do you not see…’ said he, quivering…’ the torches they are brandishing before us are shrivelling the heather and mingling mortal vapours to the air I breathe… How can I breach their magic circles and their menacing dances, which would affright the very horses of the sun?’
But my horse’s steady tread continued ringing in my ears, and the deepest sleep held my disquiet at bay. Yet from time to time a group lit by weird flames passed laughing over my head… or a deformed spirit, in the form of a beggar or a wounded man, would cling to my foot and allow itself to be dragged after me with an awful glee; or some hideous old man, in whom the shameful ugliness of crime was wedded to that of age, would leap on to my horse’s rump behind me and hold me in his arms, fleshless as those of death itself.
‘Come, Phlegon,’ I would exclaim, ‘come now, finest of the steeds nurtured on mount Ida, brave now these baneful terrors which are hobbling your courage! These demons are but vain appearances. My sword, swung in a circle around your head, cleaves their deceiving forms, which dissipate like clouds. When the mists of morning float above our mountain peaks and, struck by the morning sun, throw round them a half-transparent girdle, the summits, separated from their base, appear suspended in the skies as though by an invisible hand. It is thus, Phlegon, that the sorceresses of Thessaly are cloven by the keen edge of my sword. Do you not hear the distant shouts of joy rising from the walls of Larissa?… Behold the towers of the pleasure-loving city of Thessaly; that air-borne music is the song of her young girls!’
O you seductive dreams, cradles of the soul drunk on the ineffable memories of pleasure, which amongst you will restore to me the song of the young girls of Thessaly, the langorous nights of Larissa?… Amidst translucent marble columns, beneath twelve shining domes whose gold and crystal reflect the sparkle of a hundred thousand torches, the young girls of Thessaly, clad in the coloured vapours that all scents exhale, are no more than vague, captivating outlines on the point of vanishment. A wondrous cloud wavers about them or casts the shifting play of its light upon their lively groups: the fresh hues of the rose, the changeful light of dawn, the dazzling chinking of the rays of the capricious opal; a rain of pearls tumbles over their light tunics, sometimes aigrettes of fire start from every knot of the golden bands which hold their hair. Do not be alarmed if they look paler than the other maidens of Greece. They are scarcely of this earth, and seem to be shaking off the sleep of a past life. They are sad, too, either because they come from a world where they have left the love of a spirit or a God, or because an immense need to suffer lies in the heart of every woman in whom love is dawning.
But listen. Those are the songs of the young girls of Thessaly — that music rising in the air like a graceful cloud stirs the lonely leaded windows of those ruins dear to poets. Listen! The girls bend over their ivory lyres, question the ringing strings which answer once, vibrate for a moment and, falling still again, prolong an endless harmony heard by the spirit with all its senses: a melody as pure as the sweetest thought of a joyous soul, as the first kiss of love before love knows itself; as the gaze of a mother rocking the cradle of a child whose death she has just imagined, and which has just been brought into her presence, calm and lovely in its sleep. Thus the last sigh of the sistrum of a young woman, disappointed by her lover, is abandoned to the airs, fading in echoes, suspended amidst the silence of the lake, or dying with the wave at the foot of the unfeeling rock. The girls look at one another, lean towards each other, console each other, link their elegant arms, mingle their flowing hair, dance to spite the nymphs, their feet sending up clouds of burning dust which swirls, glimmers, pales and falls to earth again in silvery ashes; and the harmony of their song flows on like honey, like some graceful stream whose murmurs bring gaiety to its winding, sunlit banks, with their cool shadowy curvings, butterflies and flowers. They sing…
One alone perhaps… tall, motionless and standing thoughtfully… O Gods! How sombre and mournful she looks, lagging behind her companions, and what does she want of me? Ah! Do not pursue my thoughts, flawed simulacrum of the beloved who is no more, do not trouble the peace of my evenings with your reproachfulness. Leave me, for I have wept for you for seven years; though it still sears my cheeks, let me forget my weeping, in the innocent delights of dancing sylphs and faery music. Look, here they are, you can see their groups forming, swelling to make human garlands, yielding, standing firm, breaking off, replacing one another, now drawing close, now drawing back, rising like the wave carried by the flow, then sinking, and bearing on their fleeting swell all the colours of the scarf of Iris which embraces sea and sky at the end of the storm when, dying, it breaks the end of its great circle against the prow of a vessel.
What do I care for accidents at sea, or the strange unease of the traveller, I whom divine favour (which was perhaps one of the privileges of men in a former life) frees, when I wish it (delicious benison of sleep) from all the dangers which threaten you? Hardly have my eyes closed, hardly has the ravishing melody ceased, than the creator of the marvels of night hollows some deep abyss before me, some unknown chasm where all forms, all sounds, all sights of the world die away; than he casts, across a seething, greedy torrent of dead souls, some hasty, narrow, slippery bridge, offering no possibility of escape; than he hurls me to the end of a quavering, tremulous plank overlooking precipices the eye itself fears to plumb… calmly, I strike the obedient ground with a foot accustomed to command. It yields, responds, and I depart; happy to leave humanity behind, I see the blue stream of the continents slipping away beneath my easy flight, the sombre deserts of the sea, the dappled roofs of the forests streaked by the young green of spring, the red and gold of autumn, the mat bronze and lustreless violet of the shrivelled leaves of winter. If I hear the whirring wings of some startled bird, I surge on upwards, rising higher still, aspiring to new worlds. The river is no more than a thread vanishing into sombre greenery, the mountains merely vague points whose peaks now sink into their base, the ocean but a dark stain upon a mass lost in the ether, where it spins faster than the six-sided knucklebone rolled on its pointed axis by the little children of Athens, down the broad-paved galleries which surround the Kerameikos.
Along its walls, when they are touched by the rays of the life-giving sun during the first days of the year, you may have seen a long file of haggard men, motionless, their cheeks gouged by need, their expressions glazed and vacuous: some crouching like brutes; others standing, but leaning against pillars, half-bowed beneath the weight of their own emaciated bodies. Have you seen them, their mouths agape in their desire to breathe once more the first waft of revivifying air, to garner with bleak relish the sweet sense of the mild air of spring? The same sight would have struck you on the walls of Larissa, for there are unfortunates everywhere: but here misfortune has a particular ineluctability which is more degrading than poverty, sharper than hunger, more crushing than despair. These unfortunates creep forward slowly in their line, pausing at length beneath steps, like mechanical figures set up by some cunning magician on a wheel which registers the passing of time. Twelve hours go by while the silent cortège hugs the contours of the circus, in reality so small that from one side to the other a lover can decipher, upon his mistress’s half-opened hand, the hour of the night which will usher in the longed-for moment of his rendez-vous. By now these living spectres have been stripped of almost every vestige of their humanity: their skin is like white parchment drawn tightly over their bones, their eyes are lifeless. Their drained lips quiver with alarm or, more hideous yet, are stretched into a grim and haughty smile, like the last stand of a condemned man, resolute upon the block. Most are shaken with slight but continual convulsions, and tremble like the prongs of a Jew’s harp. The most pitiable of all, vanquished by hounding fate, are doomed for ever to alarm the passers-by with the repulsive deformity of their gnarled limbs and frozen attitudes. Yet this recurrent pause between two periods of sleep is for them a time of respite from the pains they fear the most. Victims of the vengeance of the sorceresses of Thessaly, as soon as the sun, dipping below the horizon, ceases to protect them from those redoubtable mistresses of the shadows, they are condemned again to fall prey to torments which no language can express. That is why they follow his all too rapid course, their gaze ever fixed upon it, in the ever-disappointed hope that he will once forget his bed of azure, and remain suspended amidsts the golden clouds of evening. Scarcely has night arrived to undeceive them, unfurling her wings of crepe (wings drained even of the glimmer just now dying in the tree-tops); scarcely has the last glint still dancing on the burnished metal heights of the tall towers ceased to fade, like a still glowing coal in a spent brasier, which whitens gradually beneath the ashes, and soon is indistinguishable from the rest of the abandoned hearth, than a fearful murmur rises amongst them, their teeth chatter with despair and rage, they hasten and scatter in their dread, finding witches everywhere, and ghosts. It is night… and hell will gape once more.
There was one, in particular, whose joints jangled like tired springs, and whose chest gave out a sound more raucous than that of a rusty bolt thrust painfully home. Yet some vestiges of rich embroidery, still hanging from his cloak, an expression full of grace and sadness which lit up the lassitude of his defeated features from time to time, some elusive mingling of debasement and pride which brought to mind the despair of a panther subjected to the hunter’s cruel curb, caused him to stand out from the crowd of his wretched companions; when he passed before women, one heard but a sigh. His blond hair fell in untended curls upon his shoulders, which rose white and pure as lilies above his purple tunic. Yet his neck bore the mark of blood, the triangular scar of an iron lance, the mark of the wound which had wrenched Polemon from me at the siege of Corinth, when that faithful friend threw himself upon my breast in the face of the unbridled rage of a soldier, already victorious but eager to yield up one more corpse to the battle field. It was that Polemon whom I had mourned for so long, who always returns to me in my sleep to remind me, with a cold kiss, that we shall meet again in death’s immortal realm. It was Polemon, still alive, but preserved for an existence so horrible that the ghosts and spectres of hell consoled one another by recounting his sufferings; Polemon having fallen under the sway of the sorceresses of Thessaly and of the demons who make up their train during the inscrutable rites of their nocturnal celebrations. He stopped, astonished, sought to link some memory to my features, approached me with cautious, measured steps, touched my hands with his own, which trembled with eagerness as he did so; after having enveloped me in a sudden embrace, which I experienced not without alarm; after having fixed a veiled gaze upon me, as pale as the last glimmer of a torch being drawn away from the grilles of a dungeon: ‘Lucius! Lucius,’ he cried out with a frightful laugh.
‘Polemon, my dear Polemon, Lucius’ friend and saviour!…’
‘In another world,’ he said, lowering his voice; ‘I remember… was it not in another world, in a life which was not in thrall to sleep and its phantoms?…’
‘What phantoms are these of which you talk?…’
‘Look,’ he answered, pointing in the twilight. ‘Behold them there.’
O unfortunate young man, do not succumb to fear of shadows! When the shade of the mountains creeps down, spreading like ink, so that the tips and sides of the gigantic cones grow closer and at least embrace each other in silence on the darkling earth; when the eerie images of the clouds spread, mingle and withdraw beneath the protective veil of night, like clandestine couples; when the birds of ill-omen begin to call from beyond the woods, and the hoarse voice of reptiles croak tonelessly at the marsh’s edge… then, my Polemon, do not deliver your tormented imagination over to the illusions of shadow, and solitude. Flee the hidden paths where spectres meet to brew black spells to trouble men’s repose; flee the purlieus of cemeteries, where the dark councils of the dead foregather, wrapped in their shrouds, to appear before the Areopagus, seated on biers; flee the open meadow where the trampled grass blackens, and becomes dry and sterile beneath the witches’ steady tread. Trust my word, Polemon: when the light, alarmed at the evil spirits’ approach, sinks and turns pale, you should come with me to rekindle its marvels in opulent festivities, in sensual dalliance. Have I ever lacked for gold? Have the richest mines so much as one hidden vein which keeps its treasures from me? Under my hand the very sand of the streamlets is transformed into exquisite stones which would be fitting ornament for the crowns of kings. Do you trust my word, Polemon? Daylight would fade in vain, as long as the fires lit by its rays for the delight of man still leap to illumine his feasts or, more discretely, to set aglow the sweet vigils of love. The Demons, as you know, fear the odorous vapours of wax and scented oil which shine softly in alabaster, or pour rose-coloured shadows through the double silk of our rich hangings. They shudder at the sight of polished marble, lit by chandeliers, casting around them trails of diamonds, like waterfalls struck by the first farewell glance of the retiring sun. Never did sombre lamia or fleshless spectre dare to display its hideous ugliness at the banquets of Thessaly. The very moon on which they call, often alarms them, when it casts upon them one of those roving beams which give a deathly pewter pallor to the object upon which it falls. At such moments they run off faster than the snake warned by the slithering of the sand stirring beneath the traveller’s foot. Do not fear that they may surprise you in the midst of the lights that sparkle in my palace, reflected from all sides in the mirrors’ dazzling steel. See rather, my Polemon, with what eagerness they take their distance from us when we progress between the servants’ torches along these galleries of mine, decorated with statues — the matchless masterpieces of the genius of Greece. Has any threatening movement on the part of one of these images ever revealed to you the presence of those uncanny spirits which sometimes animate them, when the last glimmer from the last lamp fades in the air? Their motionless forms, the purity of their features, the serenity of their attitudes, would reassure fear itself. If some strange noise has struck your ear, beloved brother of my heart, it is that of the watchful nymph who spreads the treasures of her crystal urn over your sleep-numbed limbs, mingling scents hitherto unknown to Larissa: an amber liquid which I gathered on the shores of seas which bathe the cradle of the sun: the sap of flowers a thousand times sweeter than the rose, which grow only in the deep shade of brown Corcyra; the tears of a shrub beloved of Apollo and his son, and which spreads its bouquets over the rocks of Epidaurus, deep-red cymbals trembling beneath the weight of the dew. And how could the spells of the sorceresses trouble the purity of the waters which rock their silver waves around you? And then the lovely Myrthé, with her flaxen hair, the youngest and best-beloved of my slaves, the one whom you saw bow down as you passed, for she loves all that I love… she has spells known only to her and to the spirit who entrusted them to her in the mysteries of sleep; now she wanders like a shade through the enclosures of the baths where the surface of the health-giving water gradually rises; she runs to and fro, singing airs which ward off the demons, sometimes touching the strings of a wandering harp which obedient genies offer her even before her desires can be made known by passing from her soul into her eyes. She walks; she runs; and the harp sings beneath her hand. Listen to the echoing voice of Myrthé’s harp; it is a full, grave, lingering sound, which banishes all earth-bound thoughts, filling the soul like a leitmotiv; then it takes wing, flees, vanishes and returns; ravishing enchanters of the night, the airs of Myrthé’s harp soar and fade, return again — how it sings, how they fly, the airs of Myrthé’s harp which ward off demons!… Listen, Polemon, do you hear them?
In truth I have experienced all the illusions of dreams, and what would I have become without the succour of Myrthé’s harp, without its voice, so sweetly disturbing the pained groaning that passed for sleep?… How many times have I bent in my slumber over the limpid, sleeping wave, only too faithful in reproducing my ravaged features, my hair on end with terror, my gaze as fixed and lustreless as the look of despair when it can no longer weep!… How often have I shuddered, seeing traces of livid blood around my pallid lips; feeling my loosened teeth driven from their sockets, my nails, torn from their roots, prized free! How many times, alarmed at my shameful nudity, or wearing a tunic shorter, lighter, more transparent than that worn by a courtesan as she enters the brazen bed of debauchery, have I not given myself over nervously to the jeers of the crowd! O, how often dreams more hideous yet, dreams Polemon himself is unacquainted with… what then would I have become without the succour of Myrthé’s harp, without her voice and the harmony she imparts to her sisters, when they cluster obediently around her, to dispel the terrors of the wretched sleeper, to fill his ears with songs from far away, like breezes whispering into flying snails — songs which commingle and conspire to still the heart’s storm-tossed, tormented visions and to becalm them with long melody.
And now, behold the sisters of Myrthé, who have prepared the feast. There is Theis, unique among the daughters of Thessaly: most girls of that land have black hair falling upon alabaster shoulders; none has the supple, sensuous curls of black-haired Theis. It is she who holds a delicate earthen vessel where the wine simmers palely, letting fall from it, drop by drop like liquid topaz, the most exquisite honey ever gathered on the young elms of Sicily. Despoiled of her treasures, the bee flies restlessly amidst the flowers; she hangs from the lonely branches of the abandoned tree, claiming her honey from the zephyrs. She murmurs in pain, for her little ones will no longer have a haven in any of the thousand five-walled palaces she built for them of a light, translucent wax, nor will they taste the honey she has gathered for them on the scented bushes of mount Hybla. It is Theis who pours the honey stolen from the bees of Sicily into the simmering wine; and her other sisters, those who have black hair — for only Myrthé is fair — run in smiling and obedient haste to make the banquet ready. They scatter pomegranate flowers or roseleaves on the foaming milk; or fan the fires of amber and incense burning beneath the cup where the hot wine seethes; the flames bow respectfully along the vessel’s rounded brim, and draw nigh, caressing its golden outlines to merge at last with the gold and blue-tongued flames which dance above the wine. The flames rise and fall, flickering like the lonely will-o’-the-wisp which loves to gaze upon itself in fountains. Who can say how many times the cup has passed around the festive table, how often, drained, its lip has been flooded with fresh nectar? Maidens, spare neither wine nor hydromel. The sun forever swells new grapes, forever pours the rays of its immortal splendour on the bursting clusters which sway on the rich swags of our vines, glimpsed through the darkling vine-shoots wreathed in garlands which run between the mulberry trees of Tempe. One more libation to drive off the demons of the night! I myself now see only the joyous spirits of drunkenness bubbling forth from the foam, chasing one another through the air like fire-flies, or dazzling my hot eyelids with their radiant wings; like those fleet insects which nature has bedecked with harmless fires, and which burst in swarms from a tuft of greenery in the quiet cool of brief midsummer nights, like a sheaf of sparks beneath the blacksmith’s hammer. They float, wafted on a slight passing breeze, or summoned by some sweet scent on which they feed in the rose’s chalice. The light-filled cloud hangs, ever-changing, rests or turns fleetingly upon itself, and sinks in its entirety to cloak the summit of a young pine tree, which it illumines like the time-honoured pyramid at a village fete; or shrouds the lower branches of a great oak tree, made to seem a girandole for some forest gathering. See how they play around you, how they spin through the flowers, how they glow in fiery strands against the polished vessels; these are no enemy demons. They dance, they are glad, with all the abandon and insouciance of madness. If they sometimes trouble the repose of men, it is merely to satisfy some laughing whim, like a heedless child. Mischievously they become entwined in the tangled flax on the spindle of an old shepherdess, muddling the threads, while knots proliferate beneath her fingers’ futile skill. When a lost traveller scans the night horizon for some source of light that might offer him shelter, they send him wandering from path to path, by the light of their fickle glow, to the sound of a deceiving voice, or of the distant barking of a watchful dog, prowling like a sentinel around a solitary farm; thus they abuse the hopes of the poor wanderer, until the moment when, touched with pity at his weariness, they suddenly present him with an unexpected resting-place, hitherto unremarked in all this wilderness; sometimes indeed, on his arrival, he is astonished to find a crackling hearth whose very sight inspirits, and rare and delicate dishes brought by pure chance to the cottage of the fisherman or poacher, and a young girl, as lovely as the Graces, to serve him, too modest even to raise her eyes; for she feels that this stranger is dangerous to look upon. The next day, surprised that so brief a respite has so thoroughly revived him, he arises cheerfully to the song of the lark greeting a pure sky; he learns that his fortunate error has shortened his route by twenty leagues, and his horse, whinnying with impatience, nostrils flaring, coat lustrous, mane smooth and shining, is pawing the ground before him in a triple indication of departure. The imp bounds from the rump to the head of the traveller’s horse, runs his cunning hands through the vast mane; looking about him, he is pleased with what he’s done, and departs gleefully to amuse himself at the plight of a parched sleeper who sees a cooling draft receding, then drying up before his proffered lips; he plumbs the vessel pointlessly with his gaze, and vainly sups up the absent liquid; he then awakens, and finds the cup filled with a Syracusan wine he has never tasted, which the elf has extracted from the choicest grapes, making sport of the frettings of his sleep. Here you can drink, speak and sleep without fear, for the elves are our friends. Only you must satisfy the eager curiosity of Theis and Myrthé, and the less impartial curiosity of Thelaire, who has fixed you with her great dark eyes, with their long lustrous lashes — eyes like auspicious stars in a sky awash with the most tender azure. Tell us, Polemon, of the outlandish sufferings you were experiencing under the sway of the sorceresses: for the torments with which they dog our imagination are but the vain illusions of a dream which fades at the first light of dawn. Theis, Thelaire and Myrthé are attentive… They are listening… speak, then, tell us of your despair, your fears, all the mad fancies of the night; Theis, pour us some wine; Thelaire, smile at his tale, so that his soul is comforted; and you, Myrthé, should you see him yield to a new illusion, surprised at the memory of his aberrations,… must sing to him and pluck the strings of your beguiling harp… Draw heartening sounds from it, sounds which dispel bad spirits… thus one may deliver the bleak hours of the night from the tumultuous power of dreams, and thus escape, moving from pleasure unto pleasure, from the sinister wizardry which fills the world during the absence of the sun.