X.3

OTAKAR BŘEZINA

Perspectives¹

The fire of life, kindled from another union than that which is given mortal men to know, if it is not to be extinguished but intensified, requires impetuous gusts of wind that come from the infinite. Only then may it pass from the blood-red tones to those of the purest, resplendent white, expanding in wide circles of light. It matters not that the dialogue of the dancing flames attracts the insects which fly in the twilight of our nights, or that hissing vipers, wise enemies of the flames, approach the fire! The strong one does not fear their venom; he grasps them with his bare hands and thus purifies his ground with their wisdom. The blood of the strong is immune to every venom, for even that dissolves in this sublime juice. The strong have prepared for their mission by knowing and absorbing both that which exalts life, and that which slays it.

The soul of him who rises toward the light knows only one danger: that which is attainable without danger. The promised land of the soul has only impassable paths. And even when the soul halts exhausted, its eyes never rest. With a single glance it sweeps up thousands of suns from the Milky Way, and flings them like sand on the path of its own immortality. Its dreams gain no lightness unless they move above the abysses—for the true element of the soul is the space stretching from the kindling of worlds to their extinction. Its nights prepare the way for its days; its weaknesses—for its strength; its fall—for its victory; death—for the affirmation of life. And how could one call a path “rest” when every step opens onto the infinite?

The soul wants to master all that it encounters. It penetrates all things, so as to subject them to its own laws of freedom. In the soul’s language every depth expresses a possibility of descent and new knowledge. According to the traditions of its own origins, it knows no greater delight than to build eternity on earth. Ever wakeful, it can do no other than to wake the sleepers. The soul’s gaze makes every flower bloom; never satisfied, it is not stopped by its surface woven from perfumes and light; passing through, it penetrates to the fire of the earth that gave it growth, and even further, through the earth—as though this were transparent—to the other hemisphere where another space opens, with other stars. Nothing can place limits on the soul but the unlimited.

The soul is generous in sublime prodigality to all that it has vanquished; but it jealously guards its own hopes for the unattainable. Not even death is strong enough to hypnotize it into inactivity, to extinguish in it that thirst for conquest, that dazzlement by the splendor of the treasures amassed in the cosmic treasury, whose arches are lost in infinity and where the worlds, like so many gems, shine with light absorbed in ages past.

The sun has created its earthly sight; gravity—its power; pain—its love; the impossible—its audacity. The greater the effort, the sweeter and more lovable is the red blush on its face, and the quicker and more harmonious its breathing. Greedy for motion, it loves all that is rapid—time; and all that frees its flight from obstacles—glorious space . . .

The freest, the strongest manifestations of the soul, which astound our sight in the rare, splendid, luminous moments of this earth, are of a febrile and radiant voracity, of a splendor like that of flying, flaming hair combed out by the wind. To those unused to this spectacle (hardly credible in the poor and cold climate of our time), there seems to be something hard and egotistic in this ardent flight, whose beauty is too dazzling for eyes scarcely released from dreams. The intense concentration of the maker seems like indifference to his brethren, who do not understand that when the soul is at work, every instant is worth ages. How else could one grasp all the forces in those glorious creative gestures which penetrate matter like ethereal fingers, move networks of inner relationships and weave them anew? How could one reproach an architect for the severity of his gaze when he examines the foundations of a building over which thousands of beings not yet born will pass? How, if love could not take on so many forms—love, which is as multiform as fire! How, if its heat vanished when the flame became invisible!

The soul never builds for itself alone. In the places of its making, the space is filled with thousands of hands that rise from the depths of the centuries: hands that meet in significant grasps of universal brotherhood, passing on the work from one to the other. Memory returns shocked and dumb from the places of this ardent and terrifying activity, wearied to death by the strokes of thousands of hammers; blinded by the white refulgence of the furnaces; deafened by the din of the tools of these mysterious factories, by the commands that cut through the hot air, the feverish breathing of the masses, the noise of footsteps coming and going, and the singing of those working above. There is nothing in these lands resembling earthlings’ faded opinions on egotism, or the petty concern that seals the honeycombs, lest their sweetness should reach fraternal lips. There is no act there that does not set in motion every atom, to the uttermost worlds. In these seas, every wave spreads in circles that reach the shores undiminished. Roads are built here for thousands of men, cities to be inhabited by whole peoples, and whose every gate opens on a new century. Here falls the rain that fertilizes the rich fields of every planet in the cosmos. In the Sun that shines here, all suns sparkle like dust motes on a summer’s day, over infinite fields where the future harvest ripens with a rustling of the ears. Here all wills vibrate in the vibration of a single will. All forces unite in a single impulse of omnipotence. Here one inhales love like air glowing with the fire of all the tropics, cooled by the ice of all the Arctic nights, perfumed by the fragrances of every spring. . . .

What courage the soul must have, wretchedly confined in the prison of a few dim senses, subject to all the ironies of matter; what courage it must have, if it wants to understand its situation! That the stars in all infinities are its own sight transmuted into fire, which, projected, will return to it, while its pallid earthly shadow will survive only in the uncertain memory of a few solitary souls, before becoming forever extinct.