There will not be wanting one or two critics of the low kind who take their hints from the disavowals of the author to declare that his book is just what it is not, who will write that I think I have discovered a better poet than Keats in Marietta Pery, and a far greater than Goethe or Byron in the unknown author of the invocation to “Intialo.” But all that I truly mean is that the former is nearer to old tradition, and more succinct than the English bard—“only this and nothing more”—while in “Intialo” we have given, as no one ever expressed it, the true ideal of the magician who, overcoming all qualms of conscience, whether innate or suggested, and trampling under foot all moral human conventions, rises to will, and victory over all enemies, especially the demons of the threshold. As a poem, I no more claim special merit for it than I would for Marietta’s; [253] indeed, to the very considerable number of “highly cultivated” people who only perceive poetry in form and style, and cannot find it in the grandest conceptions unless they are elegantly expressed, what I have given in this connection will not appear as poetry at all.
CAIN AND HIS WORSHIPPERS
the spell of the mirror—the invocation to cain—the witch-history of cain and abel
“Rusticus in Luna
Quem sarcina deprimit una,
Monstrat per spinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas.”—Alexander Neckham, a.d. 1157.
This is, for reasons which I will explain anon, one of the most curious traditions which have been preserved by the Tuscan peasantry. I had made inquiry whether any conjuring by the aid of a mirror existed—“only this and nothing more”—when, some time after, I received the following:
La Scongiurazione dello Specchio.
When one wishes to enchant a lover.
“Go at midnight when there is a fine full moon, and take a small mirror, which must be kept in a box of a fine red colour, and at each of the four corners of the box put a candle with a pin, or with a pin in its point, and observe that two of the pins must have red heads, and two black, and form a cross, and note that every candle must have two tassels hanging from it, one red and one black.
“And within the box first of all put a good layer of coarse salt, and form on the salt a ring or wreath of incense, and in the middle of this a cross of cummin, and above all put the small mirror. Then take the photograph of your lover, but not the real photograph but the negative, because it must be on a plate of glass (lastra di vetro). Then take some hairs of
the lover and join them to the photograph (sono uniti dalla parte del quore), and then take a fine sprig of rue.
“And with all this nicely arranged in the box, take a boat and sail out to sea; and if a woman works the spell she must take three men with her only, and if a man three women and no other person. And they must go forth at an instant when the moon shines brightly (risplende bene) on the mirror. Then hold the left hand over the mirror, and hold up the rue with the right. Then repeat the following: [255]
Incantesimo.