The Bride of Dreams

by Frederik van Eeden

"Yes, but also robbed him of his perfection."

"True, and therefore made him dearer, more intimate and real. When we are children we consider our father and mother perfect. Thereby we wrong them. Later we see that they do indeed stand above us, but that they have faults too. And then when we can love them, faults and all, then they are most truly our beloved and trusted confidants. It is a stupid, childish tendency always to expect and to demand perfection in all that is above us. The Bible-Jesus spoke truly when he said that there was but one perfect Goodness. I will add that there is but one I and one Memory. And only then will man be able to follow Christ to the pure blessedness, when he learns to feel that there may be incomprehensible sublimity, loftiness and superiority without perfection: that there may also be faults in the power that has created him and in which he lives: that there are yet an infinite number of higher beings, all above him, and powerful and wise and lofty far beyond his comprehension, and yet all of them humble and faulty and weak in the power of a Most-Sublime, who is equally near to all and penetrates all with equal profoundness."

XXVIII

I do not propose to give you dramatic surprises, dear reader, and you must not look for thrilling excitement in the story of my life. Elsje's parentage has always remained unknown to me and the pretty motive for a romance of the foundling is left unused. For that sort of thing you have your well-stocked public libraries and Mr. Conan Doyle and his colleagues.

So I will rather tell you directly that my trip to America resulted in what everyone, and I myself too at first, considered a complete failure.

But I wish to make you distinctly realize that man may fare as the soldier, who, ordered to maintain a position without knowing that the position is untenable, faithfully perseveres in his charge, though aware that the endeavor is a hopeless failure - later to learn that his perseverance and his failure were foreseen in the great plan of the general and have helped to bring about the victory and peace.

It is possible that, even though it seemed otherwise, my efforts were after all beneficial and fruitful, that I sowed seeds that are still in a state of germination and only long after I am gone will shoot up as plants. I do not know this and I need not trouble about it. I have carried out the order, as I understood it, to the best of my abilities. But I do know what I have gained in new knowledge and understanding. And this has made me so rich that I regret none of my sacrifices and repent none of my actions. And this alone also lets me find peace and contentment in this quiet lonely life, because here I can write down what has enchanted and stirred me go strongly, and the assurance never forsakes me that my words shall find their way and, like a mighty ferment, work on in the heads of those who as you, dear reader, have experienced the painful blessing of originality, and know what it is to live in immediate contact with Christ, the Genitive Spirit of humanity.

Through all the dark confusion of my vain efforts and painful experiences, through the continued terrible anguish of mankind, ever increasing and void of beauty and sublimity, one light shone out with an ever steadier and brighter glow the wonder of the true marriage.

This is so difficult to describe, because every one professes to know it and to respect it, and insincere eloquence and insincere enthusiasm have poured themselves out over it in riotous streams. So that one scruples to employ any word wherewith to indicate the true wonder, because all words have been polluted and defiled through a horrible misuse.

The true wonder is so great that the man of original spirit who has found it would, if he had the power, not hesitate for a moment to destroy all domestic happiness and domestic peace among the great human herd, as long as these rest only on a conventional imitation, a miserable substitute, of the true glory. I have lived in what to all the world seemed a happy union. I have endured the terrible anguish of a violent rupture of firmly-knit bonds of attachment and affection - but how insignificant is all this, how sorry this apparent happiness, how slight the anguish compared to the mighty and transcendent things that were gained - the perfect tenderness, the real intimacy of true conjugal love, the complete melting into one of two cells in the great body of humanity.