The Bride of Dreams

by Frederik van Eeden

The Messiah of our time must be the hero-organizer who brings order into the confused operations and the half-conscious action of our society. And as in the time of the generals, it was only the poet-generals, the great dreamers of a world-realm, such as Alexander, Cæsar and Napoleon, who shone out through all the ages as heroes and geniuses, so in our time, it will be the poet organizer, the dreamer of a world fellowship, who will attain still greater heroism, and much more lasting honor.

The time of eloquence is also past. The elusive phrases of oratorical logic only blind young nations, and even America is outgrowing the authority of the orator who is solely an orator.

But the time of the drama and of music is not past, and he who knows how to handle these mighty suggestive expedients can turn the course of humanity. The herd will follow him though he lead them into the wilderness or the desert. Wagner and Ibsen have proved it.

But some day, and probably soon, it will come to pass that the hero of the new times, the poet organizer, will join hands with the one suggestively mighty through music and drama, or perchance that these rare powers shall be united in one man.

And only then shall the herd be led into green pastures and shall be satisfied and shall see the day of maturity dawning.

I say it, I, old hermit among the philistines, and my peace rests upon this knowledge. I had not the gift for ruling, for organizing, for leading. I was not eloquent. I had not the power of music or drama. I could not attempt to be this hero, this "Sotèr" of mankind, for I knew what was required of him. But I knew and still know that he shall be born with the infallible certainty with which statistics foretell the number of geniuses and defectives, the number of those above and below the normal. His birth is approaching, and speedily moreover, as surely as the birth of a majority of sons after a man-slaughtering war. For the race has need of him, Christ requires him.

And if I myself cannot be he, still I can be his John the Baptist, testifying of him, happy and enthusiastic in my solitude, in this desert of caddishness and provincialism.

XXI

I had been married seventeen years and my youngest child was eight years old when I returned to this same Holland, where so many strands of my rope of destiny are fastened. Little had changed in my life. Order and peace reigned in my family, prosperity in the sphere of my activities. Lucia seemed wholly satisfied and ruled her household with quiet devotion. My children were fair and well brought up. I felt my growing attachment to them and to their mother, as every creature is attached to the creatures and the things that have long been its daily companions - an affection from symbiosis, I might call it. Yet with my inmost being I remained a stranger to them, and my affection for them retained its forced quality. An ever-growing discontent was gathering in me. The older I grew, the nearer I saw the time approaching when age would make me powerless, the more intense became the strain. I felt as though I should die without really having lived. I did not fear death, but to be doomed to die without having revealed my true life, this was a prospect quite unbearable to me.

I lived on, strengthened only by my dream nights, but it seemed as though they were driving and spurring me on to something more - to an act, to an outbreak. They became rarer and I encountered greater difficulties in attaining the light and in seeing Emmy in my dreams. Often it was but a desperate struggle to force my way through chambers, garrets, and corridors. I could no longer see the unobstructed blue sky, I could no longer attain the ecstasy of joy so greatly desired, I could no longer pray in earnest, the voice of my dream-body grew husky and weak, sometimes when I called Emmy, it sounded as though I spoke in the tones of a dying man.