"Do you know this saying of the great Herodotus: 'The name of the bow is Bios, and its work is death'? This saying is one that excites our spirits even before communicating to it its exact meaning. I heard it continually within myself, that evening last autumn, when I was sitting at your table—the night of the Epiphany of the Flame. That night I had an hour of true Dionysian life, an hour of secret though terrible delight, as if I held in my breast the burning mountain where the Tiades howl and shriek. Sometimes I could really hear songs and clamor, and the cries of distant battle. It astonished me that I could remain motionless, and the sense of my bodily immobility increased my mental frenzy. I could see only your face, which suddenly appeared extraordinarily beautiful, revealing all the strength of your soul; and behind it I could see other countries and other peoples. If I could only tell you how I saw you! In the tumult, at the passage of marvelous images, accompanied by floods of music, I called to you as in the thick of battle; I made appeals which perhaps you heard—not for love alone, but for glory; not for one thirst, but for two, and I know not which was the more ardent. And the face of my great work appeared to me then the same as your face. I saw it, I tell you! And with incredible rapidity my work took form in words, song, movement, and symphony, and was so real that if I succeed in infusing a part of it into that which I wish to express, I shall surely inflame the world.
"To express oneself! That is the necessity. The greatest vision has no value if it is not manifested and condensed in vital forms. And I have everything to create. I am not pouring my substance into hereditary molds. My work is entirely my own invention. I must not, and I will not, obey anything but my instinct and the genius of my race. Nevertheless, like Dardi, who saw the famous organ at the house of Caterino Zeno, I too have another work before my mind—a work accomplished by a formidable creator, a gigantic work in the eyes of man."
The image of the barbaric creator reappeared to him: the blue eyes gleamed under the vast forehead, and he saw once more the white hair tossed by the wind about that aged neck. He remembered his own indescribable thrill of joy and fear when he had so unexpectedly felt beneath his hand the throbbing of that sacred heart.
"I should say not before but around my spirit. Sometimes it is like a stormy sea trying to draw me down and swallow me. My Temòdia is a granite rock in the open sea, and I am like an artisan trying to erect upon it a pure Doric temple. Compelled to defend the order of his columns from the violence of the waves, his spirit is always strained in order never to cease to hear, in the midst of the clamor, the secret rhythm which alone must regulate the intervals between lines and spaces. And in this sense too my tragedy is a battle."
He took one of his friend's hands.
"Do you hear the song?" he asked.
"Where is it?" she said, raising her face to the sky. "Is it in heaven or on the earth?"
An infinite melody seemed to be flowing through the peaceful, silvery atmosphere.
She felt Stelio's hand quiver.
"When Alessandro enters the illuminated chamber where the virgin has been reading the lament of Antigone," he said, "he tells how he has come on horseback across the plain of Argos, where the song of the larks fills the sky. He says that one lark fell at his horse's feet, like a stone, and lay there silent, overcome by its own frenzy of joy in its song. He picked it up. 'Here it is.' Then you hold your hand toward him, you take the bird, and murmur: 'Ah, it is still warm!' And while you speak the virgin trembles. You can feel her quivering."