The Flame

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

Stelio looked down upon the sparkling breast of the great, many-eyed chimera, on which rose and fell many fluttering feather fans, like tiny wings; and over his spirit passed an intoxicating glow that disquieted him. The vibration of his nerves, acting upon those of his auditors and thus reacting upon himself, unsettled him so much as almost to unbalance him. For an instant he felt that he was oscillating above the crowd, like a concave and sonorous body, the resonances of which were engendered by an indistinct yet infallible will.

He was surprised at the unknown power that dwelt within him, abolishing his own personal limits and conferring the fulness of a chorus on his single voice.

This, then, was the mysterious truce which the revelation of Beauty could grant to the daily existence of wearied man; this was the mysterious will that could possess the poet at the moment when he replied to the souls of his followers who questioned him as to the value of life and tried to raise themselves, if only once, to the height of the eternal Ideal. He was only the messenger through whom Beauty offered to those men, assembled in this place consecrated by centuries of human glory, the divine gift of oblivion. He was only the translator into rhythmic speech of the visible language whereby, in this same place, the noble craftsmen of a former day had expressed the prayers and aspirations of the race. And for one hour, at least, those men would contemplate the world with different eyes; they would think and dream with different souls.

In fancy, he passed beyond the walls that enclosed the palpitating throng in a kind of heroic cycle, a circle of red triremes, fortified towers, and triumphal theories. The place now seemed too narrow for the exaltation of his new feeling; and once more he was drawn toward the real people, the immense, unanimous crowd he had seen outside the palace, who had sent upward in the starry night a clamor that, like blood or wine, intoxicated them as they uttered it.

And not alone to this multitude did his thoughts turn; his fancy beheld an infinity of multitudes, massed together in theaters, dominated by an idea of truth and of beauty, pale and intent before the great arch of the stage, which should open before them some marvelous transfiguration of life, or frenzied by the sudden splendor radiating from an immortal phrase. And the dream of a higher Art, as it surged up again in his thought showed him mankind once more reverencing poets, as those who alone can interrupt at intervals its daily anguish, quench its thirst, and dispense oblivion. He even judged too slight the test he was now undergoing; he felt himself capable of creating gigantic fictions. The still formless work that he nourished in his soul shook him with a thrill of life as he looked again at the tragedienne, standing above the sphere of constellations—the Muse with the transcendent voice, who seemed to carry the frenzy of far-off throngs, now silenced, in the classic folds of her robes.

Almost overcome by the incredible intensity of emotion that had possessed him during the brief pause, he began to speak again in a lower tone. He spoke of the growth of art between the youth of Giorgione and the old age of Tintoretto, and described it as golden, purple, rich and expressive as the pomp of the earth irradiated by the glow of sunset.

"When I consider the impetuous creators of such marvelous beauty, my mind recalls an image from a fragment of Pindar's: 'When the centaurs became acquainted with the virtues of wine, sweet as honey and a conqueror of men, they banished milk from their tables and hastened to quaff their wine from silver horns.' No one in the world better knew than they how to taste the wine of life. They drew from it a kind of lucid intoxication that multiplied their powers and communicated to their eloquence a fertilizing energy. And in their greatest creations, the violent throbbing of their pulses seems to have persisted throughout the ages, like the veritable rhythm of Venetian art.

"Ah, how pure and poetic is the slumber of the Virgin Ursula on her immaculate bed! The most religious silence reigns in that chamber, where the pious lips of the sleeper seem to form themselves into the act of uttering prayer. Through the doors and the windows steals the timid light of dawn, illumining the syllables inscribed on her pillow: INFANTIA is the simple word that spreads around that virginal head, like the fresh aurora of the morning: INFANTIA. She sleeps, the maiden already betrothed to the pagan prince and destined to martyrdom. So chaste, so ingenuous, so fervent, is she not the image of Art such as the precursors saw it, with the sincerity of their child-like eyes? INFANTIA! The word evokes around that couch all those forgotten ones: Lorenzo Veneziano, Simone da Cusighe, Catarino, Jacobello, Maestro Paolo, Giambono, Semitecolo, Antonio, Andrea, Quirizio da Murano, and all the laborious family by whom color—which later was the rival of fire—was prepared in the burning island of furnaces. But would not they themselves have uttered a cry of admiration if they had seen the drops of blood that sprang from the maiden's heart when it was pierced by the arrow of the beautiful pagan archer? A current so red from a virgin nourished on white milk! This victory was a sort of festival: to it the archers brought their finest bows, their richest garments, their most elegant air. The golden-haired barbarian, aiming his arrows at the martyr, with a movement so proud and graceful, does he not resemble an adolescent and wingless Eros? That gracious slayer of innocence (or perhaps his brother), after laying aside his bow, will abandon himself to the enchantment of music to dream a dream of infinite pleasure.

"It was indeed Giorgione that poured into him a new soul, and kindled it with an implacable longing. The music that charms him is not the melody that last night the lutes diffused among the curving arches, over radiant thrones, or diminishing in the silence of distances in the visions of the third Bellini. Under the touch of religious hands, it still rises from the harpsichord; but the world it awakens is full of a joy and a sadness wherein sin hides its head.