The Flame

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

"In truth," said he, in a tone full of exultation, "if the whole population, abandoning their homes, should emigrate, attracted to-day toward other shores as formerly their heroic youth were tempted by the arch of the Bosphorus, in the time of the Doge Pietro Ziani, and the voice of prayer should no more strike against the sonorous gold of the concave mosaics, nor the sound of the oar perpetuate with its rhythmic stroke the meditation of the silent stones, Venice would still remain a City of Life. The ideal creatures protected by its silence live in the whole past and for the whole future. In them we shall always discover new concordances with the edifice of the universe, unforeseen meetings with the idea born only yesterday, clear announcements of that which is with us only a presentiment as yet, open answers to that which as yet we have not dared to ask.

"These ideal creatures are simple, but they are full of innumerable meanings; they are ingenuous, yet are clothed in strange attire. Should we contemplate them for an indefinite time, they never would cease to pour dissimilar truths into our minds. Should we visit them every day, every day they would appear to us under a new aspect, as do the sea, the rivers, the fields, the woods, the rocks. At times the things they say to us do not really reach our intellects, but reveal themselves to us in a sort of confused happiness, which causes our own substance to dilate and quiver to its inmost depths. Some bright day they will point out to us the path to the distant forest, wherein Beauty has awaited us from time immemorial, buried in her mystic hair.

"Whence came to them their immeasurable power?

"From the pure unconsciousness of the artificers that created them.

"Those profound men ignored the immensity of the things they wished to express. Penetrating with a million roots into the soil of life, not like single trees, but like vast forests, they absorbed infinite elements, which they transfused and condensed into ideal species, whose essences nevertheless remained unknown to them, as the flavor of the apple is unknown to the branch that bears it. They were the mysterious means chosen by Nature in her effort to represent in an integral form those types in which she has not yet succeeded. Because of this, continuing the work of the Divine Mother, their minds, as Leonardo says, have become transformed into 'a likeness of the Divine Mind.' And because creative force rushed to their fingers incessantly, like sap to the buds of trees, they created with joy."

All the desire of the determined artist, panting and struggling to obtain this Olympian gift, all his envy of those gigantic creators of Beauty, all his insatiable thirst for happiness and glory, were revealed in the tone in which he pronounced these last words. Once more the soul of the multitude was under the magic of the poet's spell, strained and vibrating like a single cord composed of a thousand strands, the resonance of which could be incalculably prolonged. That resonance awakened within the multitude the sense of a truth that had lain dormant, but which the poet's words now revealed for the first time.

In the sonority of the deep silence, the solitary voice reached its climax.

"To create with joy! It is the attribute of Divinity! It is impossible to imagine at the summit of the spirit an act more triumphal. Even the words that signify it possess something of the splendor of sunrise.

"And these artists created by a medium that is in itself a joyous mystery: by color, which is the ornament of the world; by color, which seems the effort of matter to become light.

"And the newly awakened musical sense they had for color was such that their creations transcend the narrow limits of figured symbols, and assume the high revealing power of an infinite harmony.