The Triumph of Death

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

How to awaken it? How to resuscitate it? No artifice would be efficacious. He must wait for a sudden spark, an unexpected shock. He must, perhaps, like the followers of Oreste, see the lightning flash and hear the Word in the midst of a field, at the turn of a road.

And, once more, he recalled the figure of Oreste, attired in his red tunic, advancing along the side of a little, sinuous river, where, beneath the shivering of the poplars, a stream of water coursed over a bed of polished sand. He imagined a meeting, a conversation with Oreste. It was at noon, on the coast, close to a field of wheat. The Messiah spoke like a simple, humble man, smiling with virginal candor; and his teeth were as white as jasmine. In the great silence of the sea, the continuous murmur of the breakers at the foot of the promontory imitated the distant chords of an organ. But, behind this mild person, in the gold of the ripe harvest, waved the poppies, violent symbols of desire.

"Desire!" thought George, thus recalling his mistress and the corporeal sorrow of his love. "Who will kill desire?" The admonitions of Ecclesiastes recurred to him. Non des mulieri potestatem animae tuae. A muliere initium factum est peccati, et per illam omnes morimur. He saw, at the sacred dawn of the ages, in a delicious garden, the first man, solitary and sad, attracted by the first companion; and he saw this companion become the scourge of the world, spread everywhere pain and death. But voluptuousness, contemplated as a sin, appeared to him prouder, more disturbing; it seemed to him that no other intoxication equalled the frantic intoxication of the embraces to which the martyrs of the early church surrendered themselves, in the prisons where they awaited punishment. He evoked pictures of women who, mad with terror and love, presented for kisses their faces bathed in silent tears.

In aspiring to faith and redemption, what did he, therefore, but aspire to new thrills and spasms, to unknown voluptuous sensations? Infringe on duty and obtain pardon; commit a fault and confess it tearfully; confess the slightest miseries while exaggerating them, and accuse oneself of mediocre vices while magnifying them almost to enormity; incessantly place one's sick soul and ailing flesh in the hands of a merciful physician—had not these things an entirely sensual fascination?

From the beginning, his passion had been impregnated with a pious odor of incense and violets. He recalled the Epiphany of Love, in the deserted oratory of the Via Belsiana: the little, mysterious chapel was plunged in a bluish penumbra; a choir of young girls garlanded the rostrum, curved like a balcony; below, an orchestra of string instruments stood up before the music stands of white pine; roundabout, in the oaken stalls, were seated the few auditors, almost all gray or bald; the chapel-master beat time; a religious odor of evaporated incense and of violets mingled with the music of Sebastian Bach.

He recalled also the dream of Orvieto, conjured up once more the vision of the silent city of the Guelphs: windows closed; grayish alleys in which the grasses grew; a capuchin monk crossing a square; a bishop all in black, descending from a carriage which has stopped in front of a hospital, with a decrepit servant at the carriage door; a tower rising against a white and rainy sky; a clock slowly chiming the hour; and all of a sudden, at the bottom of a street, a miracle—the Duomo.

Had he not dreamt of taking refuge at the summit of that rock of tufa, crowned by monasteries? Had he not, more than once, sincerely aspired to that silence, that peace? And now this dream also returned to his soul, suggested by an effeminate languor on this warm and ashy April day. To have a mistress, or, to express it better, a sister-lover, who would be very devoted; to go away yonder and stay there.... To spend hours and hours in the cathedral, in front of it, around it; to go and gather roses in the gardens of the convents; to visit the sisters and eat preserves.... To love a great deal and sleep a great deal, in a soft bed, all veiled in virginal white, between two praying-stools....

He was seized once more by the languid nostalgia of the darkness, of the silence, of the closed and isolated retreat in which could blossom the most frail flowers, the most subtle thoughts, the most disturbing sensualities. All that dazzling sunlight on those lines, too distinct and too strong, appeared almost offensive to him. And the same as the image of the murmuring spring fascinates the brain of him who is thirsty, so he was haunted by the cool and meditative shadow of a Roman nave.

The summons of the bells did not reach as far as the Hermitage, or, at least, it only arrived at rare intervals on the swells of a light breeze. The church of the market town was too far away, commonplace perhaps, certainly without any reputation for beauty or ancient tradition. George wanted a retreat nearer at hand, and one worthy of him, where his mysticism might flower æsthetically as in that deep marble urn which enclosed the Dantesque visions of Luca Signorelli.

He recalled the abbey of Saint Clement at Casauria, seen in one of the distant days of his adolescence, and he remembered that he had visited it in the company of Demetrius. The recollection, like all recollections connected with his kinsman, was as distinct and precise as if it had dated only from the day before.