The Triumph of Death

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

She smiled. Once more the suffering transfigured her, gave her greater seductive charm.

He said again:

"How long it is since you gave me a kiss!"

They embraced.

"Now, sleep a little," he begged, tenderly.

His sentiment of love seemed renewed in him, after so many horrible and strange things that had oppressed them. He began once more to isolate himself, to recoil within himself, to repulse all communion that was not with the elect of his heart. His mind freed itself with an inconceivable rapidity from all the phantoms created during the period of the mystic illusion, the ascetic ideal; he threw off the yoke of that "divine" which he had tried to substitute for his inert will, from the very hopelessness of arousing it. He now felt for "faith" the same disgust that he had felt in the church for the unclean beasts that crawled in the sacred dust. He saw again the fat and pale hands of the priests who received the offerings, the continual balancing of the black figures behind the closed railing. All that was ignoble, denied the presence of that Lord whom he had hoped to know in an annihilating revelation. But, finally, the great proof had been accomplished. He had experienced the material contact with the inferior classes of his race, and nothing had resulted from it for him but a sentiment of invincible horror. His being had no roots in that ground, could have nothing in common with that multitude which, like most species of animals, had attained its definite type, had definitely incarnated in its brutish flesh permanency of habit. For how many centuries, during how many generations, had this immutable type been perpetuated? So the human species had an absolutely inert basis which persisted beneath the undulations of moving superior elements.

So the ideal type of humanity was not in a distant future, at the unknown end of a progressive evolution; it could only manifest itself on the crest of the waves, in the most elevated beings. He perceived now that, in trying to find himself entirely and to recognize his veritable essence by means of an immediate contact with the race from which he had sprung, he deceived himself like a man who attempts to determine the form, dimension, direction, speed, and power of a sea wave by the action of the subjacent volume of water. The experiment had not succeeded. He was as much a stranger to this multitude as to a tribe of Oceanians; he was as much a stranger to his country, to the land of his birth, to his fatherland, as he was to his family and to his hearth. He should forever renounce that vain search for the fixed state, the stable support, the assured help. "The sensation I have of my being resembles that which a man would have, who, condemned to hold himself upright on a ceaselessly oscillating and unbalanced surface, would feel his support ceaselessly fail him, no matter where he placed his foot." He had used this vision once to paint his perpetual anxiety. But why, since he wished to preserve life, did he not become, by dint of method, sufficiently strong and agile to become habituated to preserving his equilibrium amid the diverse impulsions, and to dance even on the edge of the precipice, freely and boldly? In truth, he wished to preserve life. What proved that, as far as evidence could, was his successive experiments themselves. In him a deep instinct, resting intact up to then, arose with ever new artifices against mortal languor. That ascetic dream which he had constructed with such richness, trimmed with such elegance, was it anything else than an expedient for combating death? He himself, since the beginning, had set himself the dilemma: either to follow the example of Demetrius, or to give himself to Heaven. He had chosen Heaven, to preserve his life. "Apply henceforth your mind to acquire the disgust of truth and certitude, if you wish to live. Renounce searching experience. Respect the veils. Believe in the visible line and in the proffered Word. Do not seek beyond the world any of the appearances that your marvellous senses have created. Adore the illusion."

And he already found a charm in this fleeting hour. The profundity of his conscience and the infinite extension of his sensibility filled him with pride. The innumerable phenomena that, instant by instant, succeeded one another in his inner world made the comprehensive power of his soul appear to be illimitable. And that fleeting hour during which he believed he could discover hidden connections and secret analogies between the representations of Chance and his own sentiment possessed, in reality, a singular charm for him.

In the distance could be heard the confused murmur of the wild crowd from which he had just extricated himself; and that confused murmur aroused in him, in flashes, the vision of a great, sinister furnace in which demons were struggling in a tragic combat. And above this incessant murmur he distinguished also, at every breath of the breeze, the delicious rustling of the branches that shielded his meditation and Hippolyte's repose. Hippolyte was resting in a doze, her mouth half-open, scarcely breathing; and a light moisture dampened her brow. Her hands were folded in her lap, ungloved, pale; and in imagination George saw between the fingers the "plucked-out tuft of hair." Just as this tuft of hair appeared and disappeared in the strong light, on the burning soil, appeared also the phantom of the epileptic, he who had unexpectedly fallen at the doorway writhing beneath the grasp of two men who were trying to force open and place a key in his mouth. This phantom appeared and disappeared, as if it were the dream of the sleeping woman, and rendered visible. "What if she awoke and the epilepsy returned?" thought George, with an inner shudder. "The image that forms in my brain is perhaps transmitted to me from her. I see perhaps her dream. And her dream is perhaps caused by an organic disturbance that commences and will increase as far as an attack. Is not a dream sometimes the presage of a malady that is breeding?" He dwelt for a long time in the meditation of these mysteries of the animal substance, vaguely perceived. Against the diffuse depths of this physical sensibility, already enlightened by the five superior senses, gradually appeared other intermediary senses, whose very subtle perceptions disclosed to him a world up to then unknown. Was it impossible that Hippolyte's latent malady furnished him with a condition favorable for communicating with her in some extraordinary manner?

He regarded her attentively, as he had done in bed on that first day, already so distant. He saw the light shadows of the hanging branches tremble on her face. He heard the continual tumult that spread out from the Sanctuary in the infinite light. Sadness again fell on his heart; lassitude crushed him to earth again. He leaned his head against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes, without thinking of anything.