I turned away my eyes and ears elsewhere; and my heart-strings throbbed with proud joy, because my eyes were undimmed by tears, and could perceive all lines and all colours, because my healthy, watchful ears could hear all sounds and all rhythms, because my spirit could rejoice boundlessly in fugitive appearances and know how to cultivate within itself very different forms of melancholy, how to find the sweetest value of life in the rapidity of its metamorphoses and in the denseness of its mysteries. “Oh manifold Beauty of the World,” I used then to pray, “not to thee alone do my praises ascend; not to thee alone, but also to my forefathers, to those also who, remote ages ago, understood how to enjoy thee, and transmitted their fervid and rich blood to me. Praised be they now and for ever, for the beautiful wounds which they inflicted, for the beautiful fires they kindled, for the beautiful goblets they emptied, for the beautiful garments which clothed them, for the beautiful palfreys they caressed, for the beautiful women they enjoyed, for all their slaughter, their intoxication, their magnificence, their luxury, let them be praised; because thus did they form in me those senses in which thou canst widely and deeply reflect thyself, oh Beauty of the World, as in five wide and deep seas!”
In the meantime, the poets, discouraged and erring, having exhausted their store of rhymes in evoking images of other days, in weeping over their own dead illusions, and in counting the colours of the dying leaves, were asking, some ironically, some seriously: “What can be our function now? Are we to exalt universal suffrage in senile rhymes? Are we to hasten with the breathlessness of hexameters the fall of the king, the advent of republics, the accession of the people to power? Is there no demagogue Cleophontes who manufactures lire in Rome, as in Athens of old? For a modest sum we might persuade the incredulous, on his very instruments tuned by himself, that power, right, thought, wisdom, light, are to be found in the masses....”
But not one among them, more generous and more eager than the rest, arose to answer: “Defend Beauty! That is your only function. Defend the vision that is within you. Since mortals have now ceased to bear honour and reverence to the singer scholars of the Muse that favours them, as Odysseus said, defend yourselves with all your weapons, even with jests, if such are of more use than invectives. Be careful to sharpen the point of your scorn with the bitterest poison. Let your sarcasm have such corrosive strength that it may reach to the very marrow and destroy it. Brand to the very bone the stupid brows of those who would put an exact mark on each soul, as on a household utensil, and would make human heads alike as the heads of nails under the blow of the hammer. Let your frenzied laughter rise to the very heaven, when you hear the stablemen of the Great Beast vociferating in the Assembly. For the sake of the glory of Mind proclaim and demonstrate that their sayings are not less ignoble than the groans of the flatulent peasant. Proclaim and demonstrate that their hands—to which your father Dante would give the same epithet as he gave to the nails of Thais—may be fit to gather manure, but are not worthy of being raised to sanction a law in the Assembly. Defend the Thought which they threaten, the Beauty which they outrage! A day will come when they will attempt to burn the books, shatter the statues, rip up the canvases. Defend the ancient generous work of your masters and the future work of your disciples against the rage of these drunken slaves. Do not despair because ye are few. Ye possess the supreme knowledge and the supreme power of the world—the Word. Words may have more murderous power than a chemical formula. Oppose destruction resolutely with destruction.”
And the patricians, stripped of their authority in the name of equality, and looked upon as ghosts from a world which has disappeared for ever; unfaithful, the greater part of them at least, to their lineage, and ignorant or forgetful of the art of mastery professed by their forefathers, were also asking: “What can be our function now? Are we to deceive the age and ourselves by attempting to revive some slender hope among faded memories of the past, under those vaulted roofs storied with sanguine mythology, which are too vast for our restricted breathing? Or must we recognise the great dogma of Eighty-nine, and open the porticoes of our courts to popular applause, illuminate our travertine balconies for State festivals, associate with Jewish bankers, exercise our small share of sovereignty by filling up the voting ticket with the names of men of the middle classes, of our tailors, our hatters, our bootmakers, our money-lenders, and our lawyers?”
A few among them—ill-inclined for peaceful renunciation, elegant boredom, and barren irony—answered: “Train yourselves as you train your race-horses, and wait for the opportunity. Learn the method of asserting yourselves and strengthening your own persons, as you have learned that of winning on the turf. By strength of will force all your energies, even your stormiest passions and darkest vices, into a straight line and towards a definite aim. Be assured that the essence of personality far exceeds all accessory attributes in value, and that inward sovereignty is the chief mark of the aristocrat. Believe only in force tempered by long discipline. Force is the first law of nature; it is indestructible, not to be abolished. Discipline is the supreme virtue of the freeman. The world can be based only on force, as truly in civilised ages as in the epochs of barbarism. If all the races of the earth were destroyed by another deluge, and new generations were to arise from the stones, as in the old fable, men would begin to fight amongst themselves as soon as they had issued from their mother earth, until one of them the strongest, should succeed in mastering the others. Wait, therefore, and prepare for your opportunity. Fortunately, the State built on foundations of popular suffrage and equality, cemented by fear, is not only an ignoble, but also a precarious structure. The State ought to be nothing less than an institution perfectly adapted to promote the gradual elevation of a privileged class towards an ideal form of existence. Therefore, upon the economic and political equality to which democracy aspires, you must go on forming a new oligarchy, a new realm of force; and before long, sooner or later, you will succeed in taking the reins into your own hands again, so as to rule the multitude for your own profit. Indeed, you will have little difficulty in bringing back the common herd to its obedience. The masses always remain slaves; they have a natural impulse to stretch out their wrists to the fetters. The sense of liberty will never to the end of time exist in them. Do not be deceived by their vociferations and their hideous contortions; but always remember that the soul of the Multitude is in the power of Panic. It will be your policy, therefore, when the opportunity comes, to provide yourselves with cutting whips, to assume an imperious mien, to plan some humorous stratagem. When the cunning Ulysses was ranging the field to call in every one to the council, if he came across a noisy plebeian, he used to chastise him with his sceptre, scolding him thus: 'Silence, silence, coward, pusillanimous one, thing of naught in the council.’ The noble demagogue Alcibiades, who was more versed than any in the government of the Great Beast, began one of his orations on the expedition into Sicily thus: 'This command, oh Athenians—this command belongs to me rather than to any one else, and I hold myself worthy of this command.’ But truly there is no teaching more profound and more suitable for you than that given by Herodotus in the beginning of the book of Melpomene. Here it is: 'The Scythians, having spent twenty-eight years away from their own country in ruling over Upper Asia, and desirous, after such a long interval, to return home, found that to do so involved hardships no less great than those they had suffered in the Median war. A great and hostile army barred their entrance. And this came to pass because the Scythian women, having been left so long without men of their own race, had given themselves to their slaves. And from the slaves and the women had sprung a generation of young men who, conscious of their origin, had set themselves against those who were returning from Media; and in order to hold the pass, had first of all made an entrenchment stretching from the mountains of Taurus to the Mæotian marsh, which is very wide. They then proceeded to repulse the attempted assault of the Scythians, defending themselves with many deeds of valour; and as, after various conflicts, the Scythians found they could make no advance by fighting, one of them began to speak thus: Oh Scythians, why do we labour thus? By fighting against our slaves we weaken ourselves by the number of our deaths, and by killing them we only reduce the number of our future subjects. Wherefore it seems to me fitting that we should put aside our spears and darts, and that each of us should be armed only with his horsewhip, and thus we should confront these slaves. Because up till now, seeing us march against them in arms, they have no doubt thought themselves our equals, and sons of equals; but when they see us coming against them wielding whips instead of arms, they will feel at once that they are our slaves, and they will not dare to resist us any longer. The Scythians followed this advice; and their adversaries, thunderstruck by the change, ceased fighting and took to flight. Thus did the Scythians win back their country.’ Oh ye masters without mastery, think upon it.”
Perhaps in my busy solitude—although I feared neither sickness, nor madness, nor death, having within me that tutelary flame of pride, of thought, and of faith—perhaps there lay hidden beneath my melancholy a real need for communion with some kindred spirit as yet unknown, or with some circle of minds disposed to care sincerely and passionately for those things for which I so passionately cared. It seemed to me that this need was betrayed by a mental habit I had of casting my theory of ideas and images into a concrete oratorical or lyrical form, almost as if for an imaginary audience. Warm bursts of eloquence and poetry would suddenly flood my being, and silence was at times a burden to my overflowing soul.
Then, to comfort my solitude, I thought of giving corporeal form to that dæmon in whom, according to my first master’s teaching, I believed as the infallible pledge which was to lead me to achieve the integrity of my moral being. I thought of committing to a noble, masterful mouth, red with the same blood as mine, the duty of repeating to me, “Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be.”
Among the figures of my ancestors one above all others is most dear to me, and sacred as a votive image. He is the noblest and the most brilliant flower of my race, represented by the brush of a divine artist. It is the portrait of Alessandro Cantelmo, Count of Volturara, painted by Da Vinci between the years 1493 and 1494, at Milan, where Alessandro, attracted by the unheard-of magnificence of that Sforza who wished to turn the Lombard city into a New Athens, had taken up his abode with a company of men-at-arms.
There is nothing in the world that I prize so much, nor was treasure ever guarded with more passionate jealousy. I am never weary of thanking fortune for having caused such a noble figure to brighten my life, and for having granted me the incomparable luxury of such a secret. “If thou possess a beautiful object, remember that every glance cast on it by another is a usurpation of thy possession. The joy of possession is diminished when it is divided, therefore do thou refuse to share it. They say that some one declined to enter a public museum lest his glance should be mingled with that of strangers. Now, if thou do indeed possess a beautiful object, enclose it within seven doors, and cover it with seven veils.” And a veil hangs over the magnetic face; but the dream in it is so profound, the fire in it is so powerful, that at times the woven stuff trembles with the vehemence of the breathing.