His last production augurs well for him, because it indicates that finally he will bathe in the pool of the five porches at Jerusalem, the World War having troubled its water instead of an angel. November 30, 1919, he published in the most widely circulated and influential newspaper of Central Italy, the Resto del Carlino, an article entitled "Amore e Morte" ("Love and Death"), which sets forth that he has had that experience which the Christian calls "seeing a great light, knowing a spiritual reincarnation," and which those whom Papini has been supposed to represent call a pitiable defalcation, a spiritual bankruptcy.
On February 21, 1913, he proclaimed in the Costanzi Theatre of Rome that "in order to reach his power man must throw off religious faith, not only Christianity or Catholicism, but all mystic, spiritualistic, theosophic faiths and beliefs." Now he has discovered Jesus. In his literary ruminations he has come upon the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which set forth the purpose and teachings of our Lord and which have convinced countless living and dead of His divinity. We must forswear egocentrism; we must stop making obeisance to materialism; we must cease striving for success, comfort, or power. Such efforts led to the massacre of yesterday, to the agony of to-day, and are conditioning our eternal perdition. Salvation is within ourselves, the Kingdom of Heaven is within our hearts, he who seeks it without is a blind man led by a blind guide. The road over which we must travel is bordered on either side by seductive pastures from which gush life-giving springs, topped with luxurious trees of soul-satisfying color that protect from the blazing sun or the congealing wind, and on either side are pathways so softly cushioned that even the most tender feet may tread them without fear of wound or blister. The sign-posts to this road are the four little volumes written two thousand years ago.
No one unfamiliar with that strange disorder of the mind called the manic depressive psychosis can fully understand Signor Papini. There is no one more sane and businesslike than the former Futurist, yet the reactions of his supersensitive nature have some similarity with this mental condition present, in embryo, in many people. In that mysterious malady there is a period of emotional, physical, and intellectual activity that surmounts every obstacle, brushes aside every barrier, leaps over every hurdle. During its dominancy the victim respects neither law not convention; the goal is his only object. He doesn't always know where he is going and he isn't concerned with it; he is concerned only with going. When the spectator sees the road over which he has travelled on his winged horse he finds it littered with the débris that Pegasus has trampled upon and crushed.
This period of hyperactivity is invariably followed by a time of depression, of inadequacy, of emotional barrenness, of intellectual sterility, of physical impotency, of spiritual frigidity. The sun from which the body and the soul have had their warmth and their glow falls below the horizon of the unfortunate's existence and he senses the terrors of the dark and the rigidity of beginning congelation. Then, when hope and warmth have all but gone and only life, mere life without color or emotion remains, and the necessity of living forever in a world perpetually enshrouded in darkness with no differentiation in the débris remaining after the tornado, then the sun gradually peeps up, illuminates, warms, revives, fructifies the earth, and the sufferer becomes normal—normal save in the moments or hours of fear when he contemplates having again to brave the hurricane or to breast the deluge. But once the wind begins to blow with a velocity that bespeaks the readvent of the tornado, he throws off inhibition and goes out in the open, holds up the torch that shall light the whole world, and with his megaphone from the top of Helicon shouts: "This way to the revolution."
In a relative sense, this is the mode of Signor Papini. He is fascinated by the beauty and perfections of an individual or of a school and he will enroll himself a member, but before he gets thoroughly initiated he gets word of another individual or another school which must be investigated. In the intoxication he defames and often slays his previous mistress. Thus his whole life has been given to the task of discovering a new philosophy, a new poetry, a new romance, a new prophecy, and their makers. In the ecstasy of discovery he cannot resist smashing the idol of yesterday that his pedestal may be free for the more worthy one of to-day, and he cannot inhibit the impulse to rush off to the composing-rooms of La Voce to register his emotions in print.
In his desire to be famous he reminds one of those individuals who would be liked by every one, and who will do anything save cease making the effort. Pretending that he loves to have people hate him, he does not, but he would rather have hate and disparagement than indifference or neglect. He desires power, that unattainable he will be satisfied with notoriety. He does not agree with a fellow poet that
"On stepping stones we reach to higher dreams,
And ever high and higher must we climb,
Casting aside our burdens as we go,
Till we have reached the mountain-tops sublime,
Where purged from care and dross the free winds flow."
Were he a genius and at the same time had the industry that he has displayed, he would be the equal of H. G. Wells, possibly the peer of Bernard Shaw, but he is neither. He is simply a clever, industrious, versatile, sensitive, emotional man of forty, whose mental juvenility tends to cling to him. He has so long habituated himself to overestimation and his admiring friends have been so injudicious in praising his productions for qualities which they do not possess and neglecting praiseworthy qualities which they do possess, that he is like an object under a magnifying-glass out of focus.
But, as Papini himself says, he has not finished. He is still comparatively a young man and the world awaits his accomplishment. If the function he has chosen is that of agitation rather than construction, of preparation rather than of building, he cannot be totally condemned for that. His environment is in a condition where much destruction is necessary before anything real can be evolved. And as the apostle of this destruction Papini must be accepted. He stands as a prophet, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way—'"; and the generations will show whether it is indeed a highway he has opened.