Stray leaves from strange literature; and, Fantastics and other fancies

by Lafcadio Hearn

"HIS HEART IS OLD"[32]

Chrystoblepharos—Elikoblepharos—eyelids grace-kissed—the eyes of Leucothea—the dreaming marble head of the Capitoline Museum—the face of the girl-nurse of the wine-god, with a spray of wine-leaves filleting her sweet hair—that inexpressible, inexplicable, petrified dream of loveliness, which well enables us to comprehend old monkish tales regarding the infernal powers of enchantment possessed by the antique statues of those gods who Tertullian affirmed were demons. For in howsoever thoughtless a mood one may be when he first visits the archæological shrine in which the holiness of antique beauty reposes, the first glorious view of such a marble miracle compels the heart to slacken its motion in the awful wonder of that moment. One breathes low, as in sacred fear lest the vision might dissolve into nothingness—as though the witchery might be broken were living breath to touch with its warm moisture that wonderful marble cheek. Vainly may you strive to solve the secret of this magical art; the exquisite mystery is divine—human eye may never pierce it; one dare not laugh, dare not speak in its presence—that beauty imposes silence by its very sweetness; one may pray voicelessly, one does not smile in presence of the Superhuman. And when hours of mute marveling have passed, the wonder seems even newer than before. Shall we wonder that early Christian zealots should have dashed these miracles to pieces, maddened by the silent glamour of beauty that defied analysis and seemed, indeed, a creation of the Master-Magician himself?

And the Centauress, in cameo, kneeling to suckle her little one;—the supple nudity of exquisite ephebi turning in eternal dance about the circumference of wondrous vases;—gentle Psyche, butterfly-winged, weeping on a graven carnelian;—river-deities in relief eternally watching the noiseless flow of marble waves from urns that gurgle not;—joyous Tritons with knotty backs and seaweed twined among their locks;—luxurious symposia in sculpture, such as might have well suggested the Oriental fancy of petrified cities, with their innumerable pleasure-seekers suddenly turned to stone;—splendid processions of maidens to the shrine of the Maiden-Goddess, and Bacchantes leading tame panthers in the escort of the Rosy God: all these and countless other visions of the dead Greek world still haunted me, as I laid aside the beautiful and quaint volume of archæological learning that inspired them—bound in old fashion, and bearing the imprint of a firm that had ceased to exist ere the close of the French Revolution—a Rococo Winkelmann. And still they circled about me, with the last smoke-wreaths of the last evening pipe, on the moonlight balcony, among the shadows.

Then as I dreamed the beautiful dead world seemed to live again, in a luminous haze, in an Elysian glow. The processions of stone awoke from their sleep of two thousand years, and moved and chanted;—marble dreams became lithe flesh;—the phantom Arcadia was peopled with shapes of unclad beauty;—I saw eyelids as of Leucothea palpitating under the kisses of the Charities—the incarnate loveliness superhuman of a thousand god-like beings, known to us only by their shadows in stone;—and the efflorescent youth of that vanished nation, whose idols were Beauty and Joy—who laughed much and never wept—whose perfect faces were never clouded by the shadow of a grief, nor furrowed by the agony of thought, nor wrinkled by the bitterness of tears.

I found myself in the honeyed heart of that world, where all was youth and joy—where the very air seemed to thrill with new happiness in a paradise newly created—where innumerable flowers, of genera unknown in these later years, filled the valley with amorous odor of spring. But I sat among them with the thoughts of the Nineteenth Century, and the heart of the Nineteenth Century, and the garb of the Nineteenth Century, which is black as a garb of mourning for the dead. And they drew about me, seeing that I laughed not at all, nor smiled, nor spoke; and low-whispering to one another, they murmured with a silky murmur as of summer winds:

"His heart is old!"

And I pondered the words of the Ecclesiast: "Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.... It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting; and the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth." But I answered nothing; and they spake again, whispering, "His heart is old!" And one with sweet and silky-lidded eyes, lifted her voice and spake:

"O thou dreamer, wherefore evoke us, wherefore mourn us—seeing that there is no more joy in the world?

"Ours was a world of light and of laughter and of flowers, of loveliness and of love. Thine is smoke-darkened and sombre; there is no beauty unveiled; and men have forgotten how to laugh.