Oh, tell me, was ever poet so taken at his word before?
I thought of that then, and I shook like a leaf with the pain of it. Again and again I faced it, again and again I failed. It was physical pain, it was a thing that I could feel like a clutch at my heart. Was it not tearing out my very soul?
But the voice cried out to me: “You have been a slave to the world! You have been a slave to life! You have been crucified upon the cross of Art!”—Yes, and all things a man may sacrifice to Art but one thing; he may not sacrifice his soul!
“What!” it rushed on. “Have you so much faith in your art, and no faith in your God? Is it for Him that you have so much need to fear, to crouch and tremble, to plot and to plan—for Him? And when he made you, when he gave you your inspiration—his soul was faint?”
“He that sendeth forth the surging springtime, and covereth all the earth with new life! He that is the storm upon the sea, the wind upon the mountains, the sun upon the meadows! He that poureth the races from his lap! He that made the ages, the suns and the systems throughout all space—he that maketh them forever and smiteth them into dust again for play! He that is infinite, unthinkable, all-glorious, all-sufficient—He hath need of thee!
“He hath need that thy wonderful books should be written, that mankind should hear thy wonderful songs! Thy books, thy songs, that are to last through the ages! And when this earth shall have withered, when the sun shall have touched it with his fiery finger, when it shall roll through space as silent and bare as the desert, when the comet shall have smitten it and hurled it into dust, when the systems to which it belongs—the sun into which it melted—shall be no more known to time—where then will be thy books and thy songs? Where then will be these things for which thou didst crouch and tremble, didst plot and plan? For which thou didst lick the feet of vile men—for which thou didst give up thy God!”
And then I leaped up and stretched out my arms. “No! No!” I cried aloud: “I have done with it! Have I not fought this fight once, and did I not win it—this fight of The Captive? And can I not fight it and win it again? Away, away with you, world, for I am a free man again, and no slave! Soul am I, will am I, unconquerable, all-defying! In His arms I lie, in His breath I breathe, in His life I live—I am He! Fear I know not, death I know not, slavery and sin and doubt and fear I will never know again!”
Nay,—nay. Go thy road, proud world, and I go mine!—
In dem wogenden Schwall,
in dem tönenden Schall,
in des Welt-Athems
wehendem All!—
ertrinken—
versinken—
unbewusst—
höchste Lust!