Hyperion to Bellarmin
I wanted to get away from Germany now. I looked for nothing more amongst these people, I’d been hurt enough by merciless affronts, and didn’t want my soul to wholly bleed to death amongst such men. But the heavenly spring held me back; it was the only joy that remained to me, it was my last love, how could I still think of other things and leave the land where spring was too?
Bellarmin! I’d never so fully felt the old and firm and fateful saying that for the heart a new bliss rises when it holds out and endures through
the midnight of grief, and that, like nightingale’s singing in darkness, it’s in deep suffering that first divinely sounds for us the lifesong of the world. For now I lived with the blossoming trees as with genii, and the limpid streams flowing beneath them whispered, like voices of gods, the sorrow from my breast. And so it fared with me everywhere, dear friend! — when I rested in the grass and tender life greened all about me, when I climbed the warm hill where the rose grew wild around the stony path, and when I boated along the breezy banks of the river and round all the islands it tenderly hugs.
And when on many a morning, like the sick to the healing spring, I’d climb to the mountain’s summit through sleeping flowers, whilst to my side, sated with sweet slumber, the dear birds flew from the bush, in the half-light reeling and greedy for day, and the quickening breeze bore up already the prayers of the valleys, the voices of the herd, and the tones of the morning bells, and now the lofty light, divinely serene, came along its habitual path, enchanting the earth with immortal life, so that her heart warmed and all her children felt themselves once more — oh, like the moon, that still lingered in heaven to share in the joy of the day, I too then stood lonely above the plains, weeping tears of love down to the shores and the glancing waters, and long couldn’t turn away my gaze.
Or of an evening when I’d wander far into the valley, to the cradle of the spring where around me rushed the dark crowns of the oaks, and nature entombed me in her peace like a dying saint; when the earth was now a Shadow and viewless life whispered through the branches, through the treetops, and above the treetops the evening cloud stood still, a shining mountain range from which the rays of heaven flowed down to me like streams to quench the wanderer’s thirst —
‘O sun, O you breezes,’ I’d then call out, ‘with you alone my heart still lives, as amongst brothers!’
Thus I gave myself up more and more to blissful nature, and almost too endlessly. How gladly I’d have become a child to be closer to her! how gladly I’d have known less and become like the pure ray of light to be closer to her! Oh, to feel myself for a moment in her peace, her beauty, how much more that meant to me than years full of thinking, than all the ventures of all-venturing men! What Id learned, what Id done in my life melted away like ice, and all youth’s designs died away in me; and O you dear ones, who are distant, you dead and you living, how wholly one we were!
Once I sat far away in a field, by a burn, in the shade of ivy-green rocks and overhanging flowering bushes. It was the most beautiful noon I’ve known. Sweet breezes wafted and in morning freshness the land still shone and serene in its native aether smiled the light. The people had gone away to rest at the homely table from their toil; my love was alone with the spring, and there was an unfathomable longing in me. ‘Diotima,’ I cried, ‘where are you? oh, where are you?’ And it seemed to me I heard Diotima’s voice, the voice that used to gladden me in the days of joy —
‘Im with my kindred,’ she called, ‘with your kindred, those the erring human spirit does not know!’
A gentle terror seized me and all thought passed away in me.
‘O dear words from holy mouth,’ I cried, once again aroused, ‘dear riddle, can I grasp you?’
And one last time I looked back into the cold night of men and shuddered and wept for joy that I was so blissful, and words I spoke, it seems to me, but they were like the fire’s rush when up it flares and leaves behind the ashes —
“O you,” so I thought, “with your gods, nature! I’ve dreamed it out, the dream of human things, and say that only you live, and all that peaceless men have wrought and thought, it melts away like pearls of wax before your flames!
“How long have they done without you? oh, how long have their rabble abused you, called you vulgar, you and your gods, the quick, the blissfully serene!
“Men fall from you like rotting fruit, oh, let them perish, for then they return to your root, and I, O tree of life, may I green again with you and breathe around your crown with all your budding branches! peacefully and deeply, for we’ve all of us grown high from that seed of golden grain!
“You springs of the earth! you flowers! and you forests and you eagles and you fraternal light! how old and new is our love! — We are free, we don’t anxiously strive to be outwardly equal; how should not vary the modes of life? but we all love the aether, and deep in our innermost being we are all of us like.
“We too, we too are not parted, Diotima! and the tears for you haven’t grasped it. We are living tones, we sound together in your harmony, nature! who can split that asunder? who will part lovers? —
“O soul! soul! beauty of the world! indestructible! rapturing! with your eternal youth! you are; what then is death and all the woe of men? — Oh! many empty words have been made by these strange brethren. Yet all things proceed from pleasure, and everything ends in peace.
“The dissonances of the world are like lovers’ tiffs. There’s reconciliation in the middle of strife, and all that’s apart comes together again.
“The arteries part and return in the heart and one eternal glowing life is All.”
So I thought. More anon.