Hyperion to Diotima
Ihave him, dearest Diotima!
Light is my breast and swift are my sinews, ha! and the future lures me, just as a clear watery deep lures us to leap in and cool our intemperate blood in the bracing bath. But that’s just idle prattle. We’re dearer to each other than ever, my Alabanda and I. We’re freer together, and yet there’s all fullness and deepness of life as before.
Oh, how right were those ancient tyrants to forbid friendships like ours! For then you're as strong as a demi-god and will thole no abuse in your sphere! —
It was evening when I entered his room. He had just put his work to one side, sat in a moonlit corner by the window, nursing his thoughts. I
stood in the dark, he didn’t recognize me, glanced perfunctorily in my direction. Heaven knows who he could have thought I was. ‘So how’s it going then?’ he cried. ‘Not too bad!’ I said. But my dissembling was in vain. My voice was full of suppressed rejoicing. ‘What's this?’ he started up, ‘is it you?’ ‘Of course it is, you blindling!’ I cried, and flew into his arms. ‘Oh now!’ cried Alabanda at last, ‘now there shall be change, Hyperion!’
‘T think so too,’ I said, and joyfully shook his hand.
‘Do you still know me then,’ Alabanda continued presently, ‘do you still have your old pious faith in Alabanda? Generous soul! things meanwhile haven’t gone as well for me as when I felt myself in the light of your love.’
‘What?’ I cried, ‘Alabanda asks this? That was not proudly spoken, Alabanda. But it’s the sign of the times that the old heroic nature goes begging for honour, and the living human heart, like an orphan, frets for a droplet of love.’
‘Dear boy!’ he cried; ‘I’ve aged, that’s all. This flabby life everywhere and the business with the old men whose disciple I tried to make you in Smyrna —’
‘Oh, that’s bitter,’ I cried; ‘even this man she’s dared to assail, the goddess of death, the nameless one that they call fate.’
Light was brought and we gazed at each other anew with gentle loving scrutiny. My dearest’s aspect was much changed since the days of hope. Like the mid-day sun from a blanched sky, his great ever-living eye gleamed at me from a faded face.
‘My good young friend!’ Alabanda cried, in friendly irritation at the gaze I gave him, ‘enough of the doleful looks, there’s a good fellow! I know full well I’ve gone downhill. O my Hyperion! I long so much for something great and true, and I hope to find it with you. You’ve grown beyond me, you're freer and stronger than you were and, believe it not! that makes me heartily glad. I’m the parched land and you come like a timely tempest — oh, it’s glorious that you’re here!’
‘Hush!’ I said, ‘you rob me of my senses, and we shouldn’t speak of ourselves at all until we’re in the thick of life, amidst the deeds.’
‘Quite right!’ cried Alabanda joyously, ‘it’s only when the hunting horn sounds that the hunters feel fully what they are.’
‘Will it soon begin then?’ I said.
‘It will, cried Alabanda, ‘and I tell you, dear heart! it should be quite a fire. Ha! may it reach right up to the tip of the tower and melt its vane, and rage and swirl about until the tower bursts and tumbles! — and don’t let yourself be put off by our allies. I know full well the good Russians would like to use us as their guns. But don’t you worry! once our stout Spartans have had the chance to find out who they are and what they can do, and when we’ve then conquered the Peloponnese, we'll laugh the North Pole in the face and build us a life of our own.’
‘A life of our own,’ I cried, ‘a new, an honourable life. Were we then born of the swamp, like a will-o’-the-wisp, or do we stem from the victors of Salamis? How is it then now? how have you become a maidservant, free nature of the Greeks? how have you sunk so low, race of my fathers, of whom the divine effigies of Jupiter and Apollo were once merely the copy? — But hear me, heaven of Ionia! hear me, earth of the fatherland, you that half-naked, like a beggar-woman, wrap yourself in the rags of your ancient glory, I will thole it no longer!’
‘O sun that reared us!’ cried Alabanda, ‘you shall be witness when under the toil our mettle grows, when under the blows of fate, like iron under the hammer, our project takes shape.’
We each of us kindled the other.
‘And let not a blot stick,’ I cried, ‘none of the grotesques the age smears us with, like the rabble on walls.’
‘Oh,’ cried Alabanda, ‘that’s why war is so good —’
‘Right, Alabanda,’ I cried, ‘like all great work where human energy and spirit alone helps and no crutch and no waxen wing. Then we shall cast off the slaves’ livery on which fate has stamped its brand for us —’
‘Then we'll have no more use for anything affected and forced,’ cried Alabanda, ‘then, just as in the Nemean races, we'll go unadorned, unfettered, naked to our goal.’
‘To our goal,’ I cried, ‘where the young free state dawns and from Greek earth the pantheon of all that’s beautiful rises.’
Alabanda was silent for a while. A fresh redness rose in his face and his form grew high, like a plant refreshed.
‘O youth! youth!’ he cried, ‘then will I drink from your fount, then will I live and love. I’m full of joy, heaven of the night,’ he went on as if drunk, walking to the window, ‘you arch over me like a bower of vine leaves, and your stars hang down like grapes.’