Hyperion to Bellarmin
I’m building a grave for my heart, that it may rest; I spin a cocoon around myself, because everywhere it’s winter, in blissful memories I wrap myself against the storm.
Once we sat in Diotima’s garden under blossoming almond trees, together with Notara — that’s the friend with whom I was staying — and some others who also, like us, belonged to the mavericks in Calauria, and we spoke amongst other things of friendship.
I'd contributed little; for some time now I’d grown chary of making many words about things that first concern the heart, my Diotima had made me so taciturn —
‘When Harmodius and Aristogeiton lived,’ someone cried at last, ‘there was still friendship in the world.’ That delighted me too much for me to keep my peace.
‘They should weave you a crown for those words!’ I cried to him; ‘do you really have an inkling, do you have a likeness for the friendship of Aristogeiton and Harmodius? Forgive me! But by the Aether! you’d have to be Aristogeiton to feel how Aristogeiton loved, and it didn’t do to be afraid of lightning if a man would be loved with the love of Harmodius, for unless I’m much mistaken the terrible youth loved with the rigour of Minos. Few could withstand such a test, and it’s no easier to be the friend of a demi-god than, like Tantalus, to sit at the table of the gods. But there’s also nothing more glorious on earth than when as proud a pair as these are so in thrall to one another.
‘And this is my hope, my joy in lonely hours, that in the symphony of the world’s course tones as great and greater still must one day come again. Love brought forth millennia full of living men; friendship will bring them forth again. From childhood harmony the peoples once set out; with the harmony of spirits a new world history will begin.
From the happiness of plants men began and grew up, grew until they ripened; from then on they fermented forth unceasingly, both inwardly and outwardly, till now the human race, in infinite dissolution, lies there like a chaos, and all those who still feel and see are gripped by dizziness; but beauty takes flight from the life of men, up into the spirit; what was nature becomes the ideal, and though the tree may be withered and weathered from below, a fresh crown has still sprung from it and greens in the sun’s glory, as the stem once did in the days of youth; what was nature is the ideal. And it’s by this ideal, this rejuvenated godhead, that the few shall know each other and they are one, for the oneness is in them, and from them, these few, shall begin the second age of the world — I’ve said enough to make clear what I think.’
You should have seen Diotima then as she leapt up and held out both her hands to me and cried: ‘I’ve understood it, dearest, wholly understood, though it says so much.
‘Love brought forth the world, friendship will bring it forth again.
‘Oh then, you who are to come, you new dioscuri, then linger a little when you pass the place where Hyperion sleeps, linger mindfully over the ashes of the forgotten man, and say: “He’d be one of us were he here now.”
This I have heard, my Bellarmin! this I have known, and won’t go willingly to my death?
Yes! yes! I’ve had my dues already, I have lived. More joy a god could bear, but not me.