Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece

I will prove my breast on the joys of the past until it becomes like steel, I will practise on them until I’m invincible.

Ha! they may often fall like the stroke of a sword on my soul, but Ill play with the sword until I’m inured to it, [Il hold my hand in the fire until I can bear it like water.

I will not flinch; yes! I will be strong! I will conceal nothing from myself, I will conjure the most blissful of all my blisses from the grave.

It’s beyond belief that man should fear what is most beautiful; yet it is SO.

Oh, have I not fled a hundred times before these moments, this deadly delight of my memories, and averted my eyes like a child from lightning! and yet in the lush garden of the world there grows nothing lovelier than my joys, yet in heaven and on earth there flourishes nothing nobler than my joys.

But only to you, my Bellarmin, only to a pure free soul such as yours do I tell it. I will not be as prodigal as the sun with its rays, I will not cast my pearls before the foolish mob.

After that last soulful converse I knew myself less with each passing day. I felt there was a holy secret between me and Diotima.

I marvelled, dreamed. As if some blissful ghost had appeared to me at midnight and chosen me to walk with him, such was my state of mind.

Oh, it’s a strange mixture of blissfulness and melancholy when it’s thus revealed to us that we’re forever removed from ordinary existence.

Since then I’d never managed to see Diotima alone. There’d always have to be a third person to disturb us, keeping us apart, and the world lay between her and me like an endless void. Six days of dread passed in this way without my knowing anything of Diotima. It was as if the others around us lamed my senses, as if they killed all my outer life, so that there was no way my locked-in soul could reach across to her.

If I would seek her with my eye, all went black before me, if I would address a word to her, it was throttled in my throat.

Oh! the holy nameless longing often almost tore my breast asunder, and mighty love often raged in me like a fettered titan. So deeply, so wholly implacably my spirit had never strained against the chains forged for it by fate, against the iron, inexorable law of being divided, not being a single soul with its desirable other half.

The star-bright night had now become my element. Then when all was still, as in the depths of the earth where gold in secret grows, it was then the more beautiful life of my love began.

Now my heart indulged its right to play the poet. It told me how Hyperion’s spirit, before coming down to earth, had sported in pre- Elysium with his lovely Diotima, in divine childhood to the harmonies of the source, and beneath boughs such as we see the boughs of the earth when gilded they sparkle from golden streams.

And, like the past, the gates of the future opened in me.

Then we flew, Diotima and I, then we wandered like swallows from one springtime of the world to the next, through the vast realm of the sun and beyond to the other islands of heaven, to Sirius’ golden shores, into the ghostly vales of Arcturus —

Oh, this is truly a thing to be desired, drinking the joy of the world from a single cup with the beloved!

Drunk from the blissful lullaby I sang myself, I fell asleep amidst the glorious phantoms.

But when the life of the earth took fire again from the ray of the morning light, I looked up and sought the dreams of the night. Like the beautiful stars they had vanished, and only the joy of grief bore witness to them in my soul.

I sorrowed; but I believe that amongst the blissful there’s such sorrowing too. It was the harbinger of joy, this grief, it was the greying dawn from which would burgeon the countless roses of the blushing day. —

The glowing summer’s day had now driven everything into dark shade. Around Diotima’s house, too, all was still and empty, and at every window the envious curtains stood in my way.

I lived in thoughts of her. ‘Where are you,’ I thought, ‘where shall my lonely spirit find you, sweet maiden? Do you gaze into space and muse? Have you put your work to one side, are you resting your elbow on your knee and your head on your little hand, yielding yourself to lovely thoughts?

‘Let nothing disturb my tranquil one when she refreshes her heart with sweet fancies, let nothing handle this cluster of grapes and graze the quickening dew from its tender berries!’

So I dreamed. But whilst my thoughts sought her out between the walls of the house, my feet searched for her elsewhere, and before I was aware of it I was walking under the archways of the sacred wood behind Diotima’s garden, where I’d seen her for the first time. What was this? Since then I’d so often mingled with these trees, become more intimate with them, more at peace beneath them; now a force seized me, as if I were stepping into Diana’s shadows to die before the present deity.

Still I carried on. With every step I felt more wonderfully strange. I could have taken flight, so strongly did my heart propel me forwards; but it was as if there were lead in my shoes. My soul had hurried ahead, leaving my earthly limbs behind. I could no longer hear, and all shapes dimmed and shimmered before my eyes. My spirit was already with Diotima; the tree top played in the morning light, while the lower boughs still felt the chill of dawn.

‘Ah! my Hyperion!’ a voice now called out to me; I rushed towards it; ‘my Diotima! O my Diotima!’ beyond that I had no word and no breath, no consciousness.

Fade, fade, mortal life, beggarly business where the lonely spirit keeps inspecting the pennies it’s gathered and counting them over! we are all called to the joy of the godhead!

Here there’s a gap in my existence. I died, and awoke to find myself pressed to the heart of the heavenly maiden.

O life of love! how you had burst forth in her in full lovely bloom! as if sung into gentle slumber by blissful genii, the charming little head lay on my shoulder, smiled sweet peace, and opened up its aethereal eyes to me in joyful naive wonder, as if just now for the first time gazing out into the world.

Long we stood like this in lovely self-forgetful contemplation and neither knew what came over us, till at last too much joy heaped up in me, and amidst tears and sounds of rapture my lost speech began again, and roused my silently entranced Diotima fully back to life.

Then at last we looked again about us.

‘O my old familiar trees!’ cried Diotima, as if she hadn’t seen them for a long time, and the remembrance of her former lonely days played about her joys, lovingly, like shadows about the virgin snow when it blushes and glows in the joyous glory of evening.

‘Angel of heaven!’ I cried, ‘who can grasp you? who can say that he has fully comprehended you?’

‘Do you wonder,’ she replied, ‘that I’m so very fond of you. Dear man! proud and modest man! Do you think I too am one of those who can’t believe in you, have I not fathomed you, have I not found out the genius in his clouds? Veil yourself all you like and don’t see yourself; I will conjure you forth, I will —

‘But he’s already here, he’s burst forth like a star; he’s broken through the husk and stands there like the spring; like a crystal stream from the gloomy grotto he’s burst forth; this is not the dismal Hyperion, this is not the wild grief any more — O my own, my glorious boy!’

All this was like a dream to me. Could I believe in this miracle of love? could I? the joy would have killed me.

‘Divine Diotima!’ I cried, ‘are your words meant for me? can you so deny yourself, you so blissfully self-sufficient! how can you take such joy in me? Oh, I see it now, I know now what I’ve often sensed, man is a garment that often a god wraps round himself, a chalice into which heaven pours its nectar so that its children may taste of the best.’ —

‘Yes, yes!’ she broke in with an enthused smile, ‘your namesake, the glorious Hyperion of heaven is in you.’

‘Let me,’ I cried, ‘let me be yours, let me forget myself, let all life in me and all spirit fly only to you; to you alone, in blissful endless contemplation! O Diotima! so too I once stood before the shadowy divine effigy that my love fashioned for itself, before the idol of my lonely dreams; I nourished it lovingly; with my life I quickened it, with the hopes of my heart I refreshed it, warmed it, but it gave me nothing save what I'd given, and when I grew poor it left me poor, and now! now I have you in my arms and feel the breath of your breast, and feel your eyes in my eyes, this beautiful presence seeps into all of my senses, and I can sustain it, I hold what’s most glorious and tremble no more — yes! I’m truly not who I used to be, Diotima! I’m become like you, and divine now plays with divine, as children play among themselves. —’

‘But still you must grow a little calmer,’ she said.

‘You're right, you lovable creature!’ I joyfully cried, ‘else the graces won’t appear to me; else I'll not see in the sea of beauty its gentle lovely ripples. Oh, I will yet learn to overlook nothing about you. Just give me time!’

‘Flatterer!’ she cried, ‘but we’re finished for today, dear flatterer! the golden cloud of evening is my reminder. Oh, don’t be sad! Preserve for you and me the pure joy! Let it echo in you till the morrow, and don’t kill it with ill humour! — the flowers of the heart want loving care. Their roots are everywhere, but they themselves only flourish in cheerful weather. Farewell, Hyperion!’

She tore herself loose. My whole being flamed up in me as she faded from view in her glowing beauty.

‘O you!’ — I cried and rushed headlong after her and gave my soul into her hand in endless kisses.

‘God!’ she cried, ‘what will become of this!’

That hit me. ‘Forgive me, heavenly one!’ I said; ‘I’m going. Good night, Diotima! think of me a little!’

‘I will, she cried, ‘good night!’

And now not a word more, Bellarmin! It would be too much for my long-suffering heart. I’m shaken, I feel. But I will go out amongst the plants and trees and lay me down amongst them, and pray that nature bring me to such tranquillity.