Sacred and Profane Love. Arnold Bennett
At the first mouthful I thought the liquid was somewhat sinister and disagreeable, but immediately afterwards I changed my opinion, and found it ingratiating, enticing, and stimulating, and yet not strong.
‘Do you like it?’ he asked.
I nodded, and drank again.
‘It is wonderful,’ I answered. ‘What do you call it?’
‘Men call it absinthe,’ he said.
‘But—’
I put the glass on the mantelpiece and picked it up again.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he soothed me. ‘I know what you were going to say. You have always heard that absinthe is the deadliest of all poisons, that it is the curse of Paris, and that it makes the most terrible of all drunkards. So it is; so it does. But not as we are drinking it; not as I invariably drink it.’
‘Of course,’ I said, proudly confident in him. ‘You would not have offered it to me otherwise.’
‘Of course I should not,’ he agreed. ‘I give you my word that a few drops of absinthe in a tumbler of water make the most effective and the least harmful stimulant in the world.’
‘I am sure of it,’ I said.
‘But drink slowly,’ he advised me.
I refused the sandwiches. I had no need of them. I felt sufficient unto myself. I no longer had any apprehension. My body, my brain, and my soul seemed to be at the highest pitch of efficiency. The fear of being maladroit departed from me. Ideas—delicate and subtle ideas—welled up in me one after another; I was bound to give utterance to them. I began to talk about my idol Chopin, and I explained to Diaz my esoteric interpretation of the Fantasia. He was sitting down now, but I still stood by the fire.
‘Yes, he said, ‘that is very interesting.’
‘What does the Fantasia mean to you?’ I asked him.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Nothing!’
‘Nothing, in the sense you wish to convey. Everything, in another sense. You can attach any ideas you please to music, but music, if you will forgive me saying so, rejects them all equally. Art has to do with emotions, not with ideas, and the great defect of literature is that it can only express emotions by means of ideas. What makes music the greatest of all the arts is that it can express emotions without ideas. Literature can appeal to the soul only through the mind. Music goes direct. Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. Therefore all I can say of the Fantasia is that it moves me profoundly. I know how it moves me, but I cannot tell you; I cannot even tell myself.’
Vistas of comprehension opened out before me.
‘Oh, do go on,’ I entreated him. ‘Tell me more about music. Do you not think Chopin the greatest composer that ever lived? You must do, since you always play him.’
He smiled.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I do not. For me there is no supremacy in art. When fifty artists have contrived to be supreme, supremacy becomes impossible. Take a little song by Grieg. It is perfect, it is supreme. No one could be greater than Grieg was great when he wrote that song. The whole last act of The Twilight of the Gods is not greater than a little song of Grieg’s.’
‘I see,’ I murmured humbly. ‘The Twilight of the Gods—that is Wagner, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Don’t you know your Wagner?’
‘No. I—’
‘You don’t know Tristan?’
He jumped up, excited.
‘How could I know it?’ I expostulated. ‘I have never seen any opera. I know the marches from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, and “O Star of Eve!” ’
‘But it is impossible that you don’t know Tristan!’ he exclaimed. ‘The second act of Tristan is the greatest piece of love-music—No, it isn’t.’ He laughed. ‘I must not contradict myself. But it is marvellous—marvellous! You know the story?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Play me some of it.’
‘I will play the Prelude,’ he answered.
I gulped down the remaining drops in my glass and crossed the room to a chair where I could see his face. And he played the Prelude to the most passionately voluptuous opera ever written. It was my first real introduction to Wagner, my first glimpse of that enchanted field. I was ravished, rapt away.
‘Wagner was a great artist in spite of himself,’ said Diaz, when he had finished. ‘He assigned definite and precise ideas to all those melodies. Nothing could be more futile. I shall not label them for you. But perhaps you can guess the love-motive for yourself.’
‘Yes, I can,’ I said positively. ‘It is this.’
I tried to hum the theme, but my voice refused obedience. So I came to the piano, and played the theme high up in the treble, while Diaz was still sitting on the piano-stool. I trembled even to touch the piano in his presence; but I did it.
‘You have guessed right,’ he said; and then he asked me in a casual tone: ‘Do you ever play pianoforte duets?’
‘Often,’ I replied unsuspectingly, ‘with my aunt. We play the symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, and overtures, and so on.’
‘Awfully good fun, isn’t it?’ he smiled.
‘Splendid!’ I said.
‘I’ve got Tristan here arranged for pianoforte duet,’ he said. ‘Tony, my secretary, enjoys playing it. You shall play part of the second act with me.’
‘Me! With you!’
‘Certainly.’
‘Impossible! I should never dare! How do you know I can play at all?’
‘You have just proved it to me,’ said he. ‘Come; you will not refuse me this!’
I wanted to leave the vicinity of the piano. I felt that, once out of the immediate circle of his tremendous physical influence, I might manage to escape the ordeal which he had suggested. But I could not go away. The silken nets of his personality had been cast, and I was enmeshed. And if I was happy, it was with a dreadful happiness.
‘But, really, I can’t play with you,’ I said weakly.
His response was merely to look up at me over his shoulder. His beautiful face was so close to mine, and it expressed such a naïve and strong yearning for my active and intimate sympathy, and such divine frankness, and such perfect kindliness, that I had no more will to resist. I knew I should suffer horribly in spoiling by my coarse amateurishness the miraculous finesse of his performance, but I resigned myself to suffering. I felt towards him as I had felt during the concert: that he must have his way at no matter what cost, that he had already earned the infinite gratitude of the entire world—in short, I raised him in my soul to a god’s throne; and I accepted humbly the great, the incredible honour he did me. And I was right—a thousand times right.
And in the same moment he was like a charming child to me: such is always in some wise the relation between the creature born to enjoy and the creature born to suffer.
‘I’ll try,’ I said; ‘but it will be appalling.’
I laughed and shook my head.
‘We shall see how appalling it will be,’ he murmured, as he got the volume of music.
He fetched a chair for me, and we sat down side by side, he on the stool and I on the chair.
‘I’m afraid my chair is too low,’ I said.
‘And