No More Learning

TO FRANZ LISZT.


What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a
sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating
the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But
physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a
vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious
meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and
fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing
complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant
lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the
spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a
mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollae, all
these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical
dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to
decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the
baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty
of the vine branches and the flowers?

The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and
venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty.
Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over
the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles
in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm,
unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the
feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance.
Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of
the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a
single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is
genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to
separate you?

Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the
pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your
wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City
or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles;
improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper
your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain,
philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of
immortality!




THE MARKSMAN.
As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the
neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a
few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most
ordinary and legitimate occupation of man? --So he gallantly offered his
hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to
whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great
part of his genius.

Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far
into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously,
mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and
said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air,
and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, _I will
imagine to myself that it is you! _"

He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly
decapitated.

Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his
inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand,
and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill! "




THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY.


"Cemetery View Inn"--"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but
it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace
and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound
philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton,
or some emblem of life's brevity. "

He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly
smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the
cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the
sunshine.

The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said
the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon
the corruption beneath.

The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things
infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from
a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of
champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.