Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams (best books to read txt) 📖

me have had what lovers they

desired. For a kiss also is but the shadow of ecstasy. Then they

taught me in the lodge of the initiated how, though death might be

far, yet it was certain, and that at death the ghost of man wanders

stripped of all powers that it has gained in a place of shadows, and

that there remained yet to be found the secret of how man could go

into that place armed with passion and high delight and return to this

world when and as he would. He that has mastered love has mastered the

world, and he that masters death is lord of that other. Also as the

delights of mere bodily love are but shadows beside the rich joys of

the transforming imagination, so this itself is nothing compared to

the revivifying intoxication of the passage from life to death and

from death to life. And I set my purpose on this and laboured to

achieve it. But, while I brooded, the feet of Europe came nearer, and

the blind intelligence of Europe looked into the clear light of the

lodges and said: ‘It is dark, it is dark,’ and smelt wickedness. And

the religion of Europe came, and the learning of Europe. Then we the

adepts knew that, unless we made Africa free, in a little while Europe

would trample over us and we should be gone; and we resolved that

Europe must be stayed.”

 

He paused and looked out over the fields and hedges between which they

were passing. Then he went on more sharply and swiftly:

 

“Not that all the Europeans who came to Africa then had closed

themselves to wisdom. Some of the white officers sat in our lodges and

were initiated and entered into trance, and made themselves strong

men; there have always been some who would do this—Mottreux was one;

I met him in Uganda, and there was a French General in Morocco, and in

the south Simon Rosenberg’s great uncle. And there were others. All of

us set to work to unite Africa. We knew the lodges already in various

parts of the land, and we drew all these into one. And we spoke with

the chiefs and kings; little by little we brought them into our

purpose. The witch-doctors and sorcerers were ours already, though

they were in the outer circle. They gave us a means of ruling the

tribes, and little by little through many years we proposed to

ourselves to show the people of Africa the doctrines of freedom and

sacrifice and ecstasy, and I determined to strike at Europe by panic

and strength.”

 

Roger said abruptly, “Yet you seemed to wish that Mottreux hadn’t

fired.”

 

“Why, for myself,” Considine said, “if men without weapons come

against me I’ll meet them without weapons, heart to heart and strength

to strength. But shall I waste years imposing my will on the

Governments of Europe—and spend my energies so? It shall be a shorter

business. They proclaim guns and they shall have guns. But for the

adepts—If I wish Mottreux had not fired it was for his sake, not

mine.”

 

“Your friends may fire at you one day,” the intolerant voice of the

priest broke in, “when they want something you can’t give them.”

 

“Pieces of silver, for example,” Considine said, not turning his head.

 

The night lay about them; they swept on through it. Roger looked out

on the unseen countryside, and remembered the words that had brought

about his own meeting with the conquistador who sat opposite him. “I

will encounter darkness as a bride”—he was rushing towards that

darkness now. The dark closed them in, but they were speeding towards

the core of the darkness; the words themselves were swallowing them

up. All the miracles of the poets had rent and illumined and charged

that night, but the mingling light and dark which was in all easily

accepted verse lay far behind them now where the wild rapture of the

Africans surged above London. It was as if he had passed from them

from something which was himself, to something which was even more

himself. His very physical body was being carried in towards the

energy which created art. Art…the ancient word so often defiled

and made stupid stood for a greatness only partially explored. His

body felt the energy opposite him—an energy self-restrained, self

shaped. “And hug it in mine arms-” but if the arms could not bear it,

if the awful blasting power of that darkness should destroy him as the

glory of Zeus destroyed Semele? It was too late now for choice; he was

lost and saved at once. Onward and onward, away from the ironic

contemplations of the children of the wise world and from the

shrieking self-immolating abandonments of the more ignorant sons of

rapture; away from young perplexity and young greed; away from Isabel.

High-set, as the moon now rising, he saw her, knowing in her daily

experiences, her generous heart and her profound womanhood, all that

he must compass sea and land to find. This was the separation that had

been between man and woman from the beginning; this was fated, and

this must be willed. It was the everlasting reconciliation of the

everlasting contradiction-to will what was fated, to choose necessity.

Perfect for one moment in his heart, he knew the choice taken. He

willed necessity. All the poets had done this in their own degree—the

very making of their verse was this, their patience and their labour,

their silence till the utterance they so long desired rose into being

within them. This was the secret of royalty—the solemn anointed

figure of government to whom necessary obedience was willed, and so

through all orders of hierarchical life, secular or religious,

vocational in every kind, trade or profession, ceremonial or actual.

Love too was its image, but love and not the beloved was the

necessity; to love, and only to the beloved as the sacred means, the

honourable toil was given.

 

Something different was in the air; his nostrils felt, far off, the

smell of the sea.