There was the light of joy
The miracle of life had started growing dynamic. There was the light of joy in the emotions. The light of joy had in it the photonic weight.
“Your mind and my heart,” said Françesca, “agree with each other, your mind that measures and my heart that feels, they have a wonderful identity. But beyond mind and heart there is something else, something most precious, that which may give rise to measures and feelings, yet transcending them both.
“You may count a number of octaves in a musical piece, or do the scanning of a beautiful poem in a blank verse form without rhymes, an end-stopped pentametric composition. But finally what counts is the source of inspiration.
“And yet beyond inspiration is the consciousness of the artist or of the poet. The beauty and knowledge of that consciousness are what lifts up the art or a poem to the realms of purest sun-bright gold. It is that consciousness which decides everything.”
“Absolutely perfect, most harmonious, light gathered in light,” concurred Leon. “And look at this nugget: I am visited by angels and devils, and I hold them bound. When it is an angel I recite a new prayer, and he gets excited; when it is a devil I commit an ultra-modern sin and he applauds my actions. But when I pick up my lyre the musician hears the silence of future music.
“We have been praying old prayers and committing old sins also. That is what the human Art is doing. The critic doesn’t understand it.”
Françesca went farther yet. “Emotional events presented most unemotionally, — that could be the real basis of successful æsthetics. You say that non-involvement is the basis of success in any field. One is not even a witness of the happening but is just a passionless reporter, mirroring faithfully the entire scene, without any addition or subtraction. But that starts appearing to me acceptable. That is the mirroring of the faithfullest kind.”
“Let me give an example or two of this unconcern, unconcern not in a negative sense; it is a sense of detachment, of non-involvement,” responded Leon with great composure, a dignity that comes from upbringing in the Academy. “This art might need strenuous effort, in fact it does, but in it is gathered the calm diamond lustre not only of æsthetic purity and sublimity, but of the vow of art to its soul.”
“I am talking about the suicide-scene of Cleopatra,” emphasised Leon. This is an extraordinary description, marvellous. A Roman has vanquished a Roman and the stage is set for a lifeful suicide; the pretty worm of Nilus has arrived in a box and its biting shall prove immortal. Cleopatra must give it a royal reception:
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip…
…Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath.Husband 1 come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. – So, – have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips…
Have 1 the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part.
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch.
Which hurts and is desir’d…
…Come, thou mortal wretch.
With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie: poor venomous fool,
Be angry, and despatch.
“There is nothing austere here; instead some imperial glow of life’s passion illumines more than destroys the nobility that stands above death in death. There is tension and drama but it is so intense and so dramatic that it, by a strange mechanism, becomes totally impersonal. At once the breath of a tall life-god gathers into its oceanic lungs the power of a vibrant spirit, imperious in will and impatient in reaching the violent end, and yet acts in a sense of supreme abandonment. No art can be more austere and difficult than this. Such are the things which make Shakespeare great, he himself not at all mystic-spiritual but the life-utterance in his art has acquired something strong of that mystic-spiritual, perhaps greater than one would see it in ascetics and practitioners of abandoned life.” “Beautiful,” said Françesca.
The Winds of Wonder 
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