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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
The Interpreters by George William Russell is a profound exploration of mysticism, spirituality, and the inner workings of the human soul. In this thought-provoking narrative, Russell delves into the minds of individuals who possess the rare ability to interpret the unseen forces of the universe. As these interpreters confront cosmic truths and transcend the ordinary world, they grapple with the mysteries of existence, divine inspiration, and the moral complexities of guiding others. Lyrical, philosophical, and deeply imaginative, this work invites readers to embark on a spiritual journey that questions the very fabric of reality.
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Table of Contents
The Interpreters
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
THE AUTHOR...
...AND HIS ART
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Interpreters
CHAPTER I
ON an evening in the late autumn a young man was hurrying through the lit crowded streets of his city, his mind but dimly aware of his fellow-citizens, for he was raised above himself by the adventure on which he was bent, and what had been familiar seemed now remote as the body is to the soul in spiritual exaltation. Because the high purpose seeks the companionship of high things, he paused awhile, looking beyond the dark roofs, where, over horizons of murky citron, the air glowed through regions of passionate green to a blue abyss becoming momentarily more fathomless. Never to his eyes had that vision appeared so beautiful, trembling from one exquisite transience of color to another. Tall pillars crested with a ruby glow marked the airways, and their dark lines and lights sank westward over the city. On each side the freighted galleons, winged shapes of dusk and glitter, roared overhead, whirring up swiftly from the horizon or fading with all their glitter into the green west. Not these hurrying lights his eye sought, but those changeless lights which have watched earth from its beginnings. Some cosmic emotion made him feel akin with those heavenly lights. A world empire was in trouble. A nation long restless under its rule had resurrected ancient hopes, and this young man with many others was bent on a violent assertion of its right to freedom. His imagination had long passed beyond fear of death. But, having in thought cast life aside, life strangely had become richly augmented. He seemed to himself a being of fire dwelling in a body of air, so intense was feeling, so light his limbs. In that mood the people in the streets, on his own level yesterday, appeared faint as shadows; but as compensation a new multitudinous life sprang up within him as if all those who had his hope and were with him in his deed had come to a mystic unity in the spirit. In this dilation of consciousness he felt the gods were with him, and it was then he looked up at the stars, feeling in an instant of vision that he was comrade with them and with all god-inspired life, and they, with earth and its people, were sustained and directed by one inflexible cosmic will. He felt it strange he had not realized before how high was the enterprise to which he had been led by a study of the history and culture of his nation. He moved confidently as a warrior of antiquity with whom Athene or Hera went invisibly to battle. He was a poet, and because his soul was a treasure-house stored with the thoughts of the great who lived before him, he interpreted his own emotions as his more uneducated comrades never could have done, they whose action was instinctive, and whose minds were not subtle enough to discern the immortal mingling with their moods, and who would perhaps have lost enthusiasm if they had been told what purposes Nature had with them, and to what event, aeons away, they were being led, and that this heroic enterprise of their life was but an hour's incident in a cyclic pilgrimage.
As he crossed an open square there came a roar which shook the air. An orange flame spurted athwart the dusky citron of the sky, and after that clouds of smoke ruddily obscure, began to pile themselves up gigantically in the higher blue of night. He gazed at this uprising of flame as the Israelites of old might have looked on the cloud and the fire which mantled the Shepherd of their host, for this was the signal that at the other end of the city the revolt had begun. Yet his body shivered, for the intelligence in it which stood sentinel guarding its mortality knew that this conflagration began a struggle in which itself might perish, and which for it would be the end of all. That mute appeal was unheeded, for the will of the young man was like a drawn bow, and life the arrow ready to be sped by the will. He experienced the terrible joy of life which has been emancipated. The spirit of man had risen from the grave which was fear, was emerging from that narrow prison cell like the sky-reaching genie from the little copper vessel in the tale of Arabian enchantment. Like a god it was laying hands on the powers of storm and commotion. Life had broken its moulds. It was no longer static but fluid, a river moving to some ocean. He watched the ruddily glowing smoke hungrily. Underneath it he imagined faces pale and bright. There were comrades, fearless, willful, laughing, intoxicated as he was himself, breaking the iron law of the Iron Age. After centuries of frustrated effort the nation, long dominated by an alien power which seemed immutable, had a resurrection. It would join the great procession of states, of beings mightier than man created by man. It would become like Egypt, Assyria, Greece, or Rome. The genius of multitudes would unite to give it spiritual greatness. Thoughts like these thronged the brain of the young man as he moved closer to the great building which he and others had planned to take by surprise. The moment arranged drew nigh. Hundreds of men were mysteriously gathering, loitering with intent, gazing at the distant illumination in the sky yet all the time nearing the gate of the arsenal. What had brought about that orchestration of life? They were united in the deed. Were they really united in soul? Was the same mood in the heart of that sombre concentrated workman as in the imaginative poet or that sharp-featured cynical journalist? Were they all raised above themselves by the same aspiration? Here were men hardly able to restrain themselves from action, which was their life. Here were thinkers drawn by some agony of conscience which bade them leave the fireside and the intimate lives about it, trusting their young to a destiny which, had they thought over it, had ever seemed heedless of life. Had each one his own dream which he believed his nation would fulfill? Or was there a Wisdom moving all for purposes of its own? Was there an inexorable war waged by the gods upon humanity, shattering its peace, never allowing it to rest, shepherding the host from cycle to cycle until it had grown to power and those divine enemies became its kinsmen? Of what lay beneath that gathering the poet, for all his imagination, knew little, for he was so blinded by his own impulse, that he imputed it to those who moved with him, that crowd which grew ever thicker, casting furtive glances at each other, at those they did not recognize, who might be agents of the power they sought to overthrow. Every heart heard its own beating. Here were resolute men who would act. Then the hour struck from a tall spire, bell after bell tolling slowly as if it symbolized the beating of the heart of the nation. On the instant men everywhere put on their sleeves the scarf which revealed all to each other. Those hitherto only known to the leaders of their groups could now recognize their comrades. Weapons of all kinds were drawn forth. Voices rang out sternly in command, and the crowd, a river of fiery life, surged through the open gate of the arsenal.
CHAPTER II.
WE waken from dream, from a nightmare in which we fought with demons, to find the body cold, clammy, and trembling, but all recollection of that dark agony is soon lost beyond recall. The body still shudders but knows not why. Our ascents to Heaven, our descents into Hell, lay too high or too heavy a burden upon the soul for memory. It cannot mirror them for more than an instant, and they melt dreamlike from consciousness. Of the physical conflict in the arsenal the poet remembered little. It was blurred to his intellect by excess of energy or passion as objects are blurred to the eye by excess of light. He came back to himself at last crowded into a corner with a group of his surviving comrades cut off from escape. Here at least the revolution had failed. Empires are like those beings in the Apocalypse full of eyes within and without.
One of these eyes had discovered a detail of the conspiracy and the open gate of the arsenal was a trap. Another of these apocalyptic eyes overlooked them searching for persons of power among the rebels. They were taken one by one as a finger pointed them out. The poet was of these. He was led by his guards up many steps and along many dim-lit corridors and was halted at last by a door about which armed men stood sentinel. He was thrust within and the door was locked behind him. He was greeted by a tumult of gay and exalted voices. It was a spiritual gaiety. The voices had the exaltation of those who had been engaged in a death-struggle not so much with others as with themselves and had been conquerors. They could not have explained why they were so gay. They were prisoners and defeated. Some of them were wounded. On the morrow they might be standing with their backs to a wall taking a wild farewell of the sky, drinking greedily the last drop in the cup of life before a voice called on the executioners to fire. The exaltation was secret and of the spirit, for all conflicts are at the last between soul and body and here the soul had triumphed; the immortal in each one had made a great stride to conscious dwelling within them and it was sustaining them with its own lavish power. Outwardly they were but men who had not failed each other however they had failed in their enterprise. Their gaze on each other was frank and affectionate. The young poet was hailed uproariously by those who knew him. Others who had heard of him gazed on him with pride.
"All here for Valhalla!"'
"I also am a traveler," said the newcomer.
"They will never allow you to go, Lavelle. You might be admitted. There will be no lingering over our fate. Hell was built for such rascals as we are."
"Hush, fools, we may be out before day-break. Does that sound like a city subdued?"
The room was reddening in a glow from without. There was a rattle increasing in intensity, not in one place but over the city. Then came a sinister noise like a sabre of sound swishing through the air and deeper and more tremendous notes boomed from further distances.
"See! see!" cried one. "The air lights have gone out."
They crowded to the windows. The towering poles which had lifted up their red lamps through the dusk to guide the night journeying airships were now lightless and darkly silhouetted against glowing masses of smoke. The airships were scattering, flying wildly, like winged dragons on some fabulous adventure who had met a volcano in eruption on their path. Some had ascended, their lights scintillating remotely in the higher darkness, while others in lower levels flashed flame-colored against the blue, their wings gilded with fire from the glowing city below.
"They must come down! They will be ours! There were men ready to rush the boats. They cannot risk passage east or west with the ways unlighted!"
Rumor started mysteriously among the prisoners. Some one had heard or surmised something, and in the fever of feeling it grew in a moment, like a phantasmal tree created by the magic of a fakir, to be of gigantic import. This rumor dwindled to give place to others more exciting. The poet soon turned away, gazing through a window at the spectacle of the night which never tired him. Imagination was at work. It created huge figures of gods seated on the mountains that lay around the city, figures still as if cast in gold, with immense pondering brows bent downward, waiting, perhaps, for god folk to rise up from men folk out of that furnace into which so many had cast themselves as a sacrifice.
"You should feel proud as Helen looking over the ruins of Troy."
An intense guttural voice was in his ear. Lavelle turned round and saw a pallid face with beaked nose, lips thick but not sensual, humorous rather, even mocking, quick moving black eyes like polished ebony, bushy gray brows and hair, every feature carved and etched by mind, the head large on a shrunken body. It was the writer he had seen in the crowd, Leroy, a notoriety, in whose work fantastical humor hardly disguised the agony of the idealist without faith in society. There existed between himself and the poet that attraction which opposites have for each other. His feeling for Lavelle was friendly, almost tender. He looked sorrowfully upon the face of the young poet so unlike his own, upon a noble beauty whose invisible sculptors were ecstasy, ardour, and the music of murmured or chanted speech.
"Why?"
"Why, who created the spirit of this revolt? Who led the people to quit the beer which gives peace, to drink the heady wine of imagination? Who ransacked the past and revived the traditions of the nation? Who but you found in the fairy tales of its infancy the basis of a future civilization? The wine has gone to peoples' heads. What are they doing? Thinking they are building a heaven on earth while they are fighting like devils!"
"Ah!" said the poet. "I wish it were true. But you know how little high traditions move the people."
"It may be so with them but not with the leaders. The people may not guess the thoughts that move the mightier of their kind but they follow all the same. And the leaders are aglow from a phosphorescence engendered in the brains of poets like you, or imaginative historians like Brehon. What is it they are led by in the end but a fragile thought; a colored dream; a thing of air!"
"No! no!" said Lavelle impetuously. "It is not unreal. Heaven is in the kindled spirit of man. How do you come to be here yourself? Are you not with us? For what but a dream do you cast away life?"
"Oh," said the other, "I am an anarchist and I wish to be free, and also my Dark Angel told me there was nothing real in my character and I wished to test it."
"What did you find in yourself?"
"Nothing! More foam on wilder waters! But who is this?"
The door had opened again, and a man, by attire, manner, and voice evidently a personage, was pushed in backwards protesting vehemently of his innocence, that he was not a rebel, that he hated them, when an ungentle thrust from the weapon of his guard cut short speech from him, and he was propelled from the doorway into the room.
"You can explain all that tomorrow," said a surly voice, evidently skeptical that the prisoner could explain the circumstance which caused his arrest. The door was again closed. The newcomer turned to face the curious and not too friendly faces of the prisoners.
"You are the fanatics who have upset the city! I hope there will not be one of you alive tomorrow night!"
"Sir," said Leroy, "I do not know how you came to be here, but I am sure it is not your good angel who inspires you to speak as you do. There are some here who might insist on your escape through the window, and the distance from the window to the pavement is exactly the distance from life to death."
"I think I know who this is," said another prisoner. Then turning to the last arrival he asked "Why did they take you? You are not of us."
Then newcomer was quieting, his agitation overcome by coolness of those about him. He had picked up a colored scarf in the street, missing the owner who was hurrying on, and he was still holding it when he was arrested by a patrol. The scarf was worn by those active in the revolt. One of the prisoners whispered to Leroy it was more likely the arrest was made because of the prisoner's personal likeness to one of their own leaders. The newcomer mentioned his name, Heyt, the autocrat of one of those great economic federations which dominated state policy and whose operations had created deep bitterness among the revolting people. The name was greeted with roars of laughter. The patrol had arrested a pillar of state. "The guilty on both sides in the same prison!" cried Leroy. "I never believed Deity had any attributes but I must now endow it with the attribute of humor. Sir," he said, turning to Heyt, "If you should be shot before me tomorrow you may die with the consolation that your death has shaken a skeptic in his unbelief."
Heyt, whose features had assumed the expression of haughtiness which seemed habitual to them, looked disdainfully at Leroy and made no reply. He sat down on a bench which ran along by the wall, ignoring his fellow-prisoners who also ignored him as an unlikely source of information about the progress of the revolt. The excitement began to dwindle, a more solemn mood to replace the gaiety and to turn their thoughts to that other world, in which, had they known it, they already existed, entering it in all hours of intense and deeper being. Even to the heaven lit spirit of the saint the prospect of death and the transit from familiar things induces solemnity of feeling, though the heart has the certitude that there is the heart's desire. These for the most part had taken little thought of that morrow or what spiritual raiment might be put on them, but they remembered the popular persistent talk about death and judgment, and they began to speculate among themselves upon such things as men who knew their stay here may be short and who must think of their further traveling. Leroy with his back to them listened irritably to their anticipations of death and after. Looking out through a window he began whistling softly and savagely to himself. That men who were in revolt against the conventions of this world should accept the conventions of the next world, which to him were even more objectionable, angered him so that he could hardly trust himself to speech.
CHAPTER III.
IT is rarely that a single mood stays long with those who believe they are nigh to death. A horde of thoughts and feelings rush from the subconscious as if they knew how little time remained for them to prove themselves. There is swift reaction. Leroy's desperate mood soon passed, his ironic humor kindled by the desire of a prisoner for consolation by a priest of his church.
"Do you really believe his blessing will secure you welcome in the Kingdom of Heaven?" he said. "My Dark Angel tells me there has been very little difference between his ideas of religion and the churches' for a very long time, so little, indeed, that his master was thinking of quietly dropping his old title and calling himself God. Myself I hold the substitution was effected centuries ago and was quite unnoticed. Everything went on as before. The princes of religion sat undisturbed upon episcopal thrones. I think," he added grimly, their long and faithful services to their new master merit sympathetic consideration from the judge of all the world."
The prisoners gathered, laughing around Leroy. His resolute spirit dominated the rest as resolute spirits do all men in time of peril. They began to even their mood to his.
