IV—THE TORCH IN ITALY Leonardo Da Vinci

The mists rolled back. I saw the City of Flowers Far down, upon the plain; and, on the slope Beside us—we were shadows and unseen,— Giulio, the painter, sketching rocks and trees. We watched him working, till a pine-cone crackled On the dark ridge beyond us, and we saw, Descending from the summits like a god, A deep-eyed stranger with a rose-red cloak Fluttering against the blue of the distant hills. He stood awhile, above a raw ravine, Studying the furrows that the rains had made Last winter. Then he searched among the rocks As though for buried gold. As he drew near Giulio looked up and spoke, and he replied. Their voices rose upon the mountain air Like a deep river answering a brook, While each pursued his work in his own way. Giulio. What are you seeking? Something you have lost? The Stranger. Something I hope to find. Giulio. You dropped it here? Was it of value? Not your purse, I hope. The Stranger. More precious than my purse. Giulio. Your lady’s ring? A jewel, perhaps? The Stranger. A jewel of a sort; But it may take a thousand years to trace it Back to its rightful owner. Giulio (laughing). O, you are bitten By the prevailing fashion. Since the plough Upturned those broken statues, all the world Is relic-hunting; but, my friend, you’ll find No Aphrodite here. The Stranger (picking up a fossil). And yet I think It was the sea, from which she rose alive, That shaped these rocks and left these twisted shells Locked up, like stone in stone. They must have lived Once, in the sea. Giulio. Ah, now I understand. You’re a philosopher,—one of those who tread The dusty road to Nowhere, which they call Science. The Stranger. All roads to truth are one to me. Giulio. Sir, you deceive yourself. Your road can lead Only to error. The Adriatic lies How many miles away? We stand up here On these unchanging hills; and yet, to fit Your theory, you would roll the seas above The peaks of Monte Rosa. The Stranger. But these shells? How did they come here? Giulio. Obviously enough, The sea being where it is, it was the Flood That left them here. The Stranger. Then Noah must have dropped them Out of his Ark. They never crept so far; And Noah must have dumped his ballast, too, Among our hills; for all those rippled rocks Up yonder were composed of blue sea-clay. I have found sea-weed in them, turned to stone, The claws of crabs, the skeletons of fish. Think you that, if your Adriatic lay Where it now lies, its little sidling crabs Could scuttle through the Deluge to the hills? Your Deluge must have risen above the tops Of all the mountains. If it rose so high, Then it embraced the globe, and made our earth One smooth blue round of water. When it sank What chasm received those monstrous cataracts? Or was the sun so hot it sucked them up And turned them into a mist? Is not that tale A racial memory, lingering in our blood, Of realms that now lie buried in the sea, Or isles that heaved up shining from the deep In old volcanic throes? Giulio. I must confess I always feel a pang, sir, when I see A man of talent wasting his fine powers On this blind road. The Stranger. Show me a better way. Giulio. The way of Art, sir. The Stranger. Yes. That is a road I have wished that I might travel. But are you sure Our paths are not eventually the same? Why have you climbed up here? To paint the truth, As you perceive it, in those rocks and trees. Suppose that, with your skill of hand, you saw The truth more clearly, saw the lines of growth, The bones and structure of the world you paint, And the great rhythm of law that runs through all, Might you not paint them better even than now? Might you not even approach the final cause Of all our art and science,—the pure truth Which also is pure beauty? Giulio. Genius leaps Like lightning to that mark, sir, and can waive These pains and labours. The Stranger. O, I have no doubt That you are right. I speak with diffidence, And as a mere spectator; one who likes To know, and seizes on this happy chance Of learning what an artist really thinks. Giulio. We artists, sir, are not concerned with laws, Except to break them. Genius is a law Unto itself. The Stranger. And that is why you’ve made Your wood-smoke blue against that shining cloud? Against the darker background of the hill It is blue in nature also; but it turns To grey against the sky. Giulio. I am not concerned With trivial points. The Stranger. But if they point to truth Beyond themselves, and through that change of colour Reveal its cause, and knit your scheme in law; Nay, as a single point of light will speak To seamen of the land that they desire, Transfiguring all the darkness with one spark, Would this be trivial? Sir, a touch will do it. Lend me your brush a moment. Had you drawn Your rocks here in the foreground, thus and thus, Following the ribbed lines of those beds of clay As the sea laid them, and the fire upheaved And cracked them, you’ll forgive me if I say That they’d not only indicate the law Of their creation; but they’d look like rocks Instead of—— Giulio. Pray don’t hesitate. The Stranger. I speak As a spectator only; but to me— Sponges or clouds perhaps—— Giulio. We artists, sir, Aim at this very effect. To us, the fact Is nothing. There is a kingdom of the mind, Where all things turn to dreams. Nothing is true In that great kingdom; and our subtlest work Is that which has no basis. The Stranger. Then I fear My thoughts are all astray; for I believed That kingdom to be more substantial far Than anything we see; and that the road Into that kingdom is the road of law Which we discover here,—the Word made Flesh. Giulio. I do not understand you—quite. I fear Yours is the popular view—that art requires Purposes, meanings, even moralities With which we artists, sir, are not concerned. The Stranger. O, no. I merely inquire. I wish to hear From one who knows. I am a little puzzled. You have dismissed so much—this outer world And all its laws; and now this other, too. I am no moralist; but I must confess That, in the greatest Art, I have always found A certain probity, a certain splendour Of inner and outer constancy to law. Giulio. All genius is capricious. You’ll admit That men who lived like beasts have painted well. The Stranger. Yes; but not greatly, except when their own souls Have gripped the beast within them by the throat, And risen again to reassert the law. Giulio. Art lives by its technique, a fact the herd Will never understand. A noble soul Is useless, if it cannot wield a brush. The Stranger. May not technique include control and judgment? Alone, they are not enough; but, for the heights, More is required, not less. I’d even add Some factors you despise. Giulio. Your shells, for instance? And that mysterious and invisible sea? The Stranger. The sea whence Beauty rose. Giulio. You have an eye For Beauty, too. You are a lover of art And you are rich. What opportunities You throw away! Was it not you I saw Yesterday, in the market-place at Florence, Buying caged birds and tossing them into the air? The Stranger. It may have been. I like to see them fly. The structure of the wing,—I think that men Will fly one day. Giulio. It was not pity, then? The Stranger. I’d not exclude it. As I said before, I would include much. Giulio. You were speaking, sir, Of Art. There are so few, so very few Who understand what Art is. The Stranger. Fewer still Who know the few to choose. Giulio. Perhaps you’d care To see some work of mine. I do not live In Florence; but I’d like to set your feet On the right way. We are a little group Known to the few that know. You’d find our works Far better worth your buying than caged birds. Pray let me know your name, sir. The Stranger. Leonardo.

I saw the house at Florence, cool and white With violet shadows, drowsing in the sun. The fountain splashed and bubbled in the court. Beside it, in a space of softened light, Under a linen awning, ten feet high, Roofing a half-enclosure, where three walls Were tinted to a pine-wood’s blue-black shade, I saw a woman seated on a throne, And Leonardo, with his radiant eyes, Glancing from his wet canvas to her face. Her face was filled with music. Music swelled Above them, from a gallery out of sight; And as the soft pulsation of the strings Died into infinite distances, he spoke. His voice was more than music. It was thought Ebbing and flowing, like a strange dark sea. “Listen to me; for I have things to say That I can only tell the world through you. Were you not just a little afraid of me At first? You know by popular report I dabble in Black Arts, and so I would To keep you here, an hour or two each day, Until the mystery we have conjured up Between us—there again, it came and went— Smiles at the centuries in their masquerade As you smiled, then, at me. Not mockery—quite— Not irony either; something we evoked That seems to have caught the ironist off his guard, And slyly observes the mocker’s naked heel. So we’ll defend humanity, you and I, Against the worst of tyrannies,—the blind sneer Of intellectual pride. The subtle fool And cunning sham at least shall meet one gaze More subtle, more secure; not yours or mine, But Nature’s own—that calm, inscrutable smile Whereby each erring atomy is restored To its true place, taught its true worth at last, And heaven’s divine simplicity renewed. Not yours or mine, Madonna. Could I trust To brush and palette or my skill of hand For this? Oh, no! We need Black Arts, I think, Black Arts and incantations, or you’d grow Weary of sitting here. Last night I made Five bubbles of glass—you blow them with a pipe Over a flame,—and set them there to dance Upon the fountain’s feathery crest of spray. Piero thought it waste of time. He jeers At these mechanical arts of mine. I watched That dance and learned a little of the machine We call the world. I left them leaping there To catch your eyes this morning, and learned more. So one thing leads to another. A device, Mechanical as the spinning of the stars In the Arch-Mechanic’s Cosmos, woke a gleam Of wonder; and I lay these Black Arts bare To make you wonder more. Black Arts, Madonna; For even such trifles may discover depths Dark as the pit of death; as when I laid Dice on a drum, and by their trembling showed Where underneath our armoured city walls The enemy dug his mines. And now—you smile, To think how wars are won. Catgut and wood Have served our wizardry. Yes; that’s why I set Musicians in the gallery overhead, To pluck their strings; and, while you listened, so Painted the living spirit that they bound With their bright spells before me, in your face. Black Arts, Madonna, and cold-blooded, too. O, sheer mechanical, playing upon your mind And senses, as they too were instruments, Or colours to be ground and mixed and used For purposes that were not yours at all, Until the living Power that uses me Breathes on this fabric, also made by hands, The inscrutable face that smiles all arts away. How many tales I have told you sitting here To make you see, according to my need, The comedy of the world, its lights and shades: The sensual feast; the mockery of renown; Youth and his innocent boastings, unaware How swiftly run the sands; Youth that believes His own bright scorn for others’ aching faults Has crowned him conqueror; Youth so nobly sure That plans are all achievements; quite, quite sure Of his own victory where all others failed; Age, with blind eyes, or staring at defeat, Dishonoured; Age, in honour, with a wreath Of fading leaves in one old trembling hand, And at his feet the dark all-gulfing grave; Envy, the lean and wizened witch behind him, Riding on death, like his own crooked shadow, Snapping at heaven with one contemptuous hand, As though she hated God; and, on her face, A mask of fairness; Envy, with those barbs Of wicked lightning darting from her flesh; Envy, whose eyes the palm and olive wound; Whose ears the laurel and myrtle pierce with pain; A fiery serpent eating at her heart; A quiver on her back with tongues for arrows. Each of these pictures left its little shadow, A little memory in your spellbound face, And so your picture smiles at all of these, And at one secret never breathed aloud, Because I think we knew it all too well. Once only, in a riddle, I made you smile At our own secret also, when I said ‘If liberty be dear to you, Madonna, Never discover that your painter’s face Is Love’s dark prison.’ Sailing to the south From our Cilicia, you and I have seen Beautiful Cyprus, rising from the wave; Cyprus, that island where Queen Venus reigned. The blood of men was drawn to that rough coast As tides, on other shores, obey the moon. Glens of wild dittany, winding through the hills From Paphos, her lost harbour, to the peak Of old Olympus, where she tamed the gods, Enticed how many a wanderer, Odorous winds Welcomed us, ruffling, crumpling the smooth brine Into a sea of violets. We drew near. We heard the muffled thunder of the surf! What ships, what fleets, had broken among those rocks! We saw a dreadful host of shattered hulls, Great splintered masts, innumerable keels With naked ribs, like skeletons of whales All weltering there, half-buried in the sand. The foam rushed through them. On their rotted prows And weed-grown poops the sea-gulls perched and screamed; And all around them with an eerie cry An icy wind was blowing. It would seem Like the Last Judgment, should there ever be A resurrection of the ships we saw Lying there dead. These things we saw and live. And now your picture smiles at all of these. The secret still evades me everywhere; And everywhere I feel it, close at hand. Do you remember when Vesuvius flamed And the earth shivered and cracked beneath our feet? Ten villages were engulfed. I wandered out Among the smoking fragments of earth’s crust To see if, in that breaking-up of things, Nature herself had now perhaps unsealed Some of her hidden wonders. On that day, I found a monstrous cavern in the hills, A rift so black and terrible that it dazed me. I stood there, with my back bent to an arch, My left hand clutching at my knee, my right Shading contracted eyes. I strained to see Into that blackness, till the strong desire To know what marvellous thing might lurk within Conquered my fear. I took a ball of thread And tied one end to a lightning-blasted tree. I made myself a torch of resinous pine And entered, running the thread through my left hand, On, on, into the entrails of the world. O, not Odysseus, when his halting steps Crept through that monstrous hollow to the dead, Felt such a fearful loneliness as I; For there were voices echoing through his night, And shadows of lost friends to welcome him; But my fierce road to knowledge clove its way Into a silence deeper than the grave, Into a darkness where not even a ghost Could stretch its hands out, even in farewell. And all that I could see around me there Was my own smoking torchlight, walls of rock And awful rifts where other caverns yawned. And all that I could hear was my own steps Echoing through endless darkness, on and on. My thread ran out. My torch was burning low, When, through the darkness, I became aware Of something darker, looming up in front; Solid as rock, and yet more strange and wild Than any shadow. My flesh and blood turned cold Before that awful Presence in the dark. I left the thread behind me, and crept on; Held up the guttering torch; and there, O there, I saw it, and I live. A monstrous thing With jaws that might have crushed a ship, and bones That might upheave a mountain; a Minotaur, A dreadful god of beasts, now turned to stone, Like a great smoke-bleared idol. The wild light Smeared it with blood; a thing that once had lived; A thing that once might turn the sea to mist With its huge flounderings, and would make a spoil For kingdoms with the ships it drove ashore. The torchlight flared against it, and went out; And I groped back, in darkness.... And you smile. O, what a marvel of enginery was there! What giant thews and sinews once controlled The enormous hinges of the rock-bound bones I saw in my dark cavern. Yet it perished, And all its monstrous race has perished, too. Was it all waste? Did it prepare the way For lordlier races? Even, perhaps, for men? Only one life to track these wonders home, So many roads to follow. Never the light Till all be travelled. We will not despise Mechanical arts, Madonna, while we use These marvellous living instruments of ours. Rather we’ll seek to master for ourselves The Master’s own devices. Birds can fly, And so shall men, when they have learned the law Revealed in every wing. Far off, I have seen Men flying like eagles over the highest clouds; Men that in ships like long grey swordfish glide Under the sea; men that in distant lands Will speak to men in Italy; men that bring The distant near, and bind all worlds in one. And yet—I shall not see it. I have explored This human instrument, traced its delicate tree Of nerves, discovering how the life-blood flows Out of the heart, through every branching vein; And how, in age, the thickening arteries close And the red streams no longer feed this frame, And the parched body starves at last and dies. I have built bridges. Armies tread them now. The rains will come. The torrents will roll down And sweep them headlong to the sea, one day. I have painted pictures. Let cicalas chirrup Of their brief immortality. I know How soon these colours fade. And yet, and yet, I do not think the Master of us all Would set us in His outer courts at night As the Magnificent, once, in the flush of wine, Set Angelo, to flatter an idle whim And sculpture him a godhead out of snow. The work’s not wasted. In my youth I thought That I was learning how to live, and now I see that I was learning how to die. Then comes the crowning wonder. We strip off The scaffolding; for the law is learned at last; And our reality, Parian then, not snow, Dares the full sun of morning, fronts the gaze Of its divine Pygmalion; lives and breathes; And knows, then, why it passed through all those pains. Now—the last touch of all! And, as this face Begins to breathe against those ancient rocks, Let music breathe these arts of mine away.” Music awoke. It throbbed like hidden wings Above them. Then a minstrel’s golden voice, As from a distance, on those wings arose And poured the Master’s passion into song: Burn, Phœnix, burn; And, in thy burning, take All that love taught me, all I strove to learn, All that I made, and all I failed to make. If it be true That from the fire thou rise In splendour, as men say dead worlds renew Their light from their own embers in the skies, In thy fierce nest I’d share that death with thee, To make one shining feather on thy breast Of all I am, and all I strove to be. The worthless bough May kindle a rich coal; And in our mingling ashes, how wilt thou Know mine from thine, ere both reclothe thy soul? Now—as thy wings Arise from this proud fire, My dust in thy assumption mounts and sings; And, being a part of thee, I still aspire.