Fantastics and other Fancies/Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner
APHRODITE AND THE KING'S PRISONER[1]
Columns of Corinthian marble stretching away in mighty perspective and rearing their acanthus capitals a hundred feet above the polished marble from which they rose;—antique mosaics from the years of Hadrian;—Pompeiian frescoes limning all the sacrifices made to Aphrodite;—naked bronzes uplifting marvelous candelabra;—fantastically beautiful oddities in terra cotta;—miracles of art in Pentelic marble;—tripods supporting vessels of burning spices which filled the palace with perfumes as intoxicating as the Song of Solomon;—and in the midst of all a range of melodious fountains amid whose waters white nymphs showed their smooth thighs of stone and curved their marble figures into all the postures that harmonize with beauty. Vast gardens of myrtle and groves of laurel, mystic and shadowy as those of Daphne, surrounded the palace with a world of deep green, broken only at intervals by the whiteness of Parian dryads;—flowers formed a living carpet upon the breadth of the terraces, and a river washed the eastern walls and marble stairways of the edifice. It was a world of wonders and of marvels, of riches and rarities, though created by the vengeance of a king. There was but one human life amid all that enchantment of Greek marble, of petrified loveliness and beauty made motionless in bronze. No servants were ever seen;—no voice was ever heard;—there was no exit from that strange paradise. It was said that the king's prisoner was served by invisible hands;—that tables covered with luxurious viands rose up through the marble pavements at regular hours;—and the fumes of the richest wines of the Levant, sweetened with honey, perfumed the chamber chosen for his repasts. All that art could inspire, all that gold might obtain, all that the wealth of a world could create were for him,—save only the sound of a human voice and the sight of a human face. To madden in the presence of unattainable loveliness, to consume his heart in wild longings to realize the ravishing myth of Pygmalion, to die of a dream of beauty,—such was the sentence of the king!
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Lovelier than all other lovelinesses created in stone or gem or eternal bronze by the hands of men whose lives were burnt out in longings for a living idol worthy of their dreams of perfect beauty—a figure of Aphrodite displayed the infinite harmony of her naked loveliness upon a pedestal of black marble, so broad and so highly polished that it reflected the divine poem of her body like a mirror of ebony—the Foam-born rising from the silent deeps of a black Ægean. The delicate mellowness of the antique marble admirably mocked the tint of human flesh;—a tropical glow, a golden warmth seemed to fill the motionless miracle—this dream of love frozen into marble by a genius greater than Praxiteles; no modern restorer had given to the attitude of this bright divinity the Christian anachronism of shame. With arms extended as if to welcome a lover, all the exquisite curves of her bosom faced the eyes of the beholder; and with one foot slightly advanced she seemed in the act of stepping forward to bestow a kiss. And a brazen tablet let into the black marble of the pedestal bore, in five learned tongues, the strange inscription:—
" Created by the hand of one maddened by love, I madden all who gaze upon me. Mortal, condemned to live in solitude with me, prepare thyself to die of love at my feet. The old gods, worshiped by youth and beauty, are dead; and no immortal power can place a living heart in this stony bosom or lend to these matchless limbs the warm flexibility and rosiness of life."
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Around the chamber of the statue ran a marble wainscoting chiseled with Bacchanal bas-reliefs—a revel of rude dryads and fauns linking themselves in amorous interlacings;—upon an altar of porphyry flickered the low flame of the holy fire fed with leaves of the myrtle sacred to love;—doves for the sacrifice were cooing and wooing in the marble court without;—a sound of crystal water came from a fountain near the threshold, where beautiful feminine monsters, whose lithe flanks blended into serpent coils, upheld in their arms of bronze the fantastic cup from which the living waters leapt; a balmy, sensuous air, bearing on its wings the ghosts of perfumes known to the voluptuaries of Corinth, filled the softly lighted sanctuary;—and on either side of the threshold stood two statues, respectively in white and black marble—Love, the blond brother of Death; Death, the dark brother of Love, with torch forever extinguished.
And the King knew that the Prisoner kept alive the sacred fire, and poured out the blood of the doves at the feet of the goddess, who smiled with the eternal smile of immortal youth and changeless loveliness and the consciousness of the mighty witchery of her enchanting body. For secret watchers came to the palace and said:—
"When he first beheld the awful holiness of her beauty, he fell prostrate as one bereft of life, and long so remained."
And the King musingly made answer:—
"Aphrodite is no longer to be appeased with the blood of doves, but only with the blood of men—men of mighty hearts and volcanic passion. He is youthful and strong and an artist!—and he must soon die. Let the weapons of death be mercifully placed at the feet of Aphrodite, that her victim may be able to offer himself up in sacrifice."
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Now the secret messengers were eunuchs. And they came again to the palace, and whispered in the ears of the silver-bearded King:—
"He has again poured out the blood of the doves, and he sings the sacred Hymn of Homer, and kisses her marble body until his lips bleed; —and the goddess still smiles the smile of perfect loveliness that is pitiless."
And the King answered:—
"It is even as I desire."
A second time the messengers came to the palace, and whispered in the ears of the iron-eyed King:—
"He bathes her feet with his tears: his heart is tortured as though crushed by fingers of marble; he no longer eats or slumbers, neither drinks he the waters of the Fountain of Bronze;—and the goddess still smiles the mocking smile of eternal and perfect loveliness that is without pity and without mercy."
And the King answered:—
"It is even as I had wished."
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So one morning, in the first rosy flush of sunrise, they found the Prisoner dead, his arms madly flung about the limbs of the goddess in a last embrace, and his cheek resting upon her marble foot. All the blood of his heart, gushing from a wound in his breast, had been poured out upon the pedestal of black marble; and it trickled down over the brazen tablet inscribed with five ancient tongues, and over the mosaic pavement, and over the marble threshold past the statue of Love who is the brother of Death, and the statue of Death who is the brother of Love, until it mingled with the waters of the Fountain of Bronze from which the sacrificial doves did drink.
And around the bodies of the serpent-women the waters blushed rosily; and above the dead, the goddess still smiled the sweet and mocking smile of eternal and perfect loveliness that hath no pity.
"Thrice seven days he has lived at her feet," muttered the King; "yet even I, hoary with years, dare not trust myself to look upon her for an hour!" And a phantom of remorse, like a shadow from Erebus, passed across his face of granite. "Let her be broken in pieces," he said, "even as a vessel of glass is broken."
But the King's servants, beholding the white witchery of her rhythmic limbs, fell upon their faces; and there was no man found to raise his hand against the Medusa of beauty whose loveliness withered men's hearts as leaves are crisped by fire. And Aphrodite smiled down upon them with the smile of everlasting youth and immortal beauty and eternal mockery of human passion.
- ↑ Item, October 12, 1880.