The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1923/Ennui
Ennui
By Anatol Kleinst
When the earth blossomed and was green again, I denied the god of desolation and went among the trees. I breathed incense, and I knew that the gods of the forest were breathing their offerings to the implacable blue sky. I breathed of it as would the sky, had it any soul, and knowing that the sky had none, I was a god. For a moment joy was in me.
But the spirit of desolation was angry, and smote me. I did not see him; the grass, the flowers, sun and wind still moulded their evanescent palaces of warm perfume; but the will of my god is mighty, and he supplants these things. Then desire glistened in my brain, like a grey moon when the stars are out; I desired joy and lo! it had slipped away, and left not even sorrow in its place. And my desire grew strong, and I felt the strength of it through all my spirit; and I envisioned my dead sister Pain and would have sung to her in a high and melancholy voice. I would have sung to her of the cruel moist lips of love, and of the agony that creates hope, of immeasurable fair gardens that mock the frenzy of fine words, of the ruin that comes to dreams in the morning: I would have chanted to the lonely bones of the desert the purity and exaltation that was once Pain. But the words were harsh, and the savour of their sickly passion suddenly cast me into despair. “Ai; Ai! Thou that dreamed of mountains and would be a God! Thou that spurned men and rebuilt fallen castles, and sang at night, in the desert, the anthem of your immemorial pride! Thy voice is pallid, it is not the voice of man, it is not the hymn of thy sister Pain; and as you speak you dishonour the crystalline vapours that are words, for your soul is empty, and its voice is hollow.” And I beat my breast, and quaffed unspeakable red wines, and called to my garden the dancers of Eudemia, who danced before me with no garment, and were not ashamed, for they loved me. And I cried at them to go away, and pored over the beautiful mad parchments of old poets, and knew the thing that drove them mad. But in all this the voice of despair laughed always as men do not ever laugh, while it sucked the blood of my heart and sent it poisoned through strange channels in my breast.
Then I regained my voice, and it rose to the grey mansion of my God, saying, “Behold, you have taken away joy and beauty, give me now suffering, that I may feel one of men, and let me weep with the beggar at the cross-roads!” But my God spoke only in his old accents of despair......
Then I grew angry, and denied again my God. And the mocking sharp voice of despair rose higher and became pale song. And this is what it sang, to the tepid sands of my little desert, as the sky was silent.