James Huneker - Visionaries

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VISIONARIES

BY

JAMES HUNEKER

J'aime les nuages ... la bas...!

BAUDELAIRE

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1916

COPYRIGHT, 1905,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published October, 1905.

A
MON CHER MAITRE

REMY DE GOURMONT
PARIS

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. A MASTER OF COBWEBS 1

II. THE EIGHTH DEADLY SIN 23

III. THE PURSE OF AHOLIBAH 44

IV. REBELS OF THE MOON 64

V. THE SPIRAL ROAD 80

VI. A MOCK SUN 110

VII. ANTICHRIST 135

VIII. THE ETERNAL DUEL 145

IX. THE ENCHANTED YODLER 149

X. THE THIRD KINGDOM 168

XI. THE HAUNTED HARPSICHORD 188

XII. THE TRAGIC WALL 203

XIII. A SENTIMENTAL REBELLION 227

XIV. HALL OF THE MISSING FOOTSTEPS 249

XV. THE CURSORY LIGHT 266

XVI. AN IRON FAN 278

XVII. THE WOMAN WHO LOVED CHOPIN 289

XVIII. THE TUNE OF TIME 309

XIX. NADA 326

XX. PAN 332

VISIONARIES

I

A MASTER OF COBWEBS

I

Alixe Van Kuyp sat in the first-tier box presented to her husband with
the accustomed heavy courtesy of the Societe Harmonique. She went early
to the hall that she might hear the entire music-making of the
evening--Van Kuyp's tone-poem, Sordello, was on the programme between a
Weber overture and a Beethoven symphony, an unusual honour for a young
American composer. If she had gone late, it would have seemed an
affectation, she reasoned. Her husband kept within doors; she could tell
him all. And then, was there not Elvard Rentgen?

She regretted that she had invited the Parisian critic to her box. It
happened at a _soiree_, where he showed his savage profile among
admiring musical lambs. But he was never punctual at musical affairs.
This consoled Alixe.

Perhaps he would forget her impulsive, foolish speech,--"without him the
music would fall upon unheeding ears,--he, who interpreted art for the
multitude, the holder of the critical key that unlocked masterpieces."
She had felt the banality of her compliment as she uttered it, and she
knew the man who listened, his glance incredulous, his mouth smiling,
could not be deceived. Rentgen had been too many years in the candy shop
to care for sweets. She recalled her mean little blush as he twisted his
pointed, piebald beard with long, fat fingers and leisurely
traversed--his were the measuring eyes of an architect--her face, her
hair, her neck, and finally, stared at her ears until they burned like a
child's cheek in frost time.

Alixe Van Kuyp was a large woman, with a conscientious head and gray
eyes. As she waited, she realized that it was one of her timid nights,
when colour came easily and temper ran at its lowest ebb. She had begged
Van Kuyp to cancel the habit of not listening to his own music except at
rehearsal, and, annoyed by his stubbornness, neglected to tell him of
the other invitation. The house was quite full when the music began.
Uneasiness overtook her as the Oberon slowly stole upon her
consciousness. She forgot Rentgen; a more disquieting problem presented
itself. Richard's music--how would it sound in the company of the old
masters, those masters who were newer than Wagner, newer than Strauss
and the "moderns"! She envisaged her husband--small, slim, with his
bushy red hair, big student's head--familiarly locking arms with Weber
and Beethoven in the hall of fame. No, the picture did not convince her.
She was his severest censor. Not one of the professional critics could
put their fingers on Van Kuyp's weak spots--"his sore music," as he
jestingly called it--so surely as his wife. She had studied; she had
even played the violin in public; but she gave up her virtuosa ambitions
for the man she had married during their student years in Germany. Now
the old doubts came to life as the chivalric tones of Weber rose to her
sharpened senses. Why couldn't Richard--

The door in the anteroom opened, her guest entered. Alixe was not
dismayed. She left her seat and, closing the curtains, greeted him.

The overture was ending as Rentgen sat down beside her in the intimate
little chamber, lighted by a solitary electric bulb.

"You are always thoughtful," she murmured.

"My dear lady, mine is the honour. And if you do not care, can't we hear
the music of your young man--" he smiled, she thought, acidly--"here? If
I sit outside, the world will say--we have to be careful of our
unsmirched reputations--we poor critics and slave-drivers of the deaf."

She drew her hand gently away. He had held it, playfully tapping it as
he slowly delivered himself in short sentences. He was a Dane, but his
French and English were without trace of accent; certain intonations
alone betrayed his Scandinavian origin.

Alixe could not refuse, for the moment he finished speaking she heard a
too familiar motive, the ponderous phrase in the brass choir which Van
Kuyp intended as the thematic label for his hero, "Sordello."

"Ah, there's your Browning in tone for you," whispered the critic. She
wished him miles away. The draperies were now slightly parted and into
the room filtered the grave, languorous accents of the new tone-poem.
Her eyes were fixed by Rentgen's. His expression changed; with nostrils
dilated like a hunter scenting prey, his rather inert, cold features
became transfigured; he was the man who listened, the cruel judge who
sentenced. And she hoped, also the kind friend who would consider the
youth and inexperience of the culprit. To the morbidly acute hearing of
the woman, the music had a ring of hollow sonority after the denser
packed phrases of Weber.

She had read Sordello with her husband until she thought its meaning was
as clear as high noon. By the critic's advice the subject had been
selected for musical treatment. Sordello's overweening spiritual
pride--"gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy"--appealed to Van
Kuyp. The stress of souls, the welter of cross-purposes which begirt the
youthful dreamer, his love for Palma, and his swift death when all the
world thrust upon him its joys--here were motives, indeed, for any
musician of lofty aim and sympathetic imagination.

Alixe recalled the interminable arguments, the snatches of poetry, the
hasty rushes to the keyboard; a composer was in travail. At the end of a
year, Rentgen professed his satisfaction; Van Kuyp stood on the highroad
to fame. Of that there could be no doubt; Elvard Rentgen would say so in
print. Alixe had been reassured--

Yet sitting now within the loop of her husband's music it suddenly
became insipid, futile, and lacking in those enchantments for which she
yearned. Her eyes dropped to the shapely hands meekly folded in her lap,
dropped because the bold, interrogative expression on Rentgen's face
disturbed her. She knew, as any woman would have known, that he admired
her--but was he not Richard's friend? His glance enveloped her with
piteous mockery.

The din was tremendous. After passages of dark music, in which the
formless ugly reigned, occurred the poetic duel between Sordello and
Eglamor at Palma's Court of Love. But why all this stress and fury? On
the pianoforte the delicate episode sounded gratefully; with the thick
riotous orchestration came a disillusioning transformation. There was
noise without power, there was sensuality that strove to imitate the
tenderness of passion; and she had fancied it a cloudy garden of love.
Alixe raised an involuntary hand to her ear.

"Yes," whispered the critic, "I warned him not to use his colours with a
trowel. His theme is not big enough to stand it." He lifted thin
eyebrows and to her overheated brain was an unexpected Mephisto. Then
the music whirled her away to Italy; the love scene of Palma and
Sordello. It should have been the apex of the work.

"Sounds too much like Tschaikowsky's Francesca da Rimini," interrupted
Rentgen. She was annoyed.

"Why didn't you tell Van Kuyp before he scored the work?" she demanded,
her long gray eyes beginning to blacken.

"I did, my dear lady, I did. But you know what musicians are--" He
shrugged a conclusion with his narrow shoulders. Alixe coldly regarded
him. There was something new and dangerous in his attitude to her
husband's music this evening.

Her heart began to beat heavily. What if her suspicions were but the
advance guard of a painful truth! What if this keen analyst of other
men's ideas--she dared not finish the thought. With a sluggish movement
the music uncoiled itself like a huge boa about to engulf a tiny rabbit.
The simile forced itself against her volition; all this monstrous
preparation for a--rabbit! In a concert-hall the poetic idea of the
tone-poem was petty. And the churning of the orchestra, foaming hysteria
of the strings, bellowing of the brass--would they never cease! Such an
insane chase after a rabbit! Yes, she said the word to herself and found
her lips carved into a hard smile, which she saw reflected as in a trick
mirror upon the face of Elvard Rentgen. _He_ understood.

Of little avail Sordello's frantic impotencies. She saw through the
rhetorical trickeries of the music, weighed its cheap splendours,
realized the mediocrity of this second-rate poet turned symphonist.
Image after image pressed upon her brain, each more pessimistic, more
depressing than its predecessor. Alixe could have wept. Her companion
placed his hand on her arm. His fingers burned; she moved, but she felt
his will controlling her mood. With high relief she heard the music end.
There was conventional applause. Alixe restlessly peered into the
auditorium. Again she saw opera-glasses turned toward the box. "Our good
friends," she rather bitterly thought. Rentgen recognized her mental
turmoil.

"Don't worry," he said soothingly. "It will be all right to-morrow
morning. What I write will make the fortune of the composition." He did
not utter this vaingloriously, but as a man who stated simple truth. She
gazed at him, her timidity and nervousness returning in full tide.

"I know I am overwrought. I should be thankful. But--but, isn't it
deception--I mean, will it be fair to conceal from Richard the real
condition of affairs?" He took her hand.

"Spoken like a true wife," he gayly exclaimed. "My dear friend, there
will be no deception. Only encouragement, a little encouragement. As for
deceiving a composer, telling him that he may not be so wonderful as he
thinks--that's impossible. I know these star-shouldering souls, these
farmers of phantasms who exist in a world by themselves. It would be a
pity to let in the cold air of reality--anyhow Van Kuyp has some
talent."

Like lifting mists revealing the treacherous borders of a masked pool,
she felt this speech with its ironic innuendo. She flushed, her vanity
irritated. Rentgen saw her eyes contract.

"Let us go when the symphony begins," she begged, "I can't talk to any
one in my present bad humour; and to hear Beethoven would drive me
mad--now."

"I don't wonder," remarked her companion, consolingly. Alixe winced.

The silver-cold fire of an undecided moon was abroad in the sky and
rumours of spring filled the air. They parted at a fiacre. He told her
he would call the next afternoon, and she nodded an unforgiving head. It
was her turn to be disagreeable.

In his music room, Van Kuyp read a volume of verse. He did not hear his
wife enter. It pained her when she saw his serious face with its
undistinguished features and dogged expression. No genius this, was her
hasty verdict, as she quickly went to him and put a hand on his head.
It was her hand now that was hot. He raised eyes, dolent with dreams.

"Well?" he queried.

"You are a curious man!" she said wonderingly. "Aren't you interested in
the news about your symphonic poem?" He smiled the smile of the fatuous
elect. "I imagine it went all right," he languidly replied. "I heard it
at rehearsal yesterday--I suppose Theleme took the _tempi_ too slow!"

She sighed and asked:--

"What are you reading a night like this?" His expression became
animated.

"A volume of Celtic poetry--I've found a stunning idea for music. What a
tone-poem it will make! Here it is. What colour, what rhythms. It is
called The Shadowy Horses. 'I hear the shadowy horses, their long manes
a-shake'--"

"Who gave you the poem?"

"Oh, Rentgen, of course. Did you see him to-night?"

"You dear boy! You must be tired to death. Better rest. The critics will
get you up early enough."

Through interminable hours the mind of Alixe revolved about a phrase she
had picked up from Elvard Rentgen: "Music is a trap for weak souls; for
the strong as the spinning of cobwebs...."

II

It was pompous July and the Van Kuyps were still in Paris. They lived
near Passy--from her windows high in the air Alixe caught the green at
dawn as the sun lifted level rays. Richard was writing his new
tone-poem, which the Societe Harmonique accepted provisionally for the
season following. Sordello had set the town agog because of the
exhaustive articles by Rentgen it brought in its wake. He was a critic
who wrote brilliantly of music in the terms of painting, of plastic arts
in the technical phraseology of music, and by him the drama was
discussed purely as literature. This deliberate and delicate confusion
of aesthetics clouded the public mind. He described Sordello as a vast
mural fresco, a Puvis de Chavannes in tone, a symphonic drama wherein
agonized the shadowy AEschylean protagonist. Even sculpture was rifled
for analogies, and Van Kuyp to his bewilderment found himself called
"The Rodin of Music"; at other times, "Richard Strauss II," or a "Tonal
Browning"; finally, he was adjured to swerve not from the path he had so
wonderfully hewn for himself in the virgin jungle of modern art, and
begged to resist the temptations of the music-drama.

Rentgen loathed the music of Wagner. Wagner had abused Meyerbeer for
doing what he did himself--writing operas stuffed with spectacular
effects. This man of the foot-lights destroyed all musical imagination
with his puppet shows, magic lanterns, Turkish bazaars, where, to the
booming of mystic bells, the listener was drugged into opium-fed
visions.

Under a tent, as at a fair, he assembled the mangled masterpieces of
Bach, Gluck, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and to a
gullible public sold the songs of these music-lords--songs that should
swim on high like great swan-clouds cleaving skies blue and
inaccessible. And his music was operatic, after all, grand opera
saccharine with commonplace melodies gorgeously attired--nothing more.
Wagner, declared the indignant critic, was not original. He popularized
the noble ideas of the masters, vulgarized and debased their dreams. He
never conceived a single new melody, but substituted instead, sadly
mauled and pinched thematic fragments of Liszt, Berlioz, and Beethoven,
combined with exaggerated fairy-tales, clothed in showy tinsel and
theatrical gauds, the illusion being aided by panoramic scenery; scenery
that acted in company with toads, dragons, horses, snakes, crazy
valkyrs, mermaids, half-mad humans, gods, demons, dwarfs, and giants.
What else is all this but old-fashioned Italian opera with a new name?
What else but an inartistic mixture of Scribe libretto and Northern
mythology? Music-drama--fudge! Making music that one can _see_ is a
death-blow to a lofty idealization of the art.

Puzzled by the richness of Rentgen's vocabulary, by his want of logic,
Alixe asked herself many times whether she was wrong and her husband
right. She wished to be loyal. His devotion to his work, his inspiration
springing as it did from poetic sources, counted for something. Why not?
All composers should read the poets. It is a starting-point. Modern
music leans heavily on drama and fiction. Richard Strauss embroiders
philosophical ideas, so why should not Richard Van Kuyp go to Ireland,
to the one land where there is hope of a spiritual, a poetic renascence?
Ireland! The very name evoked dreams!

When Rentgen called at the Van Kuyps' it was near the close of a warm
afternoon. The composer would not stir, despite the invitation of the
critic or the pleading of his wife. He knew that the angel wings of
inspiration had been brushing his brow all the morning, and such visits
were too rare to be flouted. He sat at his piano and in a composer's
raucous varied voice, imitated the imaginary _timbres_ of orchestral
instruments. Sent forth, Mrs. Van Kuyp and Rentgen slowly walked into
the little Parc of Auteuil, once the joy of the Goncourts.

"Musicians are as selfish as the sea," he asserted, as they sat upon a
bench of tepid iron. She did not demur. The weather had exhausted her
patience; she was young and fond of the open air--the woods made an
irresistible picture this day. The critic watched her changing,
dissatisfied face.

"Shall we ride?" he suddenly asked. Before she could shake a negative
head, he quickly uttered the words that had been hovering in her mind
for hours.

"Or, shall we go to the Bois?" She started. "What an idea! Go to the
Bois without Richard, without my husband?"

"Why not?" he inquired, "it's not far away. Send him a wire asking him
to join us; it will do him good after his labours. Come, Madame Van
Kuyp, come Alixe, my child." He paused. Her eyes expanded. "I'll go,"
she quietly announced--"that is, if you grant me a favour."

"A hundred!" he triumphantly cried.

III

To soothe her conscience, which began to ring faint alarm-bells at
sundown, Alixe sent several despatches to her husband, and then tried a
telephone; but she was not successful. Her mood shifted chilly, and they
bored each other immeasurably on the long promenade vibrating with gypsy
music and frivolous folk.

It was after seven o'clock as the sun slowly swam down the sky-line.
Decidedly their little flight from the prison of stone was not offering
rich recompense to Alixe Van Kuyp and her elderly companion.

"And now for the favour!" he demanded, his eyes contentedly resting upon
the graceful expanse of his guest's figure.

She moved restlessly: "My dear Rentgen, I am about to ask you a
question, only a plain question. _That_ is the favour." He bowed
incredulously.

"I must know the truth about Richard. It is a serious matter, this
composing of his. He neglects his pupils--most of them Americans who
come to Paris to study with him. Yet with the reputation he has
attained, due to you entirely"--she waved away an interruption--"he
refuses to write songs or piano music that will sell. He is an
incorrigible idealist and I confess I am discouraged. What can be our
future?" She drew the deep breath of one in peril; this plain talk
devoid of all sham mortified her exceedingly.

She was thankful that he did not attempt to play the role of fatherly
adviser. His eyes were quite sincere when he answered her:--

"What you say, Alixe--" the familiarity brought with it no condescending
reverberations--"has bothered me more than once. I shall be just as
frank on my side. No, your husband has but little talent; original
talent, none. He is mediocre--wait!" She started, her cheeks red with
the blood that fled her heart when she heard this doleful news. "Wait!
There are qualifications. In the first place, what do you expect from an
American?"

"But you always write so glowingly of our composers," she interjected.

"And," he went on as if she had not spoken, "Van Kuyp is your typical
countryman. He has studied in Germany. He has muddled his brain with
the music of a dozen different nations; if he had had any individuality
it would have been submerged. His memory has killed his imagination. He
borrows his inspiration from the poets, from Liszt, Wagner, Berlioz,
Richard Strauss. Anyhow, like all musicians of his country, he is too
painfully self-conscious of his nationality."

"You, alone, are responsible for his present ambitions," retorted the
unhappy woman.

"Quite true, my dear friend. I acknowledge it."

"And you say this to my face?"

"Do you wish me to lie?" She did not reply. After a grim pause she burst
forth:--

"Oh, why doesn't he compose an opera, and make a popular name?"

"Richard Wagner Number II!" There were implications of sarcasm in this
which greatly displeased Mrs. Van Kuyp. They strolled on slowly. It was
a melodious summer night; mauve haze screened all but the exquisite
large stars. Soothed despite rebellion, Alixe told herself sharply that
in every duel with this man she was worsted. He said things that
scratched her nerves; yet she forgave. He had not the slightest
attraction for her; nevertheless, when he spoke, she listened, when he
wrote, she read. He ruled the husband through his music; he ruled her
through her husband. And what did he expect?

They retraced their way. A fantastic bridge spanning the brief
marshland, frozen by the moonlight, appealed to them. They crossed. A
coachman driving an open carriage hailed confidentially. Alixe entered
and with a dexterous play of draperies usurped the back seat. Rentgen
made no sign. He had her in full view, the moon streaking her disturbed
features with its unflattering pencil.

They started bravely, the horses running for home; but the rapid gait
soon subsided into a rhythmic trot. Rentgen spoke. She hardly recognized
his voice, so gently monotonous were his phrases.

"Dear Alixe. It is a night for confessions. You care for your husband,
you are wrapped up in his art work, you are solicitous of his future, of
his fame. It is admirable. You are a model wife for an artist. But tell
me frankly, doesn't it bore you to death? Doesn't all this talk of
music, themes, orchestration, of the public, critics, musicians,
conductors, get on your nerves? Is it any consolation for you to know
that Van Kuyp will be famous? What is his fame or his failure to you?
Where do you, Alixe Van Kuyp, come in? Why must your charming woman's
soul be sacrificed, warped to this stunted tree of another's talent? You
are silent. You say he is trying to make me deny Richard! You were never
more mistaken. I am interested in you both; interested in you as a noble
woman--stop! I mean it. And interested in Richard--well--because he is
my own creation...."

She watched him now with her heart in her eyes; he frightened her more
with these low, purring words, than if he declared open love.

"He is my own handiwork. I have created him. I have fashioned his
outlines, have wound up the mechanism that moves him to compose. Did you
ever read that terrifying thought of Yeats, the Irish poet? I've
forgotten the story, but remember the idea: 'The beautiful arts were
sent into the world to overthrow nations, and, finally, life itself,
sowing everywhere unlimited desires, like torches thrown into a burning
city.' There--'like torches thrown into a burning city!' Richard Van
Kuyp is one of my burning torches. In the spectacle of his impuissance I
find relief from my own suffering."

The booming of the Tzigane band was no longer heard--only the horses'
muffled footfalls and the intermittent chromatic drone of hidden distant
tram-cars. She shivered and shaded her face with her fan. There was
something remote from humanity in his speech. He continued with
increasing vivacity:--

"Music is a burning torch. And music, like ideas, can slay the brain.
Wagner borrowed his harmonic fire from the torch of Chopin--" She broke
in:--

"Don't talk of Chopin! Tell me more of Van Kuyp. Why do you call him
_yours_?" Her curiosity was become pain. It mastered her prudence.

"In far-away Celtic legends there may be found a lovely belief that our
thoughts are independent realities, that they go about in the void
seeking creatures to control. They are as bodiless souls. When they
descend into a human being they possess his moods, in very existence--"

"And Richard!" she muttered. His words swayed her like strange music;
the country through which they were passing was a blank; she could see
but two luminous points--the nocturnal eyes of Elvard Rentgen, as he
spun his cobwebs in the moonshine. She did not fear him; nothing could
frighten her now. One desire held her. If it were unslaked, she felt she
would collapse. It was to know the truth, to be told everything! He put
restraining fingers on her ungloved hand; they seemed like cold, fat
spiders. Yet she was only curious, with a curiosity that murdered the
spirit within her.

"To transfuse these shadows, my dear Alixe, has been one of my delights,
for I can project my futile desires into another's soul. I am denied the
gift of music-making, so this is my revenge on nature for bungling its
job. If Richard had genius, my intervention would be superfluous. He has
none. He is dull. You must realize it. But since he has known me, has
felt my influence, has been subject to my volition, my sorcery, you may
call it,--" his laugh was disagreeably conscious,--"he has developed the
shadow of a great man. He will seem a great composer. I shall make him
think he is one. I shall make the world believe it, also. It is my
fashion of squaring a life I hate. But if I chose to withdraw--"

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