The Bride of Dreams
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Frederik van Eeden >> The Bride of Dreams
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We did after all finally procure a guide that day and made a long march
on foot along scorching sandy roads, weak and tired as we were, guided
only by a half-witted boy, humming and chewing wisps of straw. Then I
began to realize what suffering means. My father did not speak, nor
would he endure any complaints from me. I bore up against it bravely,
as bravely as I could, but I began to ponder much at that time. "How
long would I be able to endure this?" I thought. "And why does he do
it? If all this folly and hardship served no purpose, we did not have
to bear it then. What could he purpose thereby? Will something very
pleasant follow? Or will these hardships continue until we die? Is all
this God plaguing us, as he says? Why does God do it, and should we let
ourselves be tormented so?"
Then, after hours of silent wandering, I put a question:
"Is there justice, father?"
By this I meant, whether for all this footsoreness, this thirst and
this exertion, I would be rewarded by proportional pleasure. My father
did not reply. He evidently had need of all his energies to walk on.
But when we had finally reached the seaport and had washed ourselves
with seawater, he said abruptly: "There is only power!"
That answer did not please me. It was pleasure I wanted. Power could
not avail me.
III
Consider well, dear reader, the purpose of these writings. It is not to
occupy ourselves with the recital and attendance of thrilling and
glowing adventures, but to try to what extent my words can clear up and
illumine for you the dark background of these adventures. Illusion is
the all-powerful word of the philosophers, with which they seek to
destroy the things happening about us. But I have already worn out that
word. At times it is in my hands as a foul tattered rag, it has lost
its old use for me. I can also say - there is no illusion - there are
only known and unknown things, truths revealed and unrevealed, very
rapidly moving and very slowly flowing vital realities. And all my life
it has been my constant and passionate desire to penetrate from the
known to the unknown, from the revealed to the unrevealed, from the
fleeting to the lasting, from the swiftly moving to the more slowly
flowing - like a swimmer who from the centre of a wild mountain stream
struggles toward the quiet waters near the shore. And wherefore this
hard struggle? Because the still waters also hold blessings of
consolation, of joy, of happiness. There is the pleasure, the real
pleasure, that I as a boy expected from justice, the fair wages for
trouble and pain, the equivalent reward.
My father did not believe in justice, but he did believe in power. But
thus he did exactly what he wished not to do, he let himself be
deceived and tried also to deceive me. But even when only a small boy,
I would not let myself be cheated by counterfeit coin. "Go along with
your power!" I thought. "I want pleasure. What can power or might avail
me without pleasure?" I wanted wares for my money, for I believed in
justice.
The Dutch merchants, who built my pretty and substantial house, were
not very far-sighted fellows and on their hunt for happiness sailed
straight into the bog. But they demanded wares for their money, and
that was right. Now I, as an old man, live on the beautiful ruins of
their glory overgrown with the immature buds of a newer, grander
splendor of life; but I have continued to believe in justice, so
firmly, that I quite dare to assume the responsibility of expounding
this faith to you, dear reader, with all my might. And this faith
teaches that you must not let yourself be cheated, and must demand
wares for your money. That is - good, righteous, solid wares. We will
not let some inane gaieties, some paltry and miserable pleasures, some
tinsel be passed off on us as the real golden happiness. This one tries
to coax you with tempting food and drink, another with the pleasures of
being rich and mighty, still others with the comfort of a good
conscience or perhaps with the flattery of honors and the satisfaction
of duty fulfilled - or finally with the promise of reward hereafter, a
brief on eternity with the privilege for your ghost of making complaint
to the magistracy in case the ruler of the universe does not honor
them. Nothing in my old age affords me such melancholy amusement as the
foolishness of these persons, who deem themselves so wise, especially
those practical, rational, matter-of-fact and epicurean persons, who go
to such a vast amount of trouble and suffer themselves to be put off
with such hackneyed, transitory, unreal, hollow stuff.
And I know not what is worse, the deception of the priests or that of
the philosophers, who scaling to a height upon a ladder of oratory
write a big word upon a piece of paper, flaunting it before you as the
legal tender for all your pains. With a beaming countenance the good
citizens go home with their strip of paper on which is written, "pure
reason," or "will for might," and are as contented as the so-styled
freed peoples of Europe liberated by the hosts of the French revolution
and honestly paid with worthless assignments.
What my father let me gain for my trouble did not seem to me a fair
return, nor could he hold out to me any reasonable prospect of better
reward. The diversity of life, the beauty of the world which he
obtruded upon me so copiously would, as I approached maturity, have
delighted and comforted me. As a lad it vexed and wearied me.
I was a tall lad, a replica of my proud, dark father, as everyone said.
I remember the sally of an indignant Parisian street arab, who called
after me: "Hey, boy, why so high and mighty?" And in my own country,
where one turns more quickly to measures sharper than words, this
loftiness brought upon me even fiercer attacks. A country lad imitated
my proud bearing and pure Italian, getting for it a slap with a towel
which I carried on my way to bathe in the sea. On my return the answer
came - a stab in my back which for days forced me to assume a lowlier
bearing.
I had early grown accustomed to the attention we attracted wherever we
went. The father - always elegantly dressed, with his old-fashioned
pompousness and melancholy eyes - and the son - nearly as tall and
bearing a striking resemblance to him. Especially for women we were
subjects of interest. But my father never seemed to pay any attention
to this, nor did I ever see him come into closer contact with any woman.
But to me, long before I could appreciate the beauties of art and of
nature, a glance from the eyes of a woman was the most precious of all
life had to offer. That I primarily accounted as unalloyed gold
outweighing much anguish and trouble.
I will try to be exact and absolutely sincere. I may avail myself of
that privilege - old while I write, and dead when I shall be read. I am
of a very amorous nature and the thought of friend or sweetheart was
always an oasis in the desert of my thoughts. Even amidst the most
important cares and duties such thoughts were ever of unspeakably
greater interest and importance to me. They were never dull or tedious,
never bored me, and were my consolation in times of gloom and
discouragement. The pain they brought was also dear to me, and never
possessed the loathsome hatefulness of other barren vital pangs.
It is difficult for me to recall when the first beams of this great and
chiefest joy of life began to shine more brightly for me, but I cannot
have been much over five or six years old. I played the passive part at
the time, and it was the girl who chose me as her friend and invited
the attention which I right willingly bestowed. But when later I myself
went out to seek the joys of love, I thought only of boy friends. And
it was a boy, a tall pale Hollander and, as it now seems to me,
certainly not a very attractive lad, whom I approached one bright
summers eve wandering together in the starlight, with the proposition
of eternal friendship. The pale lad possessed what is called common
sense and replied that he had too vague a conception of eternity to
dare accept this proposal. Later, among women I have seldom met with
such conscientious scruples.
Our constant travelling made all these attachments very brief and
transitory and, as a child in search of love cares nothing for caste
prejudice, they were also very diverse, but therefore none the less
intense. I loved a nice brown-eyed and barefooted Livornian fisher lad,
because he was so strong and could row so well, and swim like a fish.
And later, when I was bigger, it was a young German travelling salesman
who taught me college songs and impressed me with his show of greater
worldly wisdom, that won my heart. In these relations I was always the
most ardent enthusiast, fervently pining, filled day and night with the
subject of my love. And it can still make the blood rise to my wan
cheeks when I think of the treasures of devotion that I squandered on
these unresponsive beings. But now I know too that I may count myself
lucky that they were so unresponsive. For through this wandering life
at my father's side I had remained green as grass, and how easily one
all too responsive might have turned the young tender instinct, with
which the Genius of Humanity has endowed us, forever from its destined
course to life-long torture. For we are all, man and woman alike, born
with a twofold nature, and the pliant young shoot can so easily be
contorted and its rightful growth permanently warped.
The maiden saw in me the lover long before I began to look on her with
a lover's eyes. I had, indeed, found the unspeakable joy of intimacy
surpassing and atoning for all, but not yet the peculiar higher joy of
an intimacy, with greater disparity, between youth and maid. I thought
all intimacy glorious if it was but very fervent, and even entertained
some vague notion regarding the great joy of an intimacy and cordiality
embracing all, man and woman, young and old. But these moments of
revelation and insight were but very brief and buried forthwith under
commonplaces.
It must have been between the age of ten and twelve, that looking into
the bright eyes of a girl, I first experienced that peculiar and higher
bliss, that boy friendship could not give me. This was an event that so
engrossed me, that I was oblivious of everything else and walked about
like one moving in a dream.
I know not whether it was due to the blood of my fair northern mother,
but never could a southern, dark-eyed and black-haired lass fascinate
and interest me so vehemently and intensely as a blue-eyed blonde.
Especially the English type, the cool, self-possessed, as well as
somewhat haughty and coy blonde maiden, slender and yet strong, with
wavy hair, attracted my attention and interest with an irresistible
power.
Have patience, dear reader, it is a delicate and difficult matter, and
I must deliberate well and speak carefully if we would more deeply
penetrate the meaning of these things.
When these feelings overtake us as a child, we think it is the
personality, that it is Alice or Bertha who interests us so intensely,
and that only Alice or only Bertha can inspire such strange and
powerful emotions of bliss and desire. And above all that it is just
Alice or just Bertha whose more intimate acquaintance is so eminently
desirable.
But how is it possible that we retain this illusion, and even live and
die in it - pleasant and enviable though it may be - when we know that
each feels this same interest in some other and ofttimes even see it
transferred from one to another?
Being in love is the desire to fathom a most interesting secret,
indispensable to us all. The beloved maiden attracts us, as a ray of
light attracts the wanderer in the dark. Yet we know that every
creature of her kind can shed this radiance about her, and that it is
simply our own accidental receptivity that, among so many thousands,
gives to this one creature in particular her attractive power.
Thus I think I can positively say that it was not herself I sought in
my beloved, but the reflection of one common light that also shines
through other windows as well as through the eyes in which I discovered
it. But though my reason must affirm it, my heart comprehends little of
this. When I think of her whom I loved last, longest and most
devotedly, then she herself, her own personality, is a certainty to me
that I would not willingly relinquish for any higher certainty, many
years though I have spent in anxious pondering on this subject.
The list of my boy friends is not worth recording. They were puppets
wondrously decked out by my fertile imagination, worshipped as heroes
for a while with all the ritual of German friendship cult - and later,
when in their personal life they showed no resemblance to my ideal
expectations, rudely dismantled and cast aside and hated. I can still
see a photograph of one of them lying in my washbowl with pierced eyes,
curling and charring under the avenging flame of a match.
The last of the series, the young commercial traveller, longest
retained his glory. I saw him only about a week in a watering place,
and subsequently he was able to maintain his position of hero-friend by
a correspondence in which he answered my fervent ingenuousness
stammered in poor German with fluent plagiarism from the classics of
his romantic fatherland. All went well, until after a few years I met
him again and noticed that it was not even a puppet but a skeleton that
I had arrayed in a hero's armor. I was furious at him as though he had
purposely deceived me - but my anger was unmerited. He had in perfect
good faith tried his best to live up to the national traditions of
friendship and to keep burning the smouldering fire of his own humble
ideal of love.
A friend, who would have paid me in my own coin, who requited what I
desired to give him, - as, faithful, as devoted, as passionate, as
self-sacrificing, as attentive and solicitous as it was my nature to
understand and prove friendship - such a one I never found. And I was
unreasonable enough to retain a bitter and scornful feeling toward
those who, seeming to give promise of such an exalted friendship, had
disappointed me so sorely. I now understand how good it is that at this
age such friendships do not exist. Is it not hard enough to extricate
ourselves from the seemingly hopeless complications of sexual instincts
and relations? Are we not still far from the adjustment of passions,
arising much too early and continuing much too long? physical and
mental desires, affections misplaced, extinguished and transferred to
others? and children who must be fed? Should we desire to add to these
problems the complications of strong friendships which might perhaps
transform and divert our entire nature? Let each, who feels an honest,
strong, profound, budding passion for a being of opposite sex sprouting
within himself be grateful. The more so if he is not confronted by
abysses all too deep, by doors all too closely barred and by deserts
all too barren; if in this other soul he can detect feelings somewhat
akin to his own. To expect, besides, exalted friendships between those
of equal sex is imputing too much power and good will to the Deity in
whose hand we live.
For me, then, it was not Alice or Bertha, - but Emmy, and more
particularly Emmy Tenders, the daughter of an English-Scotch merchant,
who of all human beings seemed to me the most interesting and worth
knowing. I really cannot say whether she was pretty or whether others
considered her so. She interested me in such strong and intense degree
that it never occurred to me to look at her from an ęsthetically
critical standpoint. I remember that I was interested and surprised
when, after I had already known her over a year, I heard an old
gentleman referring to her as "that lovely child." It flattered me like
a personal compliment, but it sounded wholly new to me.
I know that she was lithe and yet quite robust, that she had light
grayish-blue eyes and an abundance of thick blonde hair that framed her
face in heavy waves. It is quite impossible for me to say or to give
even an intimation of what it was that so attracted me in her. I saw
her first in her own home in the company of her mother, a pleasant
Scotch lady, and her brothers, sturdy, clever, staid and silent lads.
And from the moment I saw her I was drawn to her by a mysterious
feeling of attraction, which even now, after more than fifty years, is
as inexplicable to me as it then was. She was affectionate toward her
mother, treated her brothers like good comrades, and me in a somewhat
arch and pleasantly ingenious manner. She said nothing particular, nor
did I ever foster the illusion that she had anything very particular to
say. But her nature concealed a secret for me that I felt I must
approach and fathom at all costs, though I staked my greatest treasure,
at the cost of my life would have seemed but a miserably feeble
consideration to me.
And mingled with this, thus making it all the more inexplicable, was a
feeling of mournfulness, of pity. When I said to myself: "how dear she
is!" I pronounced the "dear" with a mingled feeling of tender pain and
fervent pity.
What could be the meaning of this? She seemed entirely well and happy
and led a pleasant life, with good parents, cordial family relations,
luxuries, many outdoor pleasures, ball games, tea-parties, boat
excursions, dances - everything that could make an English girl of our
time happy.
And yet when I thought of her playful ways, her dear, young supple
limbs, her thick, wavy, blonde hair, which she would push back now and
then with both her hands, the tears welled up in my eyes from sheer
compassion.
See, reader, after all it is just as well that for the beginning,
nothing comes of these great friendships. They merely divert us. One
would think that love meant the intellectual communion of spirits. But
that is nonsense. What an intellectual giant one would have had to be
to offer Goethe or Dante a worthy friendship. Yet Gemma Donati and
Christiane Vulpius were their mates, their equals in power, before whom
they willingly bowed and humbled themselves. Every sweet woman conceals
a secret of life that outweighs the wisdom of the greatest man, and for
which he would willingly barter all his treasures and yet count it too
small a price.
Let us be patient, dear reader, and proceed carefully. My time of love
is past and yet the matter is as much of a mystery to me as ever. But
it is the work on which we are all employed, and I hold that first the
love between man and woman must be better regulated and understood
before we can proceed to friendship.
Now I turn the jewel of my love-life a point about and contemplate
another facet as if to discover the hidden form of the crystal.
Emmy Tenders was the first woman who, when I had grown from youth to
manhood, at once, absolutely, and completely won me without effort on
her part. She was the first woman I eagerly sought, though it was with
the deepest reverence and a shrinking fervor. But, as I said before,
probably ten years previous to this girls had sought me, detecting the
prospective man in me before I had myself become aware of him. This had
indeed flattered me and, as I have confessed, I had also found in the
glance from the eyes of some one of them promise of higher joy than my
boy friendships could give me - but with a peculiar obstinacy
inexplicable to myself, I had always repelled these approaches. Without
acting in obedience to boyish tradition, to whose influence I was never
subjected on account of my nomadic life, my own feeling made me see
something childish and unworthy in the association with girls and
women, while on the other hand I exalted my boy friendships as nobler
and manlier.
But oh! the subtle and effective manner in which this avenged itself on
me. When later my time of seeking had come, and I was assailed and
driven by overwhelming passions, it then appeared that I had retained
the memory of these little adventures of childhood days with irritating
exactness, and there mingled with it a bitter feeling of regret for the
lost opportunities. The kiss blown me from a window in Naples, the
extraordinary, more than motherly cares of the hotel chambermaid in
Vienna, the roses pressed into my hands on the street by a young
Spanish girl somewhere in the south of France, the embrace and the kiss
on my cheek which I once suddenly felt in a dark garden where I stood
listening to some music and which I - oh, obstinate simpleton that I
was! - scornfully and indignantly repelled - how often and with what
teasing tenacity have they haunted me in my dreamy days and sleepless
nights, when the icy crust of boyish pride had long been melted, but
the girls had also grown proportionally more chary of their favors. And
even now with half a century intervening, I cannot watch this subtle
game of mutual hide-and-seek without a smile, and I recognize some
truth in my father's opinion that many a time it must indeed also
afford amusement to the Unseen One who secretly directs the figures of
this graceful dance.
Remember, dear reader, that up to the time I met Emmy Tenders, I was
green as grass. It had never occurred to me to seek for any connection
between the wondrously blissful emotions of intimacy that continually
occupied me - and certain physical sensations which only alarmed me
because I thought them unhealthy. And yet I consider this very
connection well-nigh the most mysterious and interesting of all the
enigmas of life. And perhaps, as I, you too have always felt when
reading the writings of the great and distinguished lovers among
mankind, a certain want of exactness, which led me to exclaim: "But how
did you deal with that question?"
My father fared in this matter like the man who dropped his glasses in
a dark room and when, after much hesitation and deliberation he very
carefully set down his foot, stepped precisely on the glass. He had
tried to bring me up with such extraordinary care and wisdom, and now
failed for that very reason. He encouraged my boyish scorn of girls and
courting and did not oppose my partiality for boy friendships. The
terrible risk I thereby ran of warping my sound and natural instinct
and thus making myself unhappy for life, he did not seem to see, and
when the time came to enlighten me in this regard he neglected to do
so. My very sensitive prudishness concerning everything pertaining to
my body he, rightly and to my gratitude, respected as long as possible.
But when it became clear to him that I was seized with a glowing
passion for Emmy Tenders - and he must indeed have been very deaf and
blind not to notice my very apparent confusion and perplexity, my air
of abstraction, my brightening at everything that suggested her, my
pallor, my nocturnal wanderings abroad and my agonies of weeping in bed
- he considered the time for my final enlightenment come.
Between two sensitive, proud and refined natures like my father and
myself, this was a most painful and most difficult task. But he
performed it with his customary undaunted determination. I have never
spent a more uncomfortable hour in my life. My father had brought books
and prints for better demonstration; he dared not look at me and
mumbled a good deal under his breath in a hollow voice. Beads of
perspiration stood on his brow.
When he had left the room, nervous and embarrassed as a child who has
done wrong, my first thought was: a revolver. I was crushed and wanted
to end my life. But the secret, - the secret itself bound me to life.
The strange, attractive, mysterious, repulsive secret fascinated me too
much to leave it.
Insensible with pain and humiliation, I went to my room. And there,
before I could help it, the name "Emmy" rose to my lips. I shivered,
crying out the name once more, now like a despairing shriek of
distress. Then I fell down upon my bed and wept as though I would weep
out my very heart.
IV
The type of men which my father called philistines has this common
characteristic, that for all wonders and mysteries they forthwith find
a convenient explanation. Does the truth not fit it exactly? Then they
do as did the Kaffir, who receiving as a present a much too narrow pair
of shoes, solved the difficulty by undauntedly chopping off his toes
and then, greatly delighted, went out walking in the precious gift.
This time it was my father himself who pretended to see nothing strange
or mysterious in my deeply agitated state of mind. The substance of the
matter he had now explained to me scientifically, biologically,
physiologically and anatomically; to this nothing need be added nor did
it leave anything unexplained.
My disgust, my profound horror and dejection at this simple increase of
knowledge which, as every new acquisition of knowledge, should have
delighted and edified me - Yes! for that there was no room in his
explanation, as little as for his own embarrassment while imparting it.
And therefore, without any sentimentality, these toes must be lopped
off so that the boot would fit.
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