William Allan Reed - "Negritos of Zambales"

William Shakespeare - "Romeo und Juliette"

Henry Seton Merriman - "Dross"

Rev. E. Donald Carr - "A Night in the Snow"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Bride of Dreams

F >> Frederik van Eeden >> The Bride of Dreams




"Didn't you tell me, dear, that Emmy, your first love, did not seem to
know Jesus, but Lucia did? And yet you loved Emmy so and have seen her
in your dreams and she has brought you to Jesus and to me. But Lucia
has always remained a stranger to you. How is that?"

"Yes, it is so, Elsje. And I see no contradiction in it. Emmy lived in
a dead, false Protestantism, but she was designed for something better.
Lucia lived in the warm, living faith of the Middle Ages, which,
however, we are outgrowing. The Middle Ages knew Jesus and lived in him
fervently, truly and really, as is manifest in their entire nature.
Their inner sensibility of him was much stronger than ours, but their
knowledge, their definite realization of him was much more faulty.
Lucia's piety belongs to an earlier phase - never can it reconcile
itself to ours. She is a perfect blossom on a more ancient branch of
humanity. But she can never be perfectly mated with any who, as we,
belongs to a more modern generation. My love for Emmy was not as deep
and as strong as my love for you, Elsje. Never. It was a much more
superficial, personal sentiment, not encouraged by return, not
sufficiently powerful to stream out further. I never learned to love
mankind through Emmy, as I did through you. And that Emmy in my dreams
as it were reserved me for herself, and then brought me to Elsje, so
that my power of love has attained to perfect, glorious development,
that I shall never be able to regard otherwise than as the greatest
blessing, the greatest privilege that Jesus ever let me experience."

"And do you believe, dearest, even though now your work should remain
entirely useless here, that humanity shall nevertheless be benefitted
by our love?"

"I believe it. But it goes beyond my responsibility and beyond my care.
Our responsibility goes no further than our comprehension. I am simply
obedient to what I recognize as my noblest and highest inclinations. I
act according to the beat of my knowledge. The responsibility I leave
to Him, who gave us our impulses and our faculty of judging, whose
wisdom and sensibility are so far exalted above ours as a human body is
exalted above the most ingenious machine invented by man. But though
now I am powerless to exert a direct influence, I shall not give it up
and shall not rest. I shall write down everything and testify of Him.
And He in His own way and in His own time, will bring it all into
regard and into practice."

"Perhaps through our child," said my poor wife; and my firmness forsook
me.

XXXI

The child of our love lived only one day.

When, a hundred years earlier, it befell my brother Lessing that he
lost his only-born after a single day of life, he bitterly reviled
Christ in his sorrow. With cutting sarcasm be lauded the wisdom of this
child, who would not enter life until he was dragged into it with tongs
of iron, - and the same night departed again.

My brother Lessing was a devout man, but yet not sufficiently devout to
revere the beauty, the majesty and greatness of Human Being amid the
suffering he had to undergo. The true, living Christ had also called
him to testify, and he did not in his testimony spare the Bible-Jesus,
the artificial product of human fancy. But the belief in the future
Glory of Mankind for which the suffering of the individual is not too
high a price, afforded him no solace and did not reconcile him to the
bitterness of life.

I will not laud my strength. I was as weak in my overwhelming sorrow as
one might expect of a poor mortal. As long as my wife survived her
child, my love for her gave me the strength outwardly to show nothing
that might resemble bitterness or despair. When she too was taken from
me, there was nothing or no one to force me to a display of
cheerfulness and resignation, and for a while I was a crushed, beaten
and broken creature, a faded, falling leaf.

But the knowledge, the spiritual, intellectual knowledge, could not
forsake me even though all sensibility had been dulled and stifled by
excess of grief. As long as we contemplate ourselves with the
scientific eye, from the height of our inmost consciousness, so long
too there is something that exists above pain, old age and death. He
who accurately observes himself in suffering and old age, is thereby
exalted above time and sorrow, for that which contemplates is always
more and higher than that which is contemplated. And so in the midst of
ray wretchedness I knew that gladness and eternal youth dwelt within me
through this tiny spark of contemplative power.

I knew and never forgot that the Eternal in which we live does not take
anxious account of a little more or less of suffering and does not
spare his creatures.

It suffers thousands of seeds to perish in order that one of them may
attain perfect growth. I knew that the pain I felt was the after effect
of a craving now grown useless and that I should no longer be sensible
of it as soon as I considered what had been attained, and desisted from
the unessential and unattainable.

And I saw no reason to doubt of the supremacy of blessedness and joy
above all sorrow, because I, insignificant individual, in a few short
years of life had been made to suffer the utmost that I could endure.

I was weak, weak as all human beings, but an inconceivable spark of
knowledge shone out like a bright tiny star above all my dark
infirmities. And it is upon this little twinkling star, dear reader,
that I would fix your attention, and not upon my frailties.

What else is it but weakness, miserable, lamentable weakness, that is
spread out before us in the bitter invective speeches against Life by
those who are called pessimists, by Schopenhauer, Wagner, Ibsen,
dragged along as they were in the ebb of life toward the middle of this
century?

I was born at the shifting of the tide and I know that the rising
waters are bearing me upon them. I know full well that pure blessedness
is not yet in Human Being, but that it must be created and that the
first condition for its advent is the faith and the will, the courage
and the strength of the Originals. Wherever true being obtains there is
pure blessedness, and it is our part to attain this true being - but
the first essential for it is the foreseeing conviction. For willing is
creating and each of us, building in eternity, follows his own plan.

My optimism is truly not the hiding myself from inevitable grief, for
with towering waves the sea of sorrow has pounded against my beacon
towers. The fires were not extinguished and beamed out above it all.

But not a moment longer than I can help it do I allow myself to dwell
on the dark, the gloomy and melancholy side of life. Nor shall I try to
thrill your heart, dear reader, with scenes of melancholy, sad as the
things may be that I have to tell you. The worst of all demoniacal
aberrations is a passion for wallowing in the mire of dreariness, of
melancholy. Guard yourself, guard yourself against the dismal lime rods
that threaten the free flight of your thoughts.

Elsje and I had frequently spoken of dying, but only when a vigorous
mood permitted us to do so without sadness or apprehension. For the
worst thing about death is not the actual dying, but the breath of
horror that it sometimes casts upon our sensibilities.

That our age permits so few to live beautifully is sad, but it is far
worse that it gives to so few the opportunity and the courage to die
worthily. Our generation ill understands how to lives but it knows even
less how to die. Most die, not the quite unappalling death of the hero,
but the horrible Philistine's death, as Goethe called it.

To die beautifully and worthily had been the dearest wish of both of
us, after that of a long life in happy unison. And Elsje attained this
desire as nearly as our wretched circumstances allowed.

"It is good after all now," she said when she felt the certainty of
what was about to take place, "that our darling baby did not live. For
it would have been so hard for you, poor, dear man, to care for the
child alone and at the same time continue with your work."

Eagerly she questioned me every morning about my dreams and it pleased
her exceedingly when I could honestly say that despite my anxieties my
dreams had been of a serene, refreshing splendor. And she always wanted
to know more of this wonderful state, that must be so like what we
shall experience after this body's decay and is so difficult to
describe and to comprehend.

"I think the worst," she said, "is that perhaps we shall never be
certain, when we see each other again, whether it is not a delusive
image, a product of our own imagination, instead of the other's actual
being. For then we no longer, as now, have our senses and thus nothing
to convince us that what we perceive is the same as what we perceived
in life."

"I can't say much in answer to that, dearest, except this - that even
in the brief moments of perception during sleep, I have felt assurance.
Self-deception may indeed be possible, but there is also infinite,
quiet time for consideration, observation, recollection, which in my
sleep is always wanting. And there must also be amalgamation,
dissolution of personality, perception through the medium of still
living beings - a multitude of conditions and faculties now still
wholly incomprehensible to us."

"That sounds sad to me: dissolution of the personality. For it will be
for you, for you as you are now, for your own personal nature, your
dear voice, your gentle eyes that I shall long for ever and ever, and
for that above everything."

"I only know, Elsje, that nothing has been lost or can be lost of all
our impressions, of all the most beautiful and precious things we have
experienced. Nothing perishes, and surely least of all that which is
the constituent element of all that is: feeling. All feeling is
eternal, and the least that we experience is lastingly recorded in the
memory of the Almighty. I can say nothing more nor be more explicit
about it, we must comfort ourselves with this main thought."

"If you are comforted and brave, dearest husband, I am too."

"I am, for even if I must live on ten or twenty solitary years after
our separation, I have my work and my study, and I also have my nights
in which I shall call you. And you'll surely want to come when I call
you?

"Oh, dearest, whether I will want to? If I know that it can comfort
you! Whether I will want to?"

And her dim eyes smiled at the extreme superfluence of my question.

"And when you have your gloomy moments again, dear, will you forgive me
then that I induced you to cause and to experience so much sorrow? - I
know of course that you never think bitterly of me, and that you
forgive me everything in your joyous, vigorous times, when your real,
true nature dominates. But there are periods of dejection too. Will you
not think bitterly of me then?"

"Rather ask me, Elsje, whether I will forgive Christ that he induced me
to cause you so much suffering, that he did not point out my way to me
sooner and more distinctly, and left you to pine and wait so long.
Christ is the Mighty, the Strong, the Wise, who governs us and who
bears the greatest responsibility. We two are poor, blind, little
toilers who have helped one another to the best of our abilities. For
each other we have only gratitude!"

"Yes!" said Elsje, contented; "for each other only gratitude."

And to the last moments of her life she was absorbed and comforted in
the thought that I would still have the nights, in which I would call
her and find strength and encouragement for the lonely day.

"To forgive Jesus," she said another time, "is really absurd, isn't it?
For I would love him at least just as much as you, if only I might
think of him as human."

"Everything we say, Elsje, is absurd. But what we feel is not absurd.
When we have returned to the Source of Life, to the Genitive-soul of
humanity, only then I think shall we realize how absurd were our words,
but how true our feeling."

The last words I heard from her, in her anxious care for me, were a
whispered: "Will you call me!" and once more when her voice had grown
toneless her lips formed the word: "Call!"

Then the blossom withered, and fell. But the mighty stem had grown
richer through the beautiful bloom of her love-breathing life.

XXXII

After Elsje's death I had no more peace in the new country. It seemed
as though her homesickness had passed on to me. My dreams spoke night
after night of Holland, only Holland, and of the place where I had
found my wife. Her supernatural being seemed to drive me toward the
land of her longing.

A long time I resisted this desire, unwilling to give up the work that
I had begun with go much sacrifice and carried through with so much
anguish.

Then I received a strange communication. I heard through a business
agent of my family in Italy, with whom I had remained in touch, that my
mother had died and had left her fortune to my children; and that my
daughter Emilia, having attained her majority, was determined not to
accept the money but to give it to me. My children were all married or
independent, and the whole family was scattered. Lucia was an abbess in
a religious institution.

Then I could no longer resist the secret craving which did not cease
night or day and so distinctly appeared to me like a warning from my
dead wife, and I went back to this little town, where I bought my
present house and the small nursery garden, which still furnishes me
daily occupation.

What I received from my daughter was not much, but sufficient for
maintaining my simple, provincial life here. Gradually I succeeded in
accustoming the petty provincials to my strange ways, and now my life
is as endurable as any that I could still have hoped to find on earth.

Only by this strange communication and Emilia's friendly act was I
aroused from the dark stupor into which Elsje's death had plunged me. I
would not perhaps have had the power to rouse myself to an interest in
life and in my work, would perhaps have fallen ill and died without
once seeing Elsje in my dreams. For my despair and my homesickness had
also dimmed the clarity of my dreamlife. I slept little and badly, the
tortured soul could not separate itself sufficiently from the restless
body to attain to reintegration and transcendental perception.

Emilia's act saved me. And then I made the comforting observation, that
with the recovery from a period of deep affliction the power of
enjoyment is extraordinarily heightened. I saw my daughter again in
Paris, where we had agreed to meet before I should go to Holland, and
the one single day there was marked by a wondrous indescribable joy.

It overcame me quite suddenly - during the journey from America - that
I felt the dark melancholy giving way. And then too came the clear
perception during the night, brief but intense, in which I for the
first time summoned the beloved dead, heard her soft, loving voice, and
saw her eyes.

In Paris the reunion with the only one of my children who had remained
true to me - the gentle devoted girl who wanted to continue to
understand and to help her father - was an exquisite joy.

It is impossible to put into words what takes place in the soul at such
a time, and the effect is so strange that, even while experiencing it,
I was filled with continual devout wonder.

The connection between the spiritual body and waking body must then
suddenly be supplied and firmly restored again, and the weakness of
this spiritual joint that was caused by melancholy all at once relieved.

All that I saw that day was joy, was well-nigh bliss. And above all -
it signified so much! With everything I saw, I felt the existence of
infinite prospects of joy and beauty that were indicated by it, only
just briefly indicated -but unmistakable.

There was a large exposition - one of these banal world fairs which I
had often railed at. But now with my thousand-fold heightened
sensibility of joy and beauty, I saw it all as a distinct dawning and
precursor of untold approaching glory.

The wide, sunny avenues with the gilded statues gleaming in the clear
sunlight, the temples and galleries white and stately, the thousands
and thousands of people assembled from every land, the joyous festive
aspect, the music on all sides, the odor of dust, of linden-blossoms,
of faintly perfumed clothes - ah! how powerless is this summary to
picture the indescribable, the beautiful joy whereof all this seemed to
me to be a fleeting proclaimer. I could look about me where I would -
at an Eastern façade, at a group of musicians, at a leafy row of sunlit
trees, at the sweet, pretty, well-dressed girl who walked by my side
and who was my daughter - everything betokened gladness, strange,
subtle, unknown joy, intense splendor, secret expectation of great,
never-suspected mysteries and wonders.

On this happy day these two truths were firmly rooted in my soul:
First, that humanity is on its upward course, that the wound of God is
healing, that a new common welfare, surpassing all imagination, is in
store, even on this earth, with a glory beyond measure or example. And
secondly, that our power of enjoyment continues to grow under the
weight of our mortal body and that there is nothing improbable in the
expectation of the ancient believers that we shall only then really
know what true blessedness is when we are forever delivered from this
burden.

Even as all faculties, all organs, are developed by opposition,
provided it is not overpowering, so also the power of loving and of
being blessed is developed under the outward opposition of the mortal,
physical life, provided the spirit retains the once acquired knowledge
and is able to endure the tribulations and with prudence to conquer
them.

This advantage I did not lose again in my later solitary life. My old
age, monotonous and inwardly lonely though it may be, is joyous and
happy, full of bright expectation, full of gentle resignation.

A few times I again had the great outward pleasure of having my
daughter visit me and of being able to speak with her openly and
honestly about my life, about her mother, about Elsje, my eternally
beloved, true wife. I could speak to no one else of this. But Emilia
always listened attentively and reverently, and I do not doubt but that
it taught her something and that it broadened and cleared her mind.

Aside from these few eminently happy days, I do not despise the most
trifling daily pleasures - nevertheless I leave my little city but
seldom. I find pleasure in the beauties of my little town and this low
land at all seasons, in the working and cultivating of my little plot
of land, in the freshly plowed earth with its sweet smell, in the eager
interest in the thriving of my plants, and also in the small domestic
joys.

An old faithful servant from "The Toelast" has, after the death of Jan
Baars, gone over into my employ, and she cooks deliciously and cares
for me as for her own child. And the long, solemn, solitary evenings in
my quiet house with my books, papers, memories and a little music are
never too long for me.

What I mind most are the meetings of the board of directors of the
orphanage, but I shall tell of that another time. It is not a heavy
affliction, however.

The nights have, as formerly, continued to be my greatest solace. The
years now pass swiftly and fleetingly, for in age one measures the
flight of time with a larger scale. I now reckon its flight almost
solely by the milestones of my dreams, by the times when I could summon
my beloved and was sensible of her presence.

In this connection I shall recount one more dream - it was in the late
morning hours between seven and eight o'clock. The dream began with a
conversation concerning the life after death, in which I tried to
convince some one that there would be a fusion of units, not a personal
continuation of life, but an absorbing of our individual being into the
universal being with complete retention of our memory and our
experience. This was clearer to me than ever before.

Then all at once came the thought: I have not yet seen my beloved, she
is waiting, I must go quickly to greet her. Thereupon the consciousness
that I was dreaming and was in E------ and that I should find her
there. I went out of doors and saw the blue sky and a magnificent
landscape. Then I passed into the state of ecstasy. Following one upon
the other in rapid succession, the most glorious spectacles unfolded
themselves and I did nothing but utter cries of rapture and fervid
thanks. I saw an entrancing mountain landscape, clearly and sharply
outlined, the crevices in the rocks, the rough stony ledges lit up by
the sun, the mountain pastures o'erspread with golden radiance. And
then all at once there lay before me a fair green valley, with low
shrubs, a clear, gently-flowing, winding stream, quiet houses and a few
tall-stemmed tropical trees. An indescribable, deeply-significant calm
and stillness reigned there. The land was populated and thickly
settled, but enwrapped in a universal breathless consecration of peace
and joy. I saw light-blue peacocks quietly strutting about in the sun,
their images reflected by the water. The colors, the pure atmosphere,
the pretty, quiet house, the solemn silence, the presence, felt but not
seen, of thousands of peaceful, happy human beings, the light horizon
with the mighty sun-lit mountain chain - all this was too beautiful for
words.

I called my beloved that she should come and look too. I did not see
her, but I heard her dear voice saying:

"What a quantity of flowers!"

Then I felt the desire to pray, and facing toward the direction whence
the light came, I for the first time no longer saw the dark cloud which
I had always seen there until Elsje's death and which after that time
only gradually dissolved. And for the first time in the dream-world I
saw the disc of the sun.

Then I spoke to Christ, passionately and eloquently as I had never done
before and surely would never be able to do in the day-time. Gratitude
and love I gave utterance to.

"My father and my mother thou art, and I love thee despite all I have
suffered for thee. I am willing to suffer for thee, and I feel no
bitterness for the grief I have suffered. I forgive thee, I forgive
thee, and I know that thou forgivest me all my follies and my
weaknesses - for between us there shall no longer be any question of
forgiveness, but only of gratitude, even as between myself and my
beloved. For we cannot conceive thee and therefore cannot love thee
sufficiently, and we only love thee in each other, even as we know each
other. But I know that the love for my beloved is love for thee and
that in her I love thee. And I feel no regret and am happy and
thankful, content to have followed thee and served thee, firmly
believing that I shall grow in power till I shall recognize and attain
fitness for eternal blessedness. I ask for nothing, but I long for thee
and for thy Glory, and I shall leave behind a glowing trail of
gratitude so that the others may find thee by it."

As I said this, I saw light mists draw away from the face of the sun,
and it began to shine with blinding radiance. This seemed such a
gracious revelation to me that I could only cry: Ah! Ah! in my
transport. Then I felt that I would weep or faint from joy, but that I
did not want, and I awoke!

That morning I was refreshed and well fortified against trouble.

The only thing I still fear is a weakening of the mind in my declining
years, so that I should have to drift about for years as a hopeless
wreck. I have a theory that one can prevent this by sagacious prudence
and by exertion and exercise of the contemplative power.

But this theory has yet to be proved. And my example alone would not be
sufficient for that.

As long as I retain my clearness of mind, I have plenty of work in
elaborating these ideas and conceptions which so far I have only
briefly indicated.

In the first place?


- - -


The E------ Journal in its issue of June 12th, 1908, published the
following account:


"To-day a sad accident occurred outside the harbor within eight of our
town. On the yacht 'Elsje,' belonging to Mr. Muralto, a fire started,
presumably caused by the upsetting of an alcohol lamp. The entire
vessel was speedily ablaze. Mr. Muralto, despite his great age a strong
swimmer, jumped overboard, endeavoring to carry his companion, a
skipper's lad who could not swim, to the haven on some planks. But the
strong current pulled both out to sea. The boy was picked up by a
home-sailing sloop, Mr. Muralto was drowned. As the deemed was
universally respected and loved for his benevolence and unassuming
manner, his death arouses universal sympathy in our town."

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