(Originally appeared in “The Daily News”, Oct. 16, 1909, and in “Alarms and Discursions”, NY: Dodd, Mead. 1911)
The Nightmare
A SUNSET of copper and gold had just broken down and gone to pieces in the west, and grey colours were crawling over everything in earth and heaven; also a wind was growing, a wind that laid a cold finger upon flesh and spirit. The bushes at the back of my garden began to whisper like conspirators; and then to wave like wild hands in signal. I was trying to read by the last light that died on the lawn a long poem of the decadent period, a poem about the old gods of Babylon and Egypt, about their blazing and obscene temples, their cruel and colossal faces.
“Or didst thou love the God of Flies who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed With wine unto the waist, or Pasht who had green beryls for her eyes?”
I read this poem because I had to review it for the Daily News; still it was genuine poetry of its kind. It really gave out an atmosphere, a fragrant and suffocating smoke that seemed really to come from the Bondage of Egypt or the Burden of Tyre. There is not much in common (thank God) between my garden with the grey-green English sky-line beyond it, and these mad visions of painted palaces, huge, headless idols and monstrous solitudes of red or golden sand. Nevertheless (as I confessed to myself) I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping thing detaches itself from one of the sombre trees and flutters to another. I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough, I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale, about how I went up the crooked road beyond the church and met Something-say a dog, a dog with one eye. Then I should meet a horse, perhaps, a horse without a rider; the horse also would have one eye. Then the inhuman silence would be broken; I should meet a man (need I say, a one-eyed man?) who would ask me the way to my own house. Or perhaps tell me that it was burnt to the ground. I think I could tell a very cosy little tale along some such lines. Or I might dream of climbing for ever the tall dark trees above me. They are so tall that I feel as if I should find at their tops the nests of the angels; but in this mood they would be dark and dreadful angels; angels of death.
Only, you see, this mood is all bosh. I do not believe it in the least. That one-eyed universe, with its one-eyed men and beasts, was only created with one universal wink. At the top of the tragic trees I should not find the Angel’s Nest. I should only find the Mare’s Nest; the dreamy and divine nest is not there. In the Mare’s Nest I shall discover that dim, enormous opalescent egg from which is hatched the Nightmare. For there is nothing so delightful as a nightmare-when you know it is a nightmare.
That is the essential. That is the stern condition laid upon all artists touching this luxury of fear. The terror must be fundamentally frivolous. Sanity may play with insanity; but insanity must not be allowed to play with sanity. Let such poets as the one I was reading in the garden, by all means, be free to imagine what outrageous deities and violent landscapes they like. By all means let them wander freely amid their opium pinnacles and perspectives. But these huge gods, these high cities, are toys; they must never for an instant be allowed to be anything else. Man, a gigantic child, must play with Babylon and Nineveh, with Isis and with Ashtaroth. By all means let him dream of the Bondage of Egypt, so long as he is free from it. By all means let him take up the Burden of Tyre, so long as he can take it lightly. But the old gods must be his dolls, not his idols. His central sanctities, his true possessions, should be Christian and simple. And just as a child would cherish most a wooden horse or a sword that is a mere cross of wood, so man, the great child, must cherish most the old plain things of poetry and piety; that horse of wood that was the epic end of Ilium, or that cross of wood that redeemed and conquered the world.
In one of Stevenson’s letters there is a characteristically humorous remark about the appalling impression produced on him in childhood by the beasts with many eyes in the Book of Revelations: “If that was heaven, what in the name of Davy Jones was hell like?” Now in sober truth there is a magnificent idea in these monsters of the Apocalypse. It is, I suppose, the idea that beings really more beautiful or more universal than we are might appear to us frightful and even confused. Especially they might seem to have senses at once more multiplex and more staring; an idea very imaginatively seized in the multitude of eyes. I like those monsters beneath the throne very much. It is when one of them goes wandering in deserts and finds a throne for himself that evil faiths begin, and there is (literally) the devil to pay-to pay in dancing girls or human sacrifice. As long as those misshapen elemental powers are around the throne, remember that the thing that they worship is the likeness of the appearance of a man.
That is, I fancy, the true doctrine on the subject of Tales of Terror and such things, which unless a man of letters do well and truly believe, without doubt he will end by blowing his brains out or by writing badly. Man, the central pillar of the world must be upright and straight; around him all the trees and beasts and elements and devils may crook and curl like smoke if they choose. All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul. Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made.
Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking tree-tops and the roaring wind; I will catch her and ride her through the awful air. Woods and weeds are alike tugging at the roots in the rising tempest, as if all wished to fly with us over the moon, like that wild, amorous cow whose child was the Moon-Calf. We will rise to that mad infinite where there is neither up nor down, the high topsy-turveydom of the heavens. I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me.
—G.K.Chesterton
(Originally appeared in “The Daily News”, Oct. 16, 1909, and in “Alarms and Discursions”, NY: Dodd, Mead. 1911)
The Nightmare
A SUNSET of copper and gold had just broken down and gone to pieces in the west, and grey colours were crawling over everything in earth and heaven; also a wind was growing, a wind that laid a cold finger upon flesh and spirit. The bushes at the back of my garden began to whisper like conspirators; and then to wave like wild hands in signal. I was trying to read by the last light that died on the lawn a long poem of the decadent period, a poem about the old gods of Babylon and Egypt, about their blazing and obscene temples, their cruel and colossal faces.
“Or didst thou love the God of Flies who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed With wine unto the waist, or Pasht who had green beryls for her eyes?”
I read this poem because I had to review it for the Daily News; still it was genuine poetry of its kind. It really gave out an atmosphere, a fragrant and suffocating smoke that seemed really to come from the Bondage of Egypt or the Burden of Tyre. There is not much in common (thank God) between my garden with the grey-green English sky-line beyond it, and these mad visions of painted palaces, huge, headless idols and monstrous solitudes of red or golden sand. Nevertheless (as I confessed to myself) I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping thing detaches itself from one of the sombre trees and flutters to another. I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough, I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale, about how I went up the crooked road beyond the church and met Something-say a dog, a dog with one eye. Then I should meet a horse, perhaps, a horse without a rider; the horse also would have one eye. Then the inhuman silence would be broken; I should meet a man (need I say, a one-eyed man?) who would ask me the way to my own house. Or perhaps tell me that it was burnt to the ground. I think I could tell a very cosy little tale along some such lines. Or I might dream of climbing for ever the tall dark trees above me. They are so tall that I feel as if I should find at their tops the nests of the angels; but in this mood they would be dark and dreadful angels; angels of death.
Only, you see, this mood is all bosh. I do not believe it in the least. That one-eyed universe, with its one-eyed men and beasts, was only created with one universal wink. At the top of the tragic trees I should not find the Angel’s Nest. I should only find the Mare’s Nest; the dreamy and divine nest is not there. In the Mare’s Nest I shall discover that dim, enormous opalescent egg from which is hatched the Nightmare. For there is nothing so delightful as a nightmare-when you know it is a nightmare.
That is the essential. That is the stern condition laid upon all artists touching this luxury of fear. The terror must be fundamentally frivolous. Sanity may play with insanity; but insanity must not be allowed to play with sanity. Let such poets as the one I was reading in the garden, by all means, be free to imagine what outrageous deities and violent landscapes they like. By all means let them wander freely amid their opium pinnacles and perspectives. But these huge gods, these high cities, are toys; they must never for an instant be allowed to be anything else. Man, a gigantic child, must play with Babylon and Nineveh, with Isis and with Ashtaroth. By all means let him dream of the Bondage of Egypt, so long as he is free from it. By all means let him take up the Burden of Tyre, so long as he can take it lightly. But the old gods must be his dolls, not his idols. His central sanctities, his true possessions, should be Christian and simple. And just as a child would cherish most a wooden horse or a sword that is a mere cross of wood, so man, the great child, must cherish most the old plain things of poetry and piety; that horse of wood that was the epic end of Ilium, or that cross of wood that redeemed and conquered the world.
In one of Stevenson’s letters there is a characteristically humorous remark about the appalling impression produced on him in childhood by the beasts with many eyes in the Book of Revelations: “If that was heaven, what in the name of Davy Jones was hell like?” Now in sober truth there is a magnificent idea in these monsters of the Apocalypse. It is, I suppose, the idea that beings really more beautiful or more universal than we are might appear to us frightful and even confused. Especially they might seem to have senses at once more multiplex and more staring; an idea very imaginatively seized in the multitude of eyes. I like those monsters beneath the throne very much. It is when one of them goes wandering in deserts and finds a throne for himself that evil faiths begin, and there is (literally) the devil to pay-to pay in dancing girls or human sacrifice. As long as those misshapen elemental powers are around the throne, remember that the thing that they worship is the likeness of the appearance of a man.
(Apparve originariamente in «The Daily News», 16 ott. 1909, e in «Alarms and Discursions», NY: Dodd, Mead. 1911)
L’Incubo
UN TRAMONTO di rame e d’oro si era appena disfatto e frantumato a occidente, e colori grigi strisciavano su ogni cosa in terra e in cielo; e cresceva anche un vento, un vento che posava un dito freddo sulla carne e sullo spirito. I cespugli in fondo al mio giardino cominciarono a bisbigliare come congiurati; e poi ad agitarsi come mani selvagge che fanno un segnale. Cercavo di leggere, all’ultima luce che moriva sul prato, un lungo poema del periodo decadente, un poema sugli antichi dèi di Babilonia e d’Egitto, sui loro templi fiammeggianti e osceni, sui loro volti crudeli e colossali.
“O amasti tu il Dio delle Mosche che flagellò gli Ebrei e fu spruzzato di vino fino ai fianchi, o Pasht che aveva verdi berilli per occhi?”
Leggevo questo poema perché dovevo recensirlo per il Daily News; eppure era autentica poesia, nel suo genere. Emanava davvero un’atmosfera, un fumo fragrante e soffocante che pareva provenire proprio dalla Schiavitù d’Egitto o dal Fardello di Tiro. Non c’è molto in comune (grazie a Dio) tra il mio giardino con la sua linea d’orizzonte inglese grigio-verde al di là, e queste folli visioni di palazzi dipinti, di enormi idoli senza testa e di mostruose solitudini di sabbia rossa o dorata. Nondimeno (come confessai a me stesso) in un simile crepuscolo tempestoso posso immaginare un tale sentore di morte e di paura. Il tramonto in rovina somiglia davvero a uno dei loro templi in rovina: un cumulo infranto di marmo d’oro e verde. Una nera cosa sbattente si stacca da uno degli alberi cupi e svolazza verso un altro. Non so se sia gufo o pipistrello; potrei figurarmi che fosse un cherubino nero, un infernale cherubino delle tenebre, non con le ali di un uccello e la testa di un bimbo, ma con la testa di un folletto e le ali di un pipistrello. Penso che, se ci fosse luce a sufficienza, potrei sedermi qui e scrivere un raccontino del brivido assai apprezzabile, su come io risalii la strada tortuosa oltre la chiesa e incontrai Qualcosa — poniamo un cane, un cane con un occhio solo. Poi incontrerei un cavallo, forse, un cavallo senza cavaliere; anche il cavallo avrebbe un occhio solo. Poi il silenzio disumano sarebbe rotto; incontrerei un uomo (devo dirlo, un uomo con un occhio solo?) che mi chiederebbe la via per la mia casa. O forse mi direbbe che è stata rasa al suolo dal fuoco. Penso che potrei raccontare un delizioso raccontino su queste falsariga. Oppure potrei sognare di arrampicarmi per sempre sugli alti alberi oscuri sopra di me. Sono così alti che mi pare che troverei in cima i nidi degli angeli; ma in questo stato d’animo sarebbero angeli oscuri e terribili; angeli della morte.
Solo che, vedete, questo stato d’animo è tutta fandonia. Non ci credo minimamente. Quell’universo con un occhio solo, con i suoi uomini e le sue bestie con un occhio solo, fu creato soltanto con un universale strizzar d’occhio. In cima agli alberi tragici non troverei il Nido dell’Angelo. Troverei soltanto il Nido della Cavalla; il nido sognante e divino non è lì. Nel Nido della Cavalla scoprirò quel fioco, enorme, opalescente uovo da cui si schiude l’Incubo. Perché non c’è nulla di così delizioso quanto un incubo — quando sai che è un incubo.
Questo è l’essenziale. Questa è la severa condizione imposta a tutti gli artisti che toccano questo lusso della paura. Il terrore dev’essere fondamentalmente frivolo. La Sanità mentale può giocare con la follia; ma alla follia non si deve permettere di giocare con la sanità mentale. I poeti come quello che leggevo nel giardino siano pure liberissimi di immaginare quali oltraggiose divinità e quali violenti paesaggi vogliono. Vaghino pure liberamente tra i loro pinnacoli e le loro prospettive d’oppio. Ma questi immensi dèi, queste alte città, sono giocattoli; non si deve permettere loro, neppure per un istante, di essere altro. L’uomo, bambino gigantesco, deve giocare con Babilonia e Ninive, con Iside e con Astaroth. Sogni pure la Schiavitù d’Egitto, purché ne sia libero. Si carichi pure del Fardello di Tiro, purché sappia portarlo con leggerezza. Ma gli antichi dèi devono essere le sue bambole, non i suoi idoli. Le sue sacralità centrali, i suoi veri possessi, dovrebbero essere cristiani e semplici. E proprio come un bambino terrebbe più caro un cavallo di legno o una spada che è una semplice croce di legno, così l’uomo, il gran bambino, deve tenere più care le antiche cose schiette della poesia e della pietà; quel cavallo di legno che fu la epica fine di Ilio, o quella croce di legno che redense e conquistò il mondo.
In una delle lettere di Stevenson c’è un’osservazione caratteristicamente spiritosa sull’impressione tremenda prodotta su di lui nella fanciullezza dalle bestie dai molti occhi del Libro dell’Apocalisse: «Se quello era il cielo, come diamine, in nome di Davy Jones, doveva essere l’inferno?». Ora, in sobria verità, c’è un’idea magnifica in questi mostri dell’Apocalisse. È, suppongo, l’idea che esseri realmente più belli o più universali di noi potrebbero apparirci spaventosi e perfino confusi. Soprattutto potrebbero sembrare dotati di sensi a un tempo più molteplici e più sbarrati; idea colta con grande immaginazione nella moltitudine di occhi. Mi piacciono moltissimo quei mostri sotto il trono. È quando uno di essi se ne va errando nei deserti e trova un trono per sé che cominciano le fedi malvage, e c’è (letteralmente) da pagare il fio al diavolo — da pagarlo in fanciulle danzanti o in sacrifici umani. Finché quelle deformi potenze elementari stanno intorno al trono, ricordate che la cosa che esse adorano è la somiglianza dell’apparenza di un uomo.
That is, I fancy, the true doctrine on the subject of Tales of Terror and such things, which unless a man of letters do well and truly believe, without doubt he will end by blowing his brains out or by writing badly. Man, the central pillar of the world must be upright and straight; around him all the trees and beasts and elements and devils may crook and curl like smoke if they choose. All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul. Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made.
Therefore I see no wrong in riding with the Nightmare to-night; she whinnies to me from the rocking tree-tops and the roaring wind; I will catch her and ride her through the awful air. Woods and weeds are alike tugging at the roots in the rising tempest, as if all wished to fly with us over the moon, like that wild, amorous cow whose child was the Moon-Calf. We will rise to that mad infinite where there is neither up nor down, the high topsy-turveydom of the heavens. I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me.
—G.K.Chesterton
Questa è, immagino, la vera dottrina in materia di Racconti del Terrore e simili cose, la quale, se un uomo di lettere non crede bene e veramente, senza dubbio finirà per farsi saltare le cervella o per scrivere male. L’uomo, il pilastro centrale del mondo, deve essere eretto e diritto; intorno a lui tutti gli alberi e le bestie e gli elementi e i diavoli possono incurvarsi e attorcigliarsi come fumo se vogliono. Tutta la letteratura davvero immaginosa non è che il contrasto tra le bizzarre curve della Natura e la rettitudine dell’anima. L’uomo può contemplare quanta bruttezza voglia se è sicuro che non la venererà; ma vi sono alcuni così deboli che venereranno una cosa solo perché è brutta. Costoro devono essere incatenati al bello. Non è sempre male anche andare, come Dante, sull’orlo del più basso promontorio e guardare giù verso l’inferno. È quando guardi in su verso l’inferno che, probabilmente, è stato commesso un grave errore di calcolo.
Perciò non vedo nulla di male nel cavalcare con l’Incubo questa notte; esso mi nitrisce dalle cime ondeggianti degli alberi e dal vento ruggente; lo afferrerò e lo cavalcherò attraverso l’aria tremenda. Boschi ed erbacce del pari strappano alle radici nella tempesta montante, come se tutti volessero volare con noi oltre la luna, come quella folle, amorosa vacca il cui figlio fu il Vitello Lunare. Ci leveremo verso quell’infinito folle dove non c’è né su né giù, l’alto capovolgimento dei cieli. Cavalcherò l’Incubo; ma esso non cavalcherà me.
—G.K.Chesterton