Herman Melville - Mardi and a Voyage Thither

We are fuller than a city. Woe it is, that reveals these things. He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity. To scale great heights, we must come out of lowermost depths. The way to heaven is through hell. We need fiery baptisms in the fiercest flames of our own bosoms. We must feel our hearts hot-hissing in us. And ere their fire is revealed, it must burn its way out of us; though it consume us and itself. Oh, sleek-cheeked Plenty! smiling at thine own dimples;-vain for thee to reach out after greatness. Turn! turn! from all your tiers of cushions of eider-down-turn! and be broken on the wheels of many woes. At white-heat, brand thyself; and count the scars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires. Soft poet! brushing tears from lilies-this way! and howl in sackcloth and in ashes! Know, thou, that the lines that live are turned out of a furrowed brow. Oh! there is a fierce, a cannibal delight, in the grief that shrieks to multiply itself. That grief is miserly of its own; it pities all the happy. Some damned spirits would not be otherwise, could they.

ABRAZZA (_to Media_)-Pray, my lord, is this good gentleman a devil?

MEDIA.-No, my lord; but he's possessed by one. His name is Azzageddi.

You may hear more of him. But come, Babbalanja, hast forgotten all about Lombardo? How set he about that great undertaking, his Kortanza?

ABRAZZA (_to Media_)-Oh, for all the ravings of your Babbalanja, Lombardo took no special pains; hence, deserves small commendation.

For, genius must be somewhat like us kings, — calm, content, in consciousness of power. And to Lombardo, the scheme of his Kortanza must have come full-fledged, like an eagle from the sun.

BABBALANJA-No, your Highness; but like eagles, his thoughts were first callow; yet, born plumeless, they came to soar.

ABRAZZA-Very fine. I presume, Babbalanja, the first thing he did, was to fast, and invoke the muses.

BABBALANJA-Pardon, my lord; on the contrary he first procured a ream of vellum, and some sturdy quills: indispensable preliminaries, my worshipful lords, to the writing of the sublimest epics.

ABRAZZA-Ah! then the muses were afterward invoked.

BABBALANJA-Pardon again. Lombardo next sat down to a fine plantain pudding.

YOOMY-When the song-spell steals over me, I live upon olives.

BABBALANJA-Yoomy, Lombardo eschewed olives. Said he, "What fasting soldier can fight? and the fight of all fights is to write." In ten days Lombardo had written-ABRAZZA-Dashed off, you mean.

BABBALANJA-He never dashed off aught.

ABRAZZA-As you will.

BABBALANJA-In ten days, Lombardo had written full fifty folios; he loved huge acres of vellum whereon to expatiate.

MEDIA-What then?

BABBALANJA-He read them over attentively; made a neat package of the whole: and put it into the fire.

ALL-How?

MEDIA-What! these great geniuses writing trash?

ABRAZZA-I thought as much.

BABBALANJA-My lords, they abound in it! more than any other men in Mardi. Genius is full of trash. But genius essays its best to keep it to itself; and giving away its ore, retains the earth; whence, the too frequent wisdom of its works, and folly of its life.

ABRAZZA-Then genius is not inspired, after all. How they must slave in their mines! I weep to think of it.

BABBALANJA-My lord, all men are inspired; fools are inspired; your highness is inspired; for the essence of all ideas is infused. Of ourselves, and in ourselves, we originate nothing. When Lombardo set about his work, he knew not what it would become. He did not build himself in with plans; he wrote right on; and so doing, got deeper and deeper into himself; and like a resolute traveler, plunging through baffling woods, at last was rewarded for his toils. "In good time," saith he, in his autobiography, "I came out into a serene, sunny, ravishing region; full of sweet scents, singing birds, wild plaints, roguish laughs, prophetic voices. "Here we are at last, then," he cried; "I have created the creative." And now the whole boundless landscape stretched away. Lombardo panted; the sweat was on his brow; he off mantle; braced himself; sat within view of the ocean; his face to a cool rushing breeze; placed flowers before him; and gave himself plenty of room. On one side was his ream of vellum-ABBRAZZA-And on the other, a brimmed beaker.

BABBALANJA-No, your Highness; though he loved it, no wine for Lombardo while actually at work.

MOHI–Indeed? Why, I ever thought that it was to the superior quality of Lombardo's punches, that Mardi was indebted for that abounding humor of his.

BABBALANJA-Not so; he had another way of keeping himself well braced.

YOOMY-Quick! tell us the secret.

BABBALANJA-He never wrote by rush-light. His lamp swung in heaven.-He rose from his East, with the sun; he wrote when all nature was alive.

MOHI-Doubtless, then, he always wrote with a grin; and none laughed louder at his quips, than Lombardo himself.

BABBALANJA-Hear you laughter at the birth of a man child, old man?

The babe may have many dimples; not so, the parent. Lombardo was a hermit to behold.

MEDIA-What! did Lombardo laugh with a long face?

BABBALANJA-His merriment was not always merriment to him, your Highness. For the most part, his meaning kept him serious. Then he was so intensely riveted to his work, he could not pause to laugh.

MOHI-My word for it; but he had a sly one, now and then.

BABBALANJA-For the nonce, he was not his own master: a mere amanuensis writing by dictation.

YOOMY-Inspiration, that!

BABBALANJA.-Call it as you will, Yoomy, it was a sort of sleepwalking of the mind. Lombardo never threw down his pen: it dropped from him; and then, he sat disenchanted: rubbing his eyes; staring; and feeling faint-sometimes, almost unto death.

MEDIA-But pray, Babbalanja, tell us how he made acquaintance with some of those rare worthies, he introduces us to, in his Koztanza.

BABBALANJA-He first met them in his reveries; they were walking about in him, sour and moody: and for a long time, were shy of his advances; but still importuned, they at last grew ashamed of their reserve; stepped forward; and gave him their hands. After that, they were frank and friendly. Lombardo set places for them at his board; when he died, he left them something in his will.

MEDIA-What! those imaginary beings?

ABRAZZA-Wondrous witty! infernal fine!

MEDIA-But, Babbalanja; after all, the Koztanza found no favor in the eyes of some Mardians.

ABRAZZA-Ay: the arch-critics Verbi and Batho denounced it.

BABBALANJA-Yes: on good authority, Verbi is said to have detected a superfluous comma; and Batho declared that, with the materials he could have constructed a far better world than Lombardo's. But, didst ever hear of his laying his axis?

ABRAZZA-But the unities; Babbalanja, the unities! they are wholly wanting in the Koztanza.

BABBALANJA-Your Highness; upon that point, Lombardo was frank. Saith he, in his autobiography: "For some time, I endeavored to keep in the good graces of those nymphs; but I found them so captious, and exacting; they threw me into such a violent passion with their faultfindings; that, at last, I renounced them."

ABRAZZA-Very rash!

BABBALANJA-No, your Highness; for though Lombardo abandoned all monitors from without; he retained one autocrat within-his crowned and sceptered instinct. And what, if he pulled down one gross world, and ransacked the etherial spheres, to build up something of his own-a composite:-what then? matter and mind, though matching not, are mates; and sundered oft, in his Koztanza they unite:-the airy waist, embraced by stalwart arms.

MEDIA-Incoherent again! I thought we were to have no more of this!

BABBALANJA-My lord Media, there are things infinite in the finite; and dualities in unities. Our eyes are pleased with the redness of the rose, but another sense lives upon its fragrance. Its redness you must approach, to view: its invisible fragrance pervades the field. So, with the Koztanza. Its mere beauty is restricted to its form: its expanding soul, past Mardi does embalm. Modak is Modako; but foglefoggle is not fugle-fi.