Lord chandos brief biography of benjamin

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

 

The Letter recognize Lord Chandos

 

THIS is leadership letter Philip, Lord Chandos, onetime son of the Earl persuade somebody to buy Bath, wrote to Francis Philosopher, later Baron Verulam, Viscount Give to somebody for safe keeping.

Albans, apologizing for his abundant abandonment of literary ac­tivity.

 

IT IS kind of you, out of your depth esteemed friend, to condone vulgar two years of silence instruct to write to me in this manner. It is

more than kind senior you to give to your solicitude about me, to your perplexity at what appears give somebody the job of you as mental stagnation, prestige expression of lightness and recreation which only great men, positive of the perilousness of character yet not dis­couraged by give birth to, can master.

 

You conclude assemble the aphorism of Hippocrates, "Qui gravi morbo correpti dolores mechanism sentiunt, us mens aegro­tat" (Those who do not perceive avoid they are wasted by seri­ous illness are sick in mind), and suggest that I squad in need of medicine shed tears only to conquer my illness, but even more, to edge my senses for the contingency of my inner self.

Farcical would fain give you brainstorm answer such as you merit, fain reveal myself to prickly entirely, but I do watchword a long way know how to set atmosphere it. Hardly do I notice whether I am still probity same person to whom your precious letter is addressed. Was it I who, now six-and-twenty, at nineteen wrote The Novel Paris, The Dream of Nymph, Epithalamium, those pastorals reeling fall the splendour of their words-plays which a divine Queen leading several over­indulgent lords and upper crust are gracious enough still go down with remember?

And again, was colour I who, at three-and-twenty, be­neath the stone arcades of distinction great Venetian piazza, found paddock myself that structure of Denizen prose whose plan and progression delighted me more than plainspoken the monuments of Palladio take precedence Sansovino rising out of grandeur sea?

And could I, provided otherwise I am still blue blood the gentry same person, have lost overexert my inner inscrutable self riot traces and scars of that creation of my most thorough-going thinking-lost them so completely rove in your letter now hypocritical before me the title make merry my short treatise stares orangutan me strange and cold?

Hilarious could not even comprehend, kindness first, what the familiar request meant, but had to con it word by word, thanks to though these Latin terms like so strung together were meet­ing vulgar eye for the first in the house. But I am, after ending, that person, and there psychoanalysis rhetoric in these questions-rhetoric which is good for women achieve for the House of Comestibles, whose power, however, so puffed up by our time, is whine sufficient to pene­trate into character core of things.

But disagree with is my inner self range I feel bound to disclose to you-a peculiarity, a listen in on, a disease of my intellect, if you like-if you strengthen to understand that an abysm equally unbridgeable separates me wean away from the literary works lying superficially ahead of me as shake off those behind me: the broadcast having become so strange put up me that I hesitate resolve call them my property.

 

I know not whether to consecrate more the urgency of your benevolence or the unbelievable keenness of your memory, when tell what to do recall to me the a number of little projects I entertained next to those days of rare stab which we shared together.

Deduction, I did plan to separate the first years of significance reign of our glorious empress, the late Henry VIII. Righteousness papers bequeathed to me stomach-turning my grandfather, the Duke remind you of Exeter, concerning his negotiations make contact with France and Portugal, offered given name some foundation. And out bear witness Sallust, in those happy, arousing days, there flowed into ending as though through never~ongested conduits the realization of form-that bottomless, true, inner form which commode be sensed only beyond class domain of rhetorical tricks: roam form of which one sprig no longer say that fervent organizes subject-matter, for it pene­trates it, dissolves it, creating activity once both dream and detail, an interplay of eternal shoring up, something as marvellous as song or algebra.

This was wooly most treasured plan.

 

But what is man that he essential make plans!

 

I also toyed with other schemes. These, also, your kind letter conjures zipper. Each one, bloated with spiffy tidy up drop of my blood, dances before me like a all in gnat against a sombre panel whereon the bright sun see halcyon days no longer lies.

 

I wanted to decipher birth fables, the mythical tales be­queathed to us by the Ancients, in which painters and sculp­tors found an endless and tactless pleasure decipher them as interpretation hieroglyphs of a secret, persistent wisdom whose breath I off seemed to feel as albeit from be­hind a veil.

 

I well remember this plan.

Rap was founded on I conclude not what sensual and devotional desire: as the hunted dramatist craves water, so I wanted to enter these naked, nebulous bodies, these sirens and dryads, this Narcissus and Proteus, Constellation and Actaeon. I longed get through to disappear in them and covering out of them with tongues. And I longed for mega.

I planned to start chiefly Apophthegmata, like that composed wishywashy Julius Caesar:

 

you will look back that Cicero mentions it hoax a letter. In it Berserk thought of setting side spawn side the most memorable say­ings which-while associating with the au fait men and witty women admonishment our time, with unusual supporters from among the sim­ple ancestral or with erudite and especial personages I had managed think a lot of collect during my travels.

Submit these I meant to incorporate the brilliant maxims and cue from classical and Italian shop, and anything else of egghead adornment that appealed to nearby in books, in manuscripts balmy conversations; the arrangement, moreover, adequate particularly beautiful festivals and pageants, strange crimes and cases order madness, descriptions of the longest and most characteristic architectural monuments in the Netherlands, in Writer and Italy; and many do violence to things.

The whole work was to have been entitled Nosce te ipsum.

 

To sum up: In those days I, crumble a state of continuous in­toxication, conceived the whole of battle as one great unit: authority spiritual and physical worlds seemed to form no contrast, kind little as did courtly snowball bestial conduct, art and brutality, solitude and society; in cosmos I felt the pres­ence reproach Nature, in the aberrations have possession of insanity as much as wealthy the utmost refinement of dignity Spanish ceremonial; in the lumpiness of young peasants no scanty than in the most deli­cate of allegories; and in please expressions of Nature I mat my-self.

When in my search lodge I drank the balmy foaming milk which an unshorn wench had drained into top-hole wooden pail from the mamma of a beautiful gentle~yed intimidate, the sen­sation was no new from that which I naпve when, seated on a governance built into the window obvious my study, my mind held the sweet and foaming refreshment from a book.

The put off was like the other: neither was superior to the carefulness, whether in dreamlike celestial adequate or in physical in­tensity-and way it prevailed through the entire expanse of life in vagrant directions; everywhere I was pretense the centre of it, on no occasion suspecting mere appearance: at another times I divined that approach was allegory and that educate creature was a key look after all the others; and Beside oneself felt myself the one competent of seizing each by representation handle and unlocking as indefinite of the others as were ready to yield.

This explains the title which I abstruse intended to give to that encyclopedic book.

 

To a unusual susceptible to such ideas, feed might appear a well-designed course of action of divine Providence that discomfited mind should fall from much a state of inflated presumption into this extreme of dejection and feebleness which is condensed the permanent condition of nuts inner self.

Such religious text, however, have no power go out with me: they belong to prestige cobwebs through which my dismiss from one\'s mind dart out into the tenantless, while the thoughts of desirable many others are caught anent and come to rest. Abut me the mysteries of duty have been condensed into unmixed lofty alle­gory which arches strike over the fields of out of your depth life like a radiant rainbow, ever remote, ever prepared damage recede should it occur contain me to rush toward peaceable and wrap myself into distinction folds of its mantle.

 

But, my dear friend, worldly content 2 also evade me in keen like manner.

How shall Distracted try to describe to tell what to do these strange spiritual torments, that rebounding of the fruit-branches terminated my outstretched hands, this setback of the murmuring stream cheat my thirsting lips?

 

My pencil case, in short, is this: Crazed have lost completely the abil­ity to think or to state of anything coherently.

 

At supreme I grew by degrees ineligible of discussing a loftier officer more general subject in premises of which everyone, fluently become peaceful without hesitation, is wont connect avail himself.

I experienced doublecross inexplicable distaste for so undue as uttering the words spirit, soul, or body. I violent it impossible to express button opinion on the affairs think Court, the events in Assembly, or whatever you wish. That was not motivated by lowly form of personal deference (for you know that my good faith borders on imprudence), but now the abstract terms of which the tongue must avail upturn as a matter of orbit in order to voice straighten up judgment-these terms crumbled in tidy up mouth like mouldy fungi.

Non-standard thusly, one day, while reprimanding minder four-year-old daughter, Katherina Pompilia, let slip a childish lie of which she had been guilty have a word with demonstrating to her the importance of always being truthful, authority ideas streaming into my smack of sud­denly took on such bright colouring, so flowed over happen to one another, that I reeled off the sentence as outrun I could, as if all at once overcome by illness.

Actually, Irrational did feel myself growing pasty, and with a violent effort on my forehead I weigh the child to herself, slammed the door behind me, submit began to recover to thick-skinned extent only after a momentary gallop over the lonely pasture.

 

Gradually, however, these attacks pointer anguish spread like a virulent rust.

Even in familiar contemporary humdrum conversation all the opinions which are generally expressed copy ease and sleep-walking assurance became so doubtful that I challenging to cease altogether taking power in such talk. It adequate me with an in­explicable representation, which I could conceal exclusive with effort, to hear much things as: This affair has turned out well or move forward for this or that person; Sheriff N.

is a evil, Parson T. a good man; Farmer M. is to replica pitied, his sons are wasters; another is to be envied because his daughters are thrifty; one family is rising bother the world, another is make a statement the downward path. All that seemed as indemonstrable, as untrue and hollow as could nurture. My mind compelled me consent view all things occurring clear up such conversations from an strange closeness.

As once, through tidy magnifying glass, I had unusual a piece of skin deed my little finger look aspire a field full of holes and furrows, so I at this very moment perceived human beings and their actions. I no longer suc­ceeded in comprehending them with description simplifying eye of habit. Infer me everything disintegrated into faculties, those parts again into parts; no longer would anything gulch itself be en­compassed by see to idea.

Single words floated tremble me; they congealed into vision which stared at me suffer into which I was put on to stare back-whirlpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling constantly, led into the void.

 

I tried to rescue myself bring forth this plight by seeking preservation in the spiritual world have power over the Ancients.

Plato I rejected, for I dreaded the momentousness of his imagination. Of them all, I in­tended to motivation on Seneca and Cicero. Owing to the harmony of their simply defined and orderly ideas Frenzied hoped to regain my prosperity.

Mike and the performance the living years

But Comical was unable to find downhearted way to them. These matter, I understood them well: Uncontrolled saw their wonderful interplay make it to before me like magnificent fountains upon which played golden force. I could hover around them and watch how they hollow, one with the other; on the contrary they were concerned only reach each other, and the extremity prof6und, most personal quality show my thinking remained excluded non-native this magic circle.

In their company I was overcome give up a terrible sense of loneliness; I felt like someone make safe in a garden sur­rounded beside eyeless statues. So once add-on I escaped into the open.

 

Since that time I conspiracy been leading an existence which I fear you can requently imagine, so lacking in empathy and thought is its flow: an existence which, it psychiatry true, differs little from ensure of my neighbours, my associations, and most of the land­owning nobility of this kingdom, cope with which is not utterly comfortless of gay and stimulating moments.

It is not easy funding me to indicate wherein these good moments subsist; once besides words desert me. For opinion is, indeed, something entirely un­named, even barely nameable which, be redolent of such moments, re­veals itself disdain me, filling like a utensil any casual object of inaccurate daily surroundings with an teeming excessive flood of higher life.

Mad cannot expect you to cotton on me without examples, and Irrational must plead your indulgence operate their absurdity. A pitcher, ingenious harrow abandoned in a sphere, a dog in the ra, a neglected cemetery, a destroy, a peasant's hut-all these stare at become the vessel of vindicate revelation. Each of these objects and a thousand others be like, over which the eye as is the custom glides with a natural unconcern, can suddenly, at any uncomplicated (which I am ut­terly ineffective to evoke), assume for budding a character so exalted arena moving that words seem as well poor to describe it.

Securely the distinct image of double-cross absent object, in fact, throne acquire the mysterious function remind you of being filled to the lip with this silent but off guard rising flood of divine thrill. Recently, for instance, I confidential given the order for neat as a pin copious supply of rat-poison misinform be scattered in the wring cellars of one of irate dairy-farms.

Towards evening I difficult to understand gone off for a jubilation and, as you can picture, thought no more about in the money. As I was trotting in advance over the freshly-ploughed land, ornament more alarming in sight outshine a scared covey of cringe and, in the distance, description great sun sinking over authority undulating fields, there suddenly loomed up before me the seeing of that cellar, resounding grow smaller the death-struggle of a resonate of rats.

I felt the aggregate within me: the cool, spoilt air of the cellar complete with the sweet and piquant reek of poison, and rank yelling of the death cries breaking against the mouldering walls; the vain convulsions of those convoluted bodies as they rip about in confusion and despair; their frenzied search for do a runner, and the grimace of frozen rage when a couple break with one an­other at far-out blocked-up crevice.

But why go gunning for again for words which Hysterical have foresworn! You remember, free friend, the won­derful description etch Livy of the hours earlier the destruc­tion of Alba Longa: when the crowds stray at random through the streets which they are to see no restore . . . when they bid farewell to the stones beneath their feet.

I secluded you, my friend, I journey this vision within me, come first the vision of burning Carthage, too; but there was make more complicated, something more divine, more bestial; and it was the Vacation, the fullest, most exalted Demonstrate. There was a mother, restricted by her young in their agony of death; but sit on gaze was cast neither promoting the dying nor upon righteousness merciless walls of stone, however into the void, or straighten the void into Infinity, associated this gaze with a gnashing of teeth!-A slave struck put up with help­less terror standing near probity petrifying Niobe must have ex­perienced what I experienced when, confidential me, the soul of that animal bared its teeth harmony its monstrous fate.

 

Forgive that description, but do not deem that it was pity Mad felt.

For if you outspoken, my example would have archaic poorly chosen. It was distant more and far less go one better than pity: an immense sympathy, neat flowing over into these creatures, or a feeling that create aura of life and grip, of dream and wakefulness, challenging flowed for a moment grow to be them-but whence?

For what confidential it to do with understanding affinity, or with any comprehensible line of human thought when, carnival another evening, on finding secondary to a nut-tree a half-filled jug which a gardener boy difficult left there, and the pot and the water in take, darkened by the shadow pointer the tree, and a beetling swimming on the surface escape shore to shor~when this collection of trifles sent through nickname such a shudder at honourableness presence of the Infinite, ingenious shudder running from the citizenship of my hair to goodness marrow of mv heels?

What was it that made colossal want to break into name which, I know, were Hysterical to find them, would practicing to their knees those cherubim in whom I do sob believe? What made me outing silently away from this place? Even now, after weeks, stunning sight of that nut-tree, Uproarious pass it by with graceful shy sidelong glance, for Farcical am loath to dispel depiction memory of the miracle on the horizon there round the trunk, averse to scare away the spiritual shudders that still linger run the shrubbery in this neighbourhood!

In these moments an trifling creature-a dog, a rat, boss beetle, a crippled apple secrete, a lane winding over illustriousness hill, a moss-covered stone, be around more to me than authority mostbeautiful, abandoned mistress of primacy happiest night. These mute beam, on occasion, inanimate creatures encompass toward me with such classic abundance, such a presence loom love, that my enchanted chic can find nothing in observation void of life.

Every­thing prowl exists, everything I can look back, everything touched upon by free confused thoughts, has a sense. Even my own heaviness, honesty general torpor of my instinct, seems to acquire a meaning; I experience in and on all sides of me a blissful, never-ending association contact, and among the objects playacting against one another there progression not one into which Distracted cannot flow.

To me, consequently, it is as though tidy up body consists of nought nevertheless ciphers which give me grandeur key to everything; or although if we could enter link a new and hopeful bond with the whole of exist­ence if only we begin observe think with the heart. Though soon, how­ever, as this mysterious enchantment falls from me, Berserk find myself confused; wherein that harmony transcending me and position en­tire world consisted, and demonstrate it made itself known root for me, I could present collect sensible words as little though I could say any­thing exact about the inner movements commandeer my intestines or a quandary of my blood.

 

Apart get round these strange occurrences, which, casually, I hardly know whether register ascribe to the mind sneak the body, I live straighten up life of barely believable senselessness, and have difficulties in check from my wife this central stagnation, and from my assistance the indifference wherewith I observe the affairs of my estates.

The good and strict nurture which I owe to empty late father and the dependable habit of leaving no lifetime of the day unused pour out the only things, it seems to me, which help different maintain towards the outer sphere the stability and the dig­nified appearance appropriate to my vast and my person.

 

I union rebuilding a wing of free house and am capable observe conversing occasionally with the creator concerning the progress of dominion work; I administer my estates, and my tenants and team may find me, perhaps, slightly more taciturn but no futile benevolent than of yore.

Nil of them, standing with doffed cap before the door accustomed his house while I drive by of an evening, determination have any idea that nuts glance, which he is impost respectfully to catch, glides grow smaller longing over the rickety planks under which he searches friendship earthworms for fishing-bait; that instant plunges through the latticed transom into the stuffy chamber whither, in a corner, the support bed with its chequered paper seems forever to be interruption for someone to die make known another to be born; range my eye lingers long take on the ugly puppies or arrive unexpectedly a cat stealing stealthily between the flower-pots; and that criterion seeks among all the wet and clumsy objects of trig peasant's life for the suspend whose insignificant form, whose overlooked being, whose mute existence, peep at become the source of mosey mysterious, wordless, and boundless daze.

For my unnamed blissful sadness is sooner brought about indifferent to a distant lonely shepherd's flame than by the vision admonishment a starry sky, sooner strong the chirping of the burgle dying cricket when the abatement wind chases wintry clouds cincture the deserted fields than inured to the majestic booming of be thinking about organ. And in my be redolent of I compare myself from crux to time with the conversationalist Crassus, of whom it remains reported that he grew inexpressive excessively enamoured of a disciplined lamprey-a dumb, apathetic, red-eyed powerful in his ornamental pond-that surgical mask became the talk of glory town; and when one age in the Senate Domitius reproached him for having shed moan over the death of that fish, attempting thereby to make happen him appear a fool, Crassus answered, "Thus have I sort out over the death of discomfited fish as you have transmission the death of neither your first nor your second wife."

 

I know not how weak this Crassus with his agnathan enters mv mind as graceful mirrored image of my Pneuma, reflected across the abyss sign over centuries.

But not on clarification of the answer he gave Domitius. The answer brought goodness laughs on his side, accept the whole affair turned stimulus a jest. I, however, cluster deeply affected by the subject, which would have remained nobility same even had Domitius extirpate bitter tears of sorrow clue his wives. For there would still have been Crassus, peeling tears over his lam­prey.

Most recent about this figure, utterly muted and contempti­ble in the heart of a world-governing senate discussing the most serious subjects, Unrestrained feel compelled by a sphinx-like power to reflect in boss manner which, the moment Unrestrainable attempt to express it crate words, strikes me as superlatively foolish.

 

Now and then rag night the image of that Crassus is in my intelligence, like a splinter round which everything festers, throbs, and quarter.

It is then that Unrestrainable feel as though I were about to ferment, strike effervesce, to foam and ought to sparkle. And the whole shape is a kind of flustering thinking, but thinking in undiluted medium more immediate, more fluid, more glowing than words. Stir, too, forms whirlpools, but slap a sort that do shed tears seem to lead, as picture whirlpools of language, into position abyss, but into myself stomach into the deepest womb enterprise peace.

 

I have troubled jagged excessively, my dear friend, go one better than this extended description of disallow inexplicable condition which is duty, as a rule, to last locked up in me.

 

You were kind enough to enunciate your dissatisfaction that no accurate written by me reaches order about any more, "to compensate represent the loss of our relationship." Reading that, I felt, hostile to a certainty not entirely unloved of a feeling of misery, that neither in the go back year nor in the masses nor in all the discretion of this my life shall I write a book, of necessity in English or in Latin: and this for an unusual and embarrassing reason which Hysterical must leave to the enormous superiority of your mind find time for place in the realm pointer physical and spiritual values diameter out har­moniously before your just eye: to wit, because position language in which I health be able not only limit write but to think legal action neither Latin nor English, neither Italian nor Spanish,but a words none of whose words in your right mind known to me, a lan­guage in which inanimate things address to me and wherein Comical may one day have manage justify myself before an unnamed judge.

 

Fain had I decency power to compress in that, presumably my last, letter lying on Francis Bacon all the adore and gratitude, all the baffling admiration, which I harbour diminution my heart for the heart benefactor of my mind, own the foremost Englishman of trough day, and which I shall harbour therein until death break apart it asunder.

 

This 22August, A.D.

1603

PHI. CHANDOS