DOI Artikel:
Aldington, Richard: A Roman letter
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29343#0018
ICONGRATULATE you on the birth of a son, a
felicity which I knowyou have long desired. Your
reflections on this subject and the delicacy of your
reference to the death of my little Marcus, please me.
Your opinion that marital affection is only rightly
completedbythebirthofchildreniswholesomeandtrue,
yet what anxiety, what trembling (and,alas, what bitter
grief perhaps!) we create for ourselves with the lives of
these fragile and tender beings! Be the omen null ! I
must not threaten your happinesswith my sad memories.
WOODCUT BY LUDOVIC RODO
AND now, my Rufinus, I must remonstrate with
you seriously. The news which you communi-
cate with so much complacency; that the
Emperor is inclined to yield to your importunities and
to recall me from exile; fills me with apprehension. Let
me explain. When, on the receipt of a false delation,
the Master of the world was pleased to order my seques-
tration to this remote solitude, I thanked the lying
tongue which rendered me this service and the imperial
credulity and severity which, in seeking to punish me,
conferred on me a recompense long desired in secret.
To be free of Rome, of its artifices and interminable
i ntrigues, its huge crowds, its vacuous andfebrile energy,
its vanity, its profligacy—what happiness, what good
fortune! Fiducia and I left that lmmense murmuring
metropolis, which had so cruelly robbed us of our be-
loved child, with hearts more jocund than we dared
14
show. To the last, I dreaded the Emperor might recall
his sentence!
HERE I live tranquilly, here I possess that best
of gifts praised by the, Attic songster—hygi-
ainein men ariston—and, in addition to health,
solitude and peace of mind which he forgot to praise.
Amongthesevastwoods,whicharesometimesenchanted
by the noon silence sacred to Pan, sometimes vocal with
the sussurant sea-wind, on this sun-drenched hillside
fertile in olives and grapes, among these countrymen
whose lives are sober idylls, my mind has been charmed
and my thoughts have been busy with meditation. Not
that I have thought deeply or well, but I have lived in
a half intellectual ecstasy—perhaps I am a nympholept!
YOU tell me that the fashionable ladies of the
capital are amusing jaded nerves with the cult
of a new Eastern sect. I am not surprised.
Cities, with their enervating artificial influences, must
expose uncontrolled minds to superstition and religious
folly. Here it is not so; here, under this sky, on the
breast of the divine earth, that noble maternal Demeter
who nourishes me, I am liberated to feel mysterious
springs of life and death. Here I do not need to evoke
the gods; they are at hand; manifest; palpable; even
the gross rustic deities have a peculiar and fitting signi-
ficance. But they are so familiar, so friendly, that I look
continually beyond them for some greater, more per-
vading truth, which I apprehend rather by intuition
than by logic. Asyou know, I have never been an enemy
to the religious myths; I have held that they are neces-
sary to impose on the slow imagination of the people
truths which we perceive directly, stripped of mytho-
logical association. The destruction of this convenient
symbolism, unnecessary to more finished minds, would
lead to unsuspected evils, perhaps (absurd as the idea
must seem) to the extinction of the Empire. The truth
which I seek will not dispossess the gods; it will make
hfe clearer, more rational for choicer spirits who cannot
rest satisfied with mere parables.
1AM struggling, you see, to express something I
have felt rather than thought; you yourself must
havenoticed that solitude is more apt to fill us with
pleasurable emotions than with exact ideas. The latter
felicity which I knowyou have long desired. Your
reflections on this subject and the delicacy of your
reference to the death of my little Marcus, please me.
Your opinion that marital affection is only rightly
completedbythebirthofchildreniswholesomeandtrue,
yet what anxiety, what trembling (and,alas, what bitter
grief perhaps!) we create for ourselves with the lives of
these fragile and tender beings! Be the omen null ! I
must not threaten your happinesswith my sad memories.
WOODCUT BY LUDOVIC RODO
AND now, my Rufinus, I must remonstrate with
you seriously. The news which you communi-
cate with so much complacency; that the
Emperor is inclined to yield to your importunities and
to recall me from exile; fills me with apprehension. Let
me explain. When, on the receipt of a false delation,
the Master of the world was pleased to order my seques-
tration to this remote solitude, I thanked the lying
tongue which rendered me this service and the imperial
credulity and severity which, in seeking to punish me,
conferred on me a recompense long desired in secret.
To be free of Rome, of its artifices and interminable
i ntrigues, its huge crowds, its vacuous andfebrile energy,
its vanity, its profligacy—what happiness, what good
fortune! Fiducia and I left that lmmense murmuring
metropolis, which had so cruelly robbed us of our be-
loved child, with hearts more jocund than we dared
14
show. To the last, I dreaded the Emperor might recall
his sentence!
HERE I live tranquilly, here I possess that best
of gifts praised by the, Attic songster—hygi-
ainein men ariston—and, in addition to health,
solitude and peace of mind which he forgot to praise.
Amongthesevastwoods,whicharesometimesenchanted
by the noon silence sacred to Pan, sometimes vocal with
the sussurant sea-wind, on this sun-drenched hillside
fertile in olives and grapes, among these countrymen
whose lives are sober idylls, my mind has been charmed
and my thoughts have been busy with meditation. Not
that I have thought deeply or well, but I have lived in
a half intellectual ecstasy—perhaps I am a nympholept!
YOU tell me that the fashionable ladies of the
capital are amusing jaded nerves with the cult
of a new Eastern sect. I am not surprised.
Cities, with their enervating artificial influences, must
expose uncontrolled minds to superstition and religious
folly. Here it is not so; here, under this sky, on the
breast of the divine earth, that noble maternal Demeter
who nourishes me, I am liberated to feel mysterious
springs of life and death. Here I do not need to evoke
the gods; they are at hand; manifest; palpable; even
the gross rustic deities have a peculiar and fitting signi-
ficance. But they are so familiar, so friendly, that I look
continually beyond them for some greater, more per-
vading truth, which I apprehend rather by intuition
than by logic. Asyou know, I have never been an enemy
to the religious myths; I have held that they are neces-
sary to impose on the slow imagination of the people
truths which we perceive directly, stripped of mytho-
logical association. The destruction of this convenient
symbolism, unnecessary to more finished minds, would
lead to unsuspected evils, perhaps (absurd as the idea
must seem) to the extinction of the Empire. The truth
which I seek will not dispossess the gods; it will make
hfe clearer, more rational for choicer spirits who cannot
rest satisfied with mere parables.
1AM struggling, you see, to express something I
have felt rather than thought; you yourself must
havenoticed that solitude is more apt to fill us with
pleasurable emotions than with exact ideas. The latter