The Temptation of St. Anthony

"I remember a voyage I made with Ammon in search of a solitary place suited for the establishment of a monastery. It was the last evening; we hastened our steps, walked side by side, murmuring hymns, without conversing. As the sun sank, the shadows of our bodies lengthened like two obelisks, continually growing taller, and moving before us. Here and there we planted crosses, made with fragments of our sticks, to mark the site of a future cell. Night was tardy in her coming; and waves of darkness overspread the earth, even while a vast rose-coloured light still glowed in heaven.

"When I was a child, I used to amuse myself by building hermitages with pebbles. My mother sitting beside me would watch me so attentively!

"Will she not have cursed me for having abandoned her? – will she not have plucked out her white hair by handfuls in the despair of her grief? And her corpse remains lying on the floor of the hut, under the roof of reeds, between the crumbling walls. Through an orifice a hyena, snuffing, thrusts his head, advances his mouth … horror! horror!"

(Sobbing):

"No: Ammonaria will not have abandoned her! Where is she now, – Ammonaria?

"Perhaps at the further end of a bathroom, she removes her garments one after the other: first the mantle, then the girdle, then the first tunic, the second lighter tunic, all her necklaces, – and the vapour of cinnamon envelops her naked limbs. At last she lies down upon the tepid mosaic. Her long hair spreading below the curve of her hips, seems like a sable fleece; and the oppressiveness of the heated air causes her to pant; her waist arched, her breasts standing out … What! my flesh rebels again! Even in the midst of grief am I tortured by concupiscence. To be subjected thus unto two tortures at once is beyond endurance! I can no longer bear myself!"

(He leans over, and gazes into the abyss.)

"The man who should fall would be killed. Nothing easier: it were only necessary to roll over upon my left side: – only one movement – one!"

(Then suddenly appears– An Aged Woman. Anthony starts to his feet in affright. It seems to him that he beholds his mother arisen.

But this woman is far older, and prodigiously thin.

A shroud, knotted about her head, hangs down, together with her white hair, so as to cover her legs, slender as crutches. The brilliancy of her ivory-coloured teeth make her earthy skin darker still. The orbits of her eyes are full of shadow; and far back within them two flames vacillate, like the lamps of sepulchres.

She exclaims):

"Advance! What hinders thee?"

Anthony (stammering):

"I fear … to commit a sin!"

She (replies):

"But King Saul killed himself! Razias, a just man, killed himself! Saint Pelagia of Antioch killed herself! Dommina of Aleppo and her two daughters – all three saints – killed themselves: and remember also how many confessors delivered themselves up to the executioner in their impatient longing for death! That they might enjoy death more speedily, the virgins of Miletus strangled themselves with their girdles. At Syracuse the philosopher Hegesias preached so eloquently upon death that men deserted the lupanars to go hang themselves in the fields. The patricians of Borne sought for death as a new form of debauch."

Anthony. "Aye! the love of death is strong; and many a anchorite has succumbed to it."

The Old Woman. "To do that which will make thee equal unto God – think! He created thee: thou wilt destroy his work – thou! and by thy courage, – of thy own free will! The enjoyment that Erostratus knew was not greater than this. And moreover thy body has so long mocked thy soul that it is full time thou shouldst take vengeance upon it. Thou wilt not suffer. It will soon be over. Of what art thou afraid? – a wide, black hole! Perhaps it is a void!"

(Anthony hearkens without replying; and upon the other side appears—

Another Woman —young and marvellously beautiful. At first he takes her to be Ammonaria. But she is taller, blond as honey, very plump, with paint upon her cheeks and roses upon her head. Her long robe, weighty with spangles, gleams with metallic lustre; – her fleshy lips are sanguinolent; and her somewhat heavy eyelids are so drowned with languor that one would almost take her to be blind.

She murmurs):

"Nay, live! enjoy! Solomon counsels joy! Follow the guiding of thy heart and the desire of thine eyes!"

Anthony. "What joy is there for me? My heart is weary; my eyes are dim!"

She (answers):

"Seek the suburb of Racotis; push open a door that is painted blue; – and when thou shalt be in the atrium where a fountain jet murmurs unceasingly, a woman will present herself before thee – in peplos of white silk striped with gold; her hair is unloosed, her laugh like the clatter of crotali. She is skilful. In her caress thou wilt taste the pride of initiation and the appeasement of desire.

"Hast ever pressed to thy bosom a virgin who loved thee? Dost remember the surrenders of her modesty, – the passing away of her remorse in a sweet flow of tears?

"Thou canst even now imagine thyself walking with her – canst thou not? – in the wood by the light of the moon? At each pressure of your joined hands, a sweet shuddering passes through you both, – looking closely into each other your eyes seem to outpour into one another something like immaterial fluid; – and thy heart fills: it bursts: it is a suave whirl of eddying passion, an overflowing of intoxication…"

The Old Woman. "One need not possess joys in order to taste their bitterness! Even to view them from afar off begets loathing of them. Thou must be fatigued by the monotony of the same actions, the length of the days, the hideousness of the world, the stupidity of the sun?"

Anthony. "Aye, indeed! – I loathe all that he shines upon."

The Young Woman. "Hermit! hermit! thou wilt find diamonds among the flints, fountains beneath the sand, a delectation in all the hazards thou dost despise; and there are even upon earth places of such beauty that the sight of them would make thee desire to press the whole world against thy heart with love!"

The Old Woman. "Each evening that thou liest down upon the earth to slumber, thou dost hope that it may soon lie upon thee and cover thee."

The Young Woman. "Yet thou dost believe in the resurrection of the flesh – which is but the translation of life into eternity!"

(Even as she speaks, the Old Woman becomes still more fleshless; and above her skull, from which the white hair has disappeared, a bat circles in the air.

The Young Woman has become fatter. Her robe gleams with shifting colours; her nostrils palpitate, her eyes roll softly.)

The Former (opening her arms, exclaiming):

"Come to me! – I am Consolation, repose, oblivion, eternal calm!"

The Other.

"I am the sleep-giver, life, happiness inexhaustible!"

(Anthony turns to fee from them. Each lays a hand on his shoulder.

The Shroud parts, exposes the Skeleton of Death.

The robe splits asunder, and leaves the whole body of Lust exposed: – her waist is slender; her long and undulating hair flutters in the wind.

Anthony stands motionless between the two, considering them):

Death (says to him):

"What matters it, whether now or at another time! Thou art mine, – like suns, nations, cities, kings, mountain-snows, and the grasses of the fields. I fly higher than the hawks of heaven. I run more swiftly than the gazelle; I overtake even Hope; I vanquished the Son of God!"

Lust. "Resist not! I am the Omnipotent! The forests re-echo with my sighs; the waters tremble with my agitations. Virtue, courage, piety, dissolve in the perfume of my mouth. Man I accompany in every step that he makes; and even from the threshold of the tomb he turns to me!"

Death. "I will find for thee that which thou hast vainly sought for, by the gleam of torches, upon the faces of the dead, – or among those awful sands that are formed of human remains, where thou wast wont to wander beyond the Pyramids. From time to time, the fragment of a skull rolled under thy sandal. Thou didst take up the dust: thou didst let it trickle through thy fingers; and thy thought, blending with it, sank into nothingness."

Lust. "My gulf is deeper! Marbles have inspired loves. Men rush to conjunctures that terrify. Fetters are riveted that the fettered curse. Whence the bewitchment of courtesans, the extravagance of dreams, the immensity of my sadness?"

Death. "Mine irony depasseth all others! There are convulsions of delight at the funerals of kings, at the extermination of a whole people; and war is made with music, with plumes, with harness of gold, – with vast display of ceremony that my due of homage may be greater!"

Lust. "My rage equals thine! I also yell; I bite! I, too, have sweats of agony, and aspects cadaverous!"

Death. "It is I that make thee awful! Let us intertwine!"

(Death laughs mockingly; Lust roars. They clasp each other about the waist, and chant alternately):

"I hasten the dissolution of matter!"

"I facilitate the dispersion of germs!"

"Thou dost destroy for my renovations!"

"Thou dost engender for my destructions!"

"Ever-active my power!"

"Fecund, my putrefaction!"

(And their voices, whose rolling echoes fill the horizon, deepen and become so mighty that Anthony falls backward as if thunder-stricken. A shock from time to time causes him to reopen his eyes; and he perceives in the midst of the darkness a manner of monster before him.

It is a skull, crowned with roses, dominating the torso of a woman nacreously white. Below, a shroud starred with specks of gold forms something like a tail; and the whole body undulates, after the fashion of a gigantic worm erect on end.

The vision attenuates, – disappears.)

Anthony (rising to his feet):

"The Devil yet again, and under his two-fold aspect: the spirit of fornication, and the spirit of destruction.

"Neither affrights me! I repel happiness; and I know myself to be eternal.

"Thus death is only an illusion, a veil-masking betimes the continuity of life.

"But Substance being unique, wherefore should forms be varied?

"Somewhere there must be primordial figures, whose bodily forms are only symbols. Could I but see them, I would know the link between matter and thought; I would know in what Being consists.

"Such were the figures painted at Babylon upon the walls of the temple of Belus; and others like them covered a mosaic in the port of Carthage. I myself have sometime beheld in the sky, as it were, forms of spirits. Those who cross the desert meet with animals surpassing all conception…"

(And opposite, upon the further side of the Nile, suddenly appears the Sphinx.27 He stretches his paws, shakes the bandelets upon his forehead, and crouches upon his belly.

Leaping, flying, spitting fire through her nostrils, lashing her winged sides with her dragon-tail, the green-eyed Chimera circles, barks.

The thick curls of her head tossed back upon one side mingle with the hair of her loins; on the other side they hang down to the sand, quivering with the swinging of her body, to and fro.)

The Sphinx (remaining motionless, and gazing at the Chimera):

"Hither, Chimera! rest awhile!"

The Chimera. "No! never!"

The Sphinx. "Do not run so fast, do not fly so high, do not bark so loudly!"

The Chimera. "Do not call me! – call me no more; since thou must remain forever dumb."

The Sphinx. "Cease casting thy flames in my face, and uttering thy yells in my ear: thou canst not melt my granite."

The Chimera. "Thou shalt not seize me, terrible sphinx!"

The Sphinx. "Thou art too mad to dwell with me!"

The Chimera. "Thou art too heavy to follow me!"

The Sphinx. "Yet whither goest thou, that thou shouldst run so fast?"

The Chimera. "I gallop in the corridors of the Labyrinth – I hover above the mountains – I graze the waves in my flight – I yelp at the bottom of precipices – I suspend myself with my mouth from the skirts of clouds – I sweep the shores with my dragging tail; and the curves of the hills have taken their form from the shape of my shoulders! But thee I find perpetually immobile, or perhaps making strange designs with thy claws upon the sand."

The Sphinx. "It is because I keep my secret; – I dream and calculate.

"The sea returns to its bed; the wheat bends back and forth in the wind; the caravans pass by; the dust flies; cities crumble; and yet my gaze, which naught can deviate, remains fixed, gazing through all intervening things, upon a horizon that none may reach."

The Chimera. "I am light and joyous! I offer to the eyes of men dazzling perspectives with Paradise in the clouds above, and unspeakable felicity afar off. Into their souls I pour the eternal madnesses; projects of happiness, plans for the future, dreams of glory and vows of love, and all virtuous resolutions.

"I urge men to perilous voyages and great enterprises. I have chiselled with my claws the wonders of architecture. It was I who suspended the little bells above the tomb of Porsenna, and surrounded the quays of Atlantis with a wall of orichalcum.

"I seek for new perfumes, for vaster flowers, for pleasures never felt before. If I perceive in any place a man whose mind reposes in wisdom, I fall upon him, and strangle him."

The Sphinx. "All those tormented by the desire of God, I have devoured.

"In order to climb up to my royal brow, the strongest ascend upon the flutings of my bandelets as upon the steps of a stairway. Then a great lassitude comes upon them, and they fall backward."

(Anthony begins to tremble.

He is no longer before his cabin, but in the desert itself, with those two monsters beside him, whose breath is hot upon his shoulders.)

The Sphinx. "O thou Fantasy, bear me away upon thy wings that my sadness may be lightened!"

The Chimera. "O thou Unknown, I am enamoured of thine eyes! Like a hyena in heat I turn about thee, soliciting those fecundations whereof the desires devour me!

"Ope thy mouth, lift thy feet – mount upon my back!"

The Sphinx. "My feet, since they have been outstretched, can move no more. The lichen, like an eruption, has formed upon my jaws. By dint of long dreaming I have no longer aught to say."

The Chimera. "Thou liest, hypocrite Sphinx! Wherefore dost thou always call me and always disown me!"

The Sphinx. "It is thou, indomitable caprice, that dost forever pass and repass, whirling in thy course!"

The Chimera. "Is the fault mine? What? Let me be!"

(She barks.)

The Sphinx. "Thou movest away! thou dost escape me!"

(He growls.)

The Chimera. "Essay! – Thou crushest me!"

The Sphinx. "Nay! – impossible!"

(And gradually sinking down he disappears in the sand; while the Chimera, ramping with tongue protruding, departs, describing circles on her way.

The breath of her mouth has produced a fog.

Through this mist Anthony perceives wreathing s of clouds, undecided curves.

At last he can distinguish something like the appearance of human bodies.

And first: —

The Astomi —approach, like bubbles of air traversed by sunlight. They cry):

"Do not breathe too hard! The drops of rain bruise us, false notes excoriate us, darknesses blind us! Composed wholly of breezes and of perfumes, we float along, we roll along: – a little more than Dreams, yet not quite beings…"

The Nisnas

(have only one eye, one cheek, one hand, one leg, half a body, half a heart. They say):

"We live quite** in our halves of houses, with our halves of wives and our halves of children!"

The Blemmyes

(who have no head at all):

"Our shoulders are all the broader; – and there is no ox, rhinoceros, or elephant able to carry what we carry.

"Something dimly resembling features – as it were a vague face – imprinted upon our breasts: that is all! We think digestions; we subtleize secretions. God, in our belief, floats peacefully within the interior chyles.

"We go straight upon our way, through all mires, crossing all morasses, skirting the edges of all abysses: and we are the most laborious, the most happy, the most virtuous of all peoples!"

The Pygmies:

"We, good little men, swarm upon the world like vermin upon the hump of a dromedary.

"We are burned, drowned, crushed; and we always reappear, more vivacious and countless than before – terrible by reason of our numbers!"

The Sciapods:

"Fettered to the earth by our hair, long as lianas, we vegetate beneath the shelter of our feet, broad as parasols; and the light comes to us through the thickness of our heels. No annoyances for us, no work! The head as low as possible – That is the secret of happiness."

(Their lifted thighs, – resembling the trunks of trees, – multiply.

And a forest appears. Great apes clamber through it on all fours: – these are men with the heads of dogs.)

The Cynocephali:

"We leap from branch to branch in search of eggs to suck; and we pluck the little fledglings alive; then we put their nests upon our heads in lieu of caps.

"We tear off the teats of cows; and we put out the eyes of lynxes: we let fall our dung from the heights of the trees – we parade our turpitude in the full light of the sun.

"Lacerating the flowers, crushing the fruits, befouling the springs, violating women, we are the masters of all, – by the strength of our arms, and the ferocity of our hearts.

"Ho! companions! – gnash with your jaws!"

(Blood and milk pour down their chops. The rain streams over their hairy backs.

Anthony inhales the freshness of the green leaves.

There is a movement among them, a clashing of branches; and all of a sudden appears a huge black stag, with the head of a bull, having between his ears a thicket of white horns.)

The Sadhuzag:

"My seventy-four antlers are hollow like flutes.

"When I turn me toward the wind of the South, there issue from them sounds that draw all the ravished animals around me. The serpents twine about my legs; the wasps cluster in my nostrils; and the parrots, the doves, the ibises, alight upon the branches of my horns.

"Listen!"

(He throws back his horns, whence issues a music of sweetness ineffable.

Anthony presses both hands upon his heart. It seems to him as though his soul were being borne away by the melody.)

The Sadhuzag:

"But when I turn me toward the wind of the North, my antlers, more thickly bristling than a battalion of lances, give forth a sound of howlings: the forests are startled with fear; the rivers remount toward their sources; the husks of fruits burst open; and the bending grasses stand erect on end, like the hair of a coward.

"Listen!"

(He bends his branching antlers forward: hideous and discordant cries proceed from them. Anthony feels as though his heart were torn asunder.

And his horror augments upon beholding) —

The Martichoras

(A gigantic red lion, with human face, and three rows of teeth):

"The gleam of my scarlet hair mingles with the reflection of the great sands. I breathe through my nostrils the terror of solitudes. I spit forth plague. I devour armies when they venture into the desert.

"My claws are twisted like screws, my teeth shaped like saws; and my curving tail bristles with darts which I cast to right and left, before and behind!

"See! see!"

(The Martichoras shoots forth the keen bristles of his tail, which irradiate in all directions like a volley of arrows. Drops of blood rain down, spattering upon the foliage.)

The Catoblepas

(A black buffalo with a pig's head, falling to the ground, and attached to his shoulders by a neck long, thin, and flaccid as an empty gut.

He wallows flat upon the ground, and his feet entirely disappear beneath the enormous mane of coarse hair which covers his face):

"Fat, melancholy, fierce – thus I continually remain, feeling against my belly the warmth of the mud. So heavy is my skull that it is impossible for me to lift it. I roll it slowly all around me, open-mouthed; and with my tongue I tear up the venemous plants bedewed with my breath. Once, I even devoured my own feet without knowing it!

"No one, Anthony, has ever beheld mine eyes, – or at least, those who have beheld them are dead. Were I to lift my eyelids – my pink and swollen eyelids, thou wouldst forthwith die!"

Anthony. "Oh, that one! Ugh! As though I could desire it? – Yet his stupidity fascinates me! No, no! I will not!"

(He gazes fixedly upon the ground.

But the weeds take fire; and amidst the contorsions of the flames, arises) —

The Basilisk

(A great violet serpent, with trilobate crest, and two fangs, one above, one below):

"Beware, lest thou fall into my jaws! I drink fire. I am fire! – and I inhale it from all things: from clouds, from flints, from dead trees, the fur of animals, the surface of marshes. My temperature maintains the volcanoes: I lend glitter to jewels: I give colours to metals!"

The Griffin

(A lion with a vulture's beak, and white wings, red paws and blue neck):

"I am the master of deep splendours. I know the secrets of the tombs wherein the Kings of old do slumber.

"A chain, issuing from the wall, maintains their heads upright. Near them, in basins of porphyry, the women they loved float upon the surfaces of black liquids. Their treasures are all arrayed in halls, in lozenge-shaped designs, in little heaps, in pyramids; – and down below, far below the tombs, and to be reached only after long travelling through stifling darkness, there are rivers of gold bordered by forests of diamonds, there are fields of carbuncles and lakes of mercury.

"Addossed against the subterranean gate I remain with claws uplifted; and my flaming eyes spy out those who seek to approach. The vast and naked plain that stretches away to the end of the horizon is whitened with the bones of travellers. But for thee the gates of bronze shall open; and thou shalt inhale the vapour of the mines, thou shalt descend into the caverns… Quick! quick!"

(He burrows into the earth with his paws, and crows like a cock.

A thousand voices answer him. The forest trembles.

And all manner of frightful creatures arise: – The Tragelaphus, half deer, half ox; the Myrmecoles, lion before-and ant behind, whose genitals are set reversely; the python Askar, sixty cubits long, that terrified Moses; the huge weasel Pastinaca, that kills the trees with her odour; the Presteros, that makes those who touch it imbecile; the Mirag, a horned hare, that dwells in the islands of the sea. The leopard Phalmant bursts his belly by roaring; the triple-headed bear Senad tears her young by licking them with her tongue; the dog Cepus pours out the blue milk of her teats upon the rocks. Mosquitoes begin to hum, toads commence to leap; serpents hiss. Lightnings flicker. Hail falls.

Then come gusts, bearing with them marvellous anatomies: – Heads of alligators with hoofs of deer; owls with serpent tails; swine with tiger-muzzles; goats with the crupper of an ass; frogs hairy as bears; chameleons huge as hippopotami; calves with two heads, one bellowing, the other weeping; winged bellies flitting hither and thither like gnats.

They rain from the sky, they rise from the earth, they pour from the rocks; everywhere eyes flame, mouths roar, breasts bulge, claws are extended, teeth gnash, flesh clacks against flesh. Some crouch; some devour each other at a mouthful.

Suffocating under their own numbers, multiplying by their own contact, they climb over one another; and move about Anthony with a surging motion as though the ground were the deck of a ship. He feels the trail of snails upon the calves of his legs, the chilliness of vipers upon his hands: – and spiders spinning about him enclose him within their network.

But the monstrous circle breaks, parts; the sky suddenly becomes blue; and) —