The Temptation of St. Anthony

He opens them again. But darkness envelopes him.

Soon the darkness brightens; and he beholds an arid plain, mamillated with knolls, such as might be seen about abandoned quarries.

Here and there a tuft of shrubbery rises among the slabs of stone, level with the soil; and there are white figures, vaguer than clouds, bending over the slabs.

Others approach, softly, silently. Eyes gleam through the slits of long veils. By the easy indifference of their walk, and the perfumes exhaled from their garments, Anthony knows they are patrician women. There are men also, but of inferior condition; for their faces are at once simple-looking and coarse.

(One of the Women, taking a long breath:)

"Ah! how good the cool air of night is, among the sepulchers! I am so weary of the softness of beds, the turmoil of days, the heavy heat of the sun!"

(Her maid-servant takes from a canvas bag, a torch which she ignites. The faithful light other torches by it, and plant them upon the tombs.)

A Woman (panting).

"I am here at last! Oh how wearisome to be the wife of an idolator!"

Another. "These visits to the prisons, interviews with our brethren, are all matters of suspicion to our husbands! And we must even hide ourselves in order to make the sign of the cross; they would take it for a magical conjuration!"

Another. "With my husband it was a quarrel every day. I would not submit myself to his brutal exactions; therefore he has had me prosecuted as a Christian."

Another. "Do you remember Lucius, that young man who was so beautiful, who was dragged like Hector, with his heels attached to a chariot, from the Esquiline Gate to the mountains of Tibur? – and how his blood spattered the bushes on either side of the road? I gathered up the drops of his blood. Behold it!"

(She drags a black sponge from her bosom, covers it with kisses, and flings herself down upon the slabs, crying aloud: – )

"Ah! my friend! my friend!"

A Man. "It is just three years to-day since Domitilla died. They stoned her at the further end of the Grove of Proserpine. I gathered her bones, which shone like glowworms in the grass. The earth how covers them."

(He casts himself down upon a tomb.)

"O my betrothed! my betrothed!"

(And all the others scattered over the plain: – )

"O my sister! O my brother! O my daughter! O my mother!"

(Some kneel, covering their faces with their hands; others lie down upon the ground with their arms extended; and the sobs they smother shake their breasts with such violence as though their hearts were breaking with grief. Sometimes they look up to heaven, exclaiming: – )

"Have mercy upon her soul, O my God! She languishes in the sojourn of Shades; vouchsafe to admit her to thy Resurrection, that she may enjoy Thy Light!"

(Or, with eyes fixed upon the gravestones, they murmur to the dead: – )

"Be at peace, beloved! and suffer not! I have brought thee wine and meats!"

A Widow. "Here is pultis, made by my own hands, as he used to like it, with plenty of eggs and a double measure of flour! We are going to eat it together as in other days, are we not?"

(She lifts a little piece to her lips, and suddenly bursts into an extravagant and frenzied laugh.

The others also nibble a little bit as she does and drink a mouthful of wine.

They recount to each other the stories of their martyrs; grief becomes exalted! libations redouble. Their tear-swimming eyes are fixed upon each other's faces. They stammer with intoxication and grief; gradually hands touch hands, lips join themselves to lips, and they seek each other upon the tombs, between the cups and the torches.

The sky begins to whiten. The fog makes damp their garments; and, without appearing even to know one another, they depart by different ways and seek their homes.

The sun shines; the weeds and the grass have grown higher; the face of the plain is changed.

And Anthony, looking between tall bamboos, sees distinctly a forest of columns, of bluish-grey color. These are tree-trunks, all originating from one vast trunk. From each branch of the colossal tree descend other branches which may bury themselves in the soil; and the aspect of all these horizontal and perpendicular lines, indefinitely multiplied, would closely resemble a monstrous timber-work, were it not that they have small figs 14 growing upon them here and there, and a blackish foliage, like that of the sycamore.

He perceives in the forkings of their branches, hanging bunches of yellow flowers, violet flowers also, and ferns that resemble the plumes of splendid birds.

Under the lowest branches the horns of a bubalus gleam at intervals, and the bright eyes of antelopes are visible; there are hosts of parrots; there are butterflies flittering hither and thither; lizards lazily drag themselves up or down; flies buzz and hum; and in the midst of the silence, a sound is audible as of the palpitation of a deep and mighty life.

Seated upon a sort of pyre at the entrance of the wood is a strange being – a man – besmeared with cow-dung, completely naked, more withered than a mummy; his articulations form knots at the termination of bones that resemble sticks. He has bunches of shells suspended from his ears; his face is very long, and his nose like a vulture's beak. His left arm remains motionlessly erect in air, anchylosed, rigid as a stake; and he has been seated here so long that birds have made themselves a nest in his long hair.

At the four corners of his wooden pyre flame four fires. The sun is directly in front of him. He gazes steadily at it with widely-opened eyes; and, then without looking at Anthony, asks him: – )

"Brahmin from the shores of the Nile, what hast thou to say regarding these things?"

(Flames suddenly burst out on all sides of him, through the intervals between the logs of the pyre; and– )

The Gymnosophist (continues).

"Lo! I have buried myself in solitude, like the rhinoceros. I dwelt in the tree behind me."

(The vast fig-tree, indeed, shows in one of its groves, a natural excavation about the size of a man.)

"And I nourished me with flowers and fruits, observing the precepts so rigidly that not even a dog ever beheld me eat.

"Inasmuch as existence originates from corruption, corruption from desire, desire from sensation, sensation from contact, I have ever avoided all action, all contact, and perpetually – motionless as the stela of a tomb, exhaling my breath from my two nostrils, fixing my eyes upon my nose, and contemplating the ether in my mind, the world in my members, the moon in my heart – I dreamed of the essence of the great Soul whence continually escape the principles of life, even as sparks escape from fire.

"Thus at last I found the supreme Soul in all beings, and all beings in the supreme Soul; and I have been able to make mine own soul all my senses.

"I receive knowledge directly from heaven, like the bird Tchataka, who quenches his thirst from falling rain only.

"Even by so much as things are known to me, things no longer exist.

"For me now there is no more hope, no more anguish, there is neither happiness nor virtue, nor day nor night, nor Thou nor I – absolutely nothing!

"My awful austerities have made me superior to the Powers. A single contraction of my thought would suffice to kill a hundred sons of kings, to dethrone gods, to overturn the world."

(He utters all these things in a monotonous voice.

The surrounding leaves shrivel up. Fleeing rats rush over the ground.

He slowly turns his eyes downward toward the rising flames, and then continues: – )

"I have loathed Form, I have loathed Perception, I have loathed even Knowledge itself, for the thought does not survive the transitory fact which caused it; and mind, like all else, is only an illusion.

"All that is engendered will perish; all that is dead must live again; the beings that have even now disappeared shall sojourn again in wombs as yet unformed, and shall again return to earth to serve in woe other creatures.

"But inasmuch as I have rolled through the revolution of an indefinite multitude of existences, under the envelopes of gods, of men, and of animals, I renounce further wanderings; I will endure this weariness no more! I abandon the filthy hostelry of this body of mine, built with flesh, reddened with blood, covered with a hideous skin, full of uncleanliness; and, for my recompense, I go at last to slumber in the deepest deeps of the Absolute – in Annihilation."

(The flames rise to his chest, then envelope him. His head rises through them as through a hole in the wall. His cavernous eyes still remain icicle open, gazing.)

Anthony (rises).

(The torch, which had fallen to the ground, has ignited the splinters of wood; and the flames have singed his beard.

With a loud cry, Anthony tramples the fire out; and, when nothing remains but ashes, he exclaims: – )

"Where can Hilarion be? He was here a moment ago. I saw him!

"What! No; it is impossible; I must have been mistaken!

"Yet why?.. Perhaps my cabin, these stones, this sand, have no real existence. I am becoming mad! Let me be calm! Where was I? What was it that happened?

"Ah! the gymnosophist!.. Such a death is frequent among the sages of India. Kalanos burned himself before Alexander; another did likewise in the time of Augustus. What hatred of life men must have to do thus! Unless, indeed, they are impelled by pride alone?.. Yet in any event they have the intrepidity of martyrs… As for the latter, I can now well believe what has been told me regarding the debauchery they cause.

"And before that? Yes: I remember now! the host of the Heresiarchs! What outcries! What eyes! Yet why so much rebellion of the flesh, so much dissoluteness, so many aberrations of the intellect.

"They claim, nevertheless, to seek God through all those ways! What right have I to curse them – I, who stumble so often in mine own path? I was perhaps about to learn more of them at the moment when they disappeared. Too rapid was the whirl; I had no time to answer. Now I feel as though there were more space, more light in my understanding. I am calm. I even feel myself able to… What is this? I thought I had put out the fire!"

(A flame flits among the rocks; and soon there comes the sound of a voice – broken, convulsed as by sobs – from afar off, among the mountains.)

"Can it be the cry of a hyena, or the lamentation of some traveler that has lost his way?"

(Anthony listens. The flame draws nearer.

And he beholds a weeping woman approach, leaning upon the shoulder of a white-bearded man.

She is covered with a purple robe in rags. He is bareheaded like lier, wears a tunic of the same color, and carries in his hands a brazen vase, whence arises a thin blue flame.

Anthony feels a fear come upon him, and wishes to know who this woman may be.)

The Stranger Simon. "It is a young girl, a poor child that I lead about with me everywhere."

(He uplifts the brazen vase.

Anthony contemplates the girl, by the light of its vacillating flame.

There are marks of bites upon her face, traces of blows upon her arms; her dishevelled hair entangles itself in the rents of her rags; her eyes appear to be insensible to light.)

Simon. "Sometimes she remains thus for a long, long time without speaking; then all at once she revives, and discourses of marvellous things."

Anthony. "In truth?"

Simon. "Ennoia; Ennoia! Ennoia! – tell us what thou hast to say!"

(She rolls her eyes like one awaking from a dream, slowly passes her fingers over her brows, and in a mournful voice, speaks: – )

Helena15 (Ennoia).

"I remember a distant land, of the color of emerald. Only one tree grows there.

(Anthony starts).

"Upon each of its tiers of broad-extending arms, a pair of Spirits dwell in air. All about them the branches intercross, like the veins of a body; and they watch the eternal Life circulating, from the roots deep plunging into darkness even to the leafy summit that rises higher than the sun. I, dwelling upon the second branch, illuminated the nights of Summer with my face."

Anthony, (tapping his own forehead: – )

"Ah! ah! I comprehend! her head!.."

Simon (placing his finger to his lips: – )

"Hush!"

Helena. "The sail remained well filled by the wind; the keel cleft the foam. He said to me: 'What though I afflict my country, though I lose my kingdom! Thou wilt belong to me, in my house!'

"How sweet was the lofty chamber of his palace! Lying upon the ivory bed, he caressed my long hair, singing amorously the while.

"Even at the close of the day I beheld the two camps, the watchfires being lighted, Ulysses at the entrance of his tent, armed Achilles driving a chariot along the sea-beach."

Anthony. "Why! she is utterly mad! How came this to pass?.."

Simon. "Hush! hush!"

Helena. "They anointed me with unguents, and sold me to the people that I might amuse them.

"One evening I was standing with the sistrum in my hand, making music for some Greek sailors who were dancing. The rain was falling upon the roof of the tavern like a cataract, and the cups of warm wine were smoking.

"A man suddenly entered, although the door was not opened to let him pass."

Simon. "It was I! I found thee again!

"Behold her, Anthony, she whom they call Sigeh, Ennoia, Barbelo, Prounikos! The Spirits governing the world were jealous of her; and they imprisoned her within the body of a woman.

"She was that Helen of Troy, whose memory was cursed by the poet Stesichorus. She was Lucretia, the patrician woman violated by a king. She was Delilah, by whom Samson's locks were shorn… She has loved adultery, idolatry, lying and foolishness. She has prostituted herself to all nations. She has sung at the angles of all cross-roads. She has kissed the faces of all men.

"At Tyre, she, the Syrian, was the mistress of robbers. She caroused with them during the nights; and she concealed assassins amidst the vermin of her tepid bed."

Anthony. "Ah! what is this to me?.."

Simon (with a furious look: – )

"I tell thee that I have redeemed her, and re-established her in her former splendor; insomuch that Caius Cæsar Caligula became enamoured of her, desiring to sleep with the Moon!"

Anthony. "What then?.."

Simon. "Why this, that she herself is the Moon! Has not Pope Clement written how she was imprisoned in a tower? Three hundred persons surrounded the tower to watch it; and the moon was seen at each of the loop-holes at the same time, although there is not more than one moon in the world, nor more than one Ennoia!"

Anthony. "Yes … it seems to me that I remember…"

(He falls into a reverie.)

Simon. "Innocent as the Christ who died for men, so did she devote herself for women. For the impotence of Jehovah is proven by the transgression of Adama, and we must shake off the yoke of the old law, which is antipathetic to the order of things.16

"I have preached the revival in Ephraim and in Issachar by the torrent of Bizor, beyond the Lake of Houleh, in the valley of Maggedo, further than the mountains, at Bostra and at Damascus. Let all come to me who are covered with wine, who are covered with filth, who are covered with blood! and I shall take away their uncleanliness with the Holy Spirit, called Minerva by the Greeks. She is Minerva! she is the Holy Spirit! I am Jupiter, Apollo, the Christ, the Paraclete, the great might of God, incarnated in the person of Simon!"

Anthony. "Ah! it is thou!.. so it is thou! But I know thy crimes!

"Thou wast born at Gittoi near Samaria, Dositheas, thy first master, drove thee from him. Thou didst execrate Saint Paul because he converted one of thy wives; and, vanquished by Saint Peter, in thy rage and terror thou didst cast into the waves the bag which contained thy artifices!"

Simon. "Dost thou desire them?"

(Anthony looks at him, and an interior voice whispers hi his heart: – "Why not?")

Simon (continues).

"He who knows the forces of Nature and the essence of Spirits must be able to perform miracles. It has been the dream of all sages; it is the desire which even now gnaws thee! – confess it!"

"In the sight of the multitude of the Romans, I flew in the air so high that none could behold me move. Nero ordered that I should be decapitated; but it was the head of a sheep which fell upon the ground in lieu of mine. At last they buried me alive; but I rose again upon the third day. The proof is that thou dost behold me before thee!"

(He presents his hands to Anthony to smell. They have the stench of corpse-flesh. Anthony recoils with loathing.)

"I can make serpents of bronze writhe; I can make marble statues laugh; I can make dogs speak. I will show thee vast quantities of gold; I will reestablish kings; thou shalt see nations prostrate themselves in adoration before me! I can walk upon the clouds and upon the waves, I can pass through mountains, I can make myself appear as a youth, as an old man, as a tiger, or as an ant; I can assume thy features; I can give thee mine; I can make the thunder follow after me. Dost hear it?"

(The thunder rumbles; flashes of lightning succeed.)

"It is the voice of the Most High; for 'the Lord thy God is a fire;' and all creations are accomplished by sparks from the fire-centre of all things.

Thou shalt even now receive the baptism of it – that second baptism announced by Jesus, which fell upon the apostles on a day of tempest when the windows were open!"

(And stirring up the flame with his hand, slowly, as though preparing to sprinkle Anthony with it, he continues: – )

"Mother of mercies, thou who discoverest all secrets, in order that we may find rest in the eighth mansion…"

Anthony (cries out: – )

"Oh! that I had only some holy water!.."

(The flame goes out, producing much smoke.

Ennoia and Simon have disappeared.

An exceedingly cold, opaque and fœtid mist fills the atmosphere.)

Anthony (groping with his hands like a blind man: – )

"Where am I?.. I fear lest I fall into the abyss! And the cross, surely, is too far from me. Ah! what a night! what a terrible night!"

(The mist is parted by a gust of wind; and Anthony sees two men covered with long white tunics.

The first is of lofty stature, with a gentle face, and a grave mien. His blond hair, parted like that of Christ, falls upon his shoulders. He has cast aside a wand that he had been holding in his hand; his companion takes it up, making a reverence after the fashion of the Orientals.

The latter is small of stature, thick set, flat-nosed; his neck and shoulders expresses good natured simplicity.

Both are barefooted, bareheaded, and dusty, like persons who have made a long journey.)

Anthony (starting up: – )

"What do ye seek? Speak!.. Begone from here!"

Damis (who is a little man).

"Nay! nay! be not angered, good hermit. As for that I seek, I know not myself what it is! Here is the Master!"

(He sits down. The other stranger remains standing. Silence.)

Anthony (asks).

"Then ye come?.."

Damis. "Oh! from afar off – very far off!"

Anthony. "And ye go?.."

Damis (pointing to the other)

"Whithersoever he shall desire!"

Anthony. "But who may he be?"

Damis. "Look well upon him!"

Anthony (aside).

"He looks like a saint! If I could only dare…"

(The mist is all gone. The night is very clear. The moon shines.)

Damis. "Of what art thou dreaming, that thou dost not speak?"

Anthony. "I was thinking… Oh! nothing!"

Damis (approaches Apollonius, and walks all round him several times, bending himself as he walks, never raising his head: – )

"Master, here is a Galilean hermit who desires to know the beginnings of wisdom."

Apollonius. "Let him approach!" (Anthony hesitates.)

Damis. "Approach!"

Apollonius (in a voice of thunder: – )

"Approach! Thou wouldst know who I am, what I have done, and what I think, – is it not so, child?"

Anthony. "Always supposing that these things can contribute to the salvation of my soul."

Apollonius. "Rejoice! I am about to inform thee of them!"

Damis (in an undertone, to Anthony: – )

"Is it possible? He must surely have at the first glance discerned in thee extraordinary aptitude for philosophy. I shall also strive to profit by his instruction."

Apollonius. "First of all, I shall tell thee of the long course which I have followed in order to obtain the doctrine; and if thou canst discover in all my life one evil action, thou shalt bid me pause, for he who hath erred in his actions may well give scandal by his words."

Damis (to Anthony).

"How just a man? Is he not?"

Anthony. "Indeed I believe him to be sincere."

Apollonius. "Upon the night of my birth, my mother imagined that she was gathering flowers by the shore of a great lake. A flash of lightning appeared; and she brought me into the world to the music of the voices of swans singing to her in her dream.

"Until I had reached the age of fifteen I was plunged thrice a day into the fountain, Asbadeus, whose waters make perjurers hydropical; and my body was rubbed with the leaves of the onyza, that I might be chaste.

"A Palmyrian princess came one evening to seek me, offering me treasures that she knew to be in the tombs. A hierodule of the temple of Diana, slew herself in despair with the sacrificial knife; and the governor of Cilicia, finding all his promises of no avail, cried out in the presence of my family that he would cause my death; but it was he that died only three days after, assassinated by the Romans."

Damis (nudging Anthony with his elbow).

"Eh? did I not tell thee? What a man!"

Apollonius. "For the space of four successive years I maintained the unbroken silence of the Pythagoreans. The most sudden and unexpected pain never extorted a sigh from me; and when I used to enter the theatre, all drew away from me, as from a phantom."

Damis. "Wouldst thou have done so much? – thou?"

Apollonius. "After the period of my trial had been accomplished, I undertook to instruct the priests regarding the tradition they had lost."

Anthony. "What tradition?"

Damis. "Interrupt him not! Be silent!"

Apollonius. "I have conversed with the Samaneans of the Ganges, with the astrologers of Chaldea, with the magi of Babylon, with the Gaulish Druids, with the priests of the negroes! I have ascended the fourteen Olympii; I have sounded the Scythian lakes; I have measured the breadth of the Desert!"

Damis. "It is all true! I was with him the while!"

Apollonius. "But first I had visited the Hyrcanian Sea; I made the tour of it; and descending by way of the country of the Baraomati, where Bucephalus is buried, I approached the city of Nineveh. At the gates of the city, a man drew near me…"

Damis. "I – even I, good master! I loved thee from the first. Thou wert gentler than a girl and more beautiful than a god!"

Apollonius (without hearing him).

"He asked me to accompany him, that he might serve as interpreter."

Damis. "But thou didst reply that all languages were familiar to thee, and that thou couldst divine all thoughts. Then I kissed the hem of thy mantle, and proceeded to walk behind thee."

Apollonius. "After Ctesiphon, we entered upon the territory of Babylon."

Damis. "And the Satrap cried aloud on beholding a man so pale."

Anthony (aside).

"What signifies this?.."

Apollonius. "The king received me standing, near a throne of silver, in a hall constellated with stars; from the cupola hung suspended by invisible threads four great birds of gold, with wings extended."

Anthony (dreamily).

"Can there be such things in the world?"