Allegories; Fantasy fiction; Historical fiction; Middle Ages -- Fiction
With that Queen Anaïtis smiled very cruelly, and she said: "Farewell
to you, then Jurgen, for it is I that am leaving you forever.
Henceforward you must fret away much sunlight by interminably
shunning discomfort and by indulging tepid preferences. For I, and
none but I, can waken that desire which uses all of a man, and so
wastes nothing, even though it leave that favored man forever after
like wan ashes in the sunlight. And with you I have no more concern,
for it is I that am leaving you forever. Join with your graying
fellows, then! and help them to affront the clean sane sunlight, by
making guilds and laws and solemn phrases wherewith to rid the world
of me. I, Anaïtis, laugh, and my heart is a wave in the sunlight.
For there is no power like my power, and no living thing which can
withstand my power; and those who deride me, as I well know, are but
the dead dry husks that a wind moves, with hissing noises, while I
harvest in open sunlight. For I am the desire that uses all of a
man: and it is I that am leaving you forever."
Said Jurgen: "I could not see all this in you, not quite all this,
because of a shadow that followed me. Now it is too late, and this
is a sorrowful thing which is happening. I am become as a puzzled
ghost who furtively observes the doings of loud-voiced ruddy
persons: and I am compact of weariness and apprehension, for I no
longer discern what thing is I, nor what is my desire, and I fear
that I am already dead. So farewell to you, Queen Anaïtis, for this,
too, is a sorrowful thing and a very unfair thing that is
happening."
Thus he cried farewell to the Sun's daughter. And all the colors of
her loveliness flickered and merged into the likeness of a tall thin
flame, that aspired; and then this flame was extinguished.
47.
The Vision of Helen
And for the third time Koshchei waved his hand. Now came to Jurgen a
gold-haired woman, clothed all in white. She was tall, and lovely
and tender to regard: and hers was not the red and white comeliness
of many ladies that were famed for beauty, but rather it had the
even glow of ivory. Her nose was large and high in the bridge, her
flexible mouth was not of the smallest; and yet, whatever other
persons might have said, to Jurgen this woman's countenance was in
all things perfect. And, beholding her, Jurgen kneeled.
He hid his face in her white robe: and he stayed thus, without
speaking, for a long while.
"Lady of my vision," he said, and his voice broke--"there is that in
you which wakes old memories. For now assuredly I believe your
father was not Dom Manuel but that ardent bird which nestled very
long ago in Leda's bosom. And now Troy's sons are all in Adês'
keeping, in the world below; fire has consumed the walls of Troy,
and the years have forgotten her tall conquerors; but still you are
bringing woe on woe to hapless sufferers."
And again his voice broke. For the world seemed cheerless, and like
a house that none has lived in for a great while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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