It is with the angelic eye that man beholds the world of his true substance.
These miniature realms, where all is sunken, muted and transformed, emerge often as not in books. A page of Hamsun frequently yielded the same mysterious harmonies of enchantment as a walk by the canal. For a brief moment one experiences the same sort of vertigo as when the motorman deserts his post with the trolley in full flight. After that it is pure volupte. Surrender again. »Surrender to the spell which has rendered the author superfluous. Immediately one’s rhythm is retarded. One lingers before the verbal structures which palpitate like living houses. One knows that some one never encountered before, and never to be encountered again, will emerge and take possession of one. It may be a personage as innocuous as Sophie. It may be a question of large white goose eggs which will dominate the whole passage. No governing the cosmic fluid in which the events and situations are now bathed. The dialogue may become pure nonsense, astral in its implications. The author has made it clear that he is absent. The reader is face to face with an angelic sport. He will live this scene, this protracted moment, over and over again, and with a sharpened sense of reality verging on the hallucinatory. Only a little street—perhaps not a block long. Diminutive gardens tended by trolls. Perpetual sunshine. And remembered music, toned down to blend with the hum of insects and the rustle of leaves. Joy, joy, joy. The intimate presence of flowers, of birds, of stones which have preserved the record of similar magical days.
I think of Hamsun because it was with Stanley that I shared so often these extraordinary experiences. Our grotesque life in the street, as boys, had prepared us for these mysterious encounters. In some unknown way we had undergone the proper initiation. We were, without knowing it, members of that traditional underground which vomits forth at suitable intervals those writers who will later be called Romantics, mystics, visionaries or diabolists. It was for such as us—then mere embryonic beings—that certain outlandish passages were written. It is we who keep alive these books which are constantly threatening to fall back into oblivion. We lie in wait, like beasts of prey, for moments of reality which will not only match but confirm and corroborate these literary extravaganzas. We grow like corkscrews, we become lop-sided, we squint and stammer in a vain endeavor to fit our world into the existent one. In us the angel sleeps lightly, ready at the slightest tremor to assume command. Only solitary vigils restore us. Only when we are cruelly separated do we really communicate with each other.
Often it is in dreams that we communicate … I am on a familiar street searching for a particular house. The moment I set foot in this street my heart beats wildly. Though I have never seen the street it is more familiar to me, more intimate, more significant, than any street I have known. It is the street by which I return to the past. Every house, every porch, every gate, every lawn, every stone, stick, twig or leaf speaks eloquently. The sense of recognition, compounded of myriad layers of memory, is so powerful that I am almost dissolved.
The street has no beginning nor end: it is a detached segment swimming in a fuzzy aura and complete in itself. A vibrant portion of the infinite whole. Though there is never any activity in this street it is not empty or deserted. Indeed, it is the most alive street I can think of. It is alive with memories, like an arcane grove which pullulates with its swarms of invisible hosts. I can’t say that I walk down this street, nor can I say either that I glide through it. The street invests me. I am devoured by it. Perhaps only in the insect world are these sensations to match this harrowing form of bliss. To eat is wonderful, but to be eaten is a treat beyond description. Perhaps it is another, more extravagant, kind of union with the external world. An inverted sort of communion.
The end of this ritual is always the same. Suddenly I am aware that Stanley is waiting for me. He stands not at the end of the street, for there is no end … he stands at that fuzzy edge where light and substance fuse. His summons is always curt and brusque: Come on, let’s go! Immediately I adapt my pace to his. Forward march! The beloved street wheels softly around, like a turn-table operated by an unseen switchman, and as we reach the corner it joins neatly and inexorably with the intersecting streets which form the pattern of our childhood precincts. From here on it is an exploration of the past, but a different past from that of the memorial street. This past is an active one, cluttered with souvenirs, but souvenirs only skin deep. The other past, so profound, so fluid, so sparkling, made no separation between itself, present and future. It was timeless, and if I speak of it as a past it is only to suggest a return which is not really a return but a restoration. The fish swimming back to the source of its own being.
When the inaudible music begins, one knows for a certainty that he is alive.
Stanley’s part in the second half of the dream is to rekindle the flame. I will take leave of him when he has set all the mnemonic filaments a-quiver. This function, which he performs with instinctive adroitness, might be likened to the quivering oscillations of a compass needle. He holds me to the path, a tortuous, zigzag path, but saturated with reminiscences. We buzz from flower to flower, like bees. When we have extracted our fill of nectar we return to the honeycomb. At the entrance I take leave of him, plunging into the very hub of transformation. My ears resound with the oceanic hum. All memory is stifled. I am deep in the labyrinthian shell, as secure and alive as a particle of energy adrift in the stellar sea of light. This is the deep sleep which restores the soul. When I awake I am new-born. The day stretches before me like a velvet meadow. I had no recollection of anything. I am a freshly-minted coin ready to fall into the palm of the first-comer.
It is on such a day that I am apt to make one of those haphazard encounters which will alter the course of my life. The stranger coming toward me greets me like an old friend. We have merely to exchange a few words and the intimate stenographic language of ancient brothers replaces the current jargon. Communication is cryptic and seraphic, accomplished with the ease and rapidity of born deaf-mutes. For me it has only one purport—to bring about a re-orientation. Altering the course of my life, as I put it before, means simply—correcting my sidereal position. The stranger, fresh from the other world, tips me off.
Given my true bearings, I cut a fresh swathe through the chartered realms of destiny. Just as the dream street swung softly into position, so I now wheel into vital alignment. The panorama against which I move is awesome and majestic. A landscape truly Tibetan beckons me onward. I know not whether it is a creation of the inner eye or some cataclysmic disturbance of the outer reality attuning itself to the profound re-orientation I have just made. I know only that I am more solitary than ever. Everything that occurs now will have the quality of shock and discovery. I am not alone. I am in the midst of other solitaries. And each and every one of us speaks his own unique language! It is like the coming together of distant gods, each one wrapped in the aura of his own incomprehensible world. It is the first day of the week in the new cycle of consciousness. A cycle, need I say, which may last a week or a lifetime. En avant, je me dis. Allons-y! Nous sommes la.
8
It was Maxie Schnadig who had introduced me, some years ago, to Karen Lundgren. Whatever brought these two together I can’t possibly imagine. They had nothing whatever in common, nothing.
Karen Lundgren was a Swede who had been educated at Oxford, where he had made something of a stir due to his athletic
