Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West/Part Second, 2
II
MY NATIVE HORIZON
NATURE in Mt. Lebanon is as beautiful
as she is exacting. The seasons obey
her command and are ever ready to take
up their cue when she speaks. What
wonder after a million rehearsals and one!
They are as punctual as a solar eclipse,
as mild as the breath of Olympus, as
equable as the humor of an Oriental sage.
And never late or in a hurry. Neither
impatient are they to enter ere the curtain
rises, nor querulous should it ever rise too
soon. It seldom does.
And the seasons follow one another with the precision of marching regiments. They do not step on each other's heels, nor do they leave a vacancy between them for the imps of chaos. No, they neither borrow nor steal from each other in these climes. Winter, for instance, has as much respect for the calendar as the moon; he never makes his appearance before Autumn folds his tent and silently steals away. Nor is Autumn so selfish and inconsiderate as to remain in the lap of Nature, when Winter's steps are heard behind the gate of Mt. Sanneen. Spring is never shy and coquettish in taking up the cue. We do not have to go a-searching for her when the time comes as we often do in other parts of the world, especially in and around New York.
My native horizon is not very far away, O my Brother of Manhattan, and not as alien as it seems. Leave the cloud-draped domes, and the sombre sky, and the sleety streets of our beloved City for a spell and come with me to the Theatre of the Ancient World, to the land of legend and prophecy, to the vine-clad hills of Tammuz and the cedar-crowned heights of Lebanus. Don't look up your geography, or your Bible, or your Baedeker. We are not now concerned with these. Behold! Winter, in giant strides across the hills, makes his way to the Mediterranean. He shakes the snow from his feet at the portals of Mt. Hermon, and, lightly over the new-born cyclamens in the terraced land, he hastens to meet Nature and say farewell. He utters his last speech and makes his exit with grand Thespian effect. And as his last echo dies away beyond the nascent warmth of the first sun-kissed cedar bough, the footsteps of Spring are heard in every glen, are seen in bud and clove, are sensed in the unsealed spices of copse and dale. She comes anon with her singing gardens and sighing zephyrs, with her verdant fields and dancing bowers. Yea, she is punctual and refulgent in her appearance as Venus or Jupiter in the Lebanon sky. Here is order, equableness, continuity;—a training, indeed, that mars not art;—a discipline that shakes even the incense in its terebinth sack from its sleep and brings the very salamander to attention. Here Nature beautifully performs the Master-Dramatist's masterpiece. And here too the weather prophets are safe in pursuing their business. They can forecast with the utmost precision, without offending either Dramatist or Actors. Between Nature in my native hills and the learned folk who write the calendar there is the deepest mutual sympathy and respect.
The seasons come and go, but the mark of their footsteps on my native horizon are ineffaceable. Here Time has erected eternal monuments to his departing children. In Mt. Sanneen, rising in the East over a dozen peaks slurred together, we behold Winter shrouded in snow; in the tiger-spotted escarpments, in the grey cliffs, barren and amorphous, forming a huge wall to the deep gorge in which the river flows, we have a fitting monument to Autumn; while in the lowlands facing the Mediterranean, the orange orchards and the olive groves are beautiful monuments to Summer and Spring, wrapped in the light green of the fields and buried in the warm brown soil of life perennial. Indeed, my native horizon is a cyclorama of all the seasons. And the sun rising in Summer over the snow-covered tomb of Winter, from behind the serrate and spotted peaks of Mt. Sanneen, presents a deeply suggestive contrast. It makes me think of the snow flakes of humanity melting under the sun of life, and flowing in the valley of love and hope, between the deep canyon-walls of pain and joy, to reach the shore of the Eternal. (Now, this is pompous and overwrought, but the Mara of my Arabic is on me—and on my race.)
And I would that the seasons of the year were a fitting background to the human symbol; but what hope is there for a race that lives so close to Nature and profits not by it? Cattle huddle together in a storm. The birds in their migrations follow their leader. Even the bees, even the ants—but the proverbial wisdom of the ages is as futile as the warning of Nature. My poor, proud, distressed and distracted little race, now in its autumn days—will it survive the approaching storms of the coming winter? Will it ever regain the glory of its ancient springs? Will its children, who are still pagans at heart, ever realize again the beauty of art in Nature and the power of Nature in art? Scattered in every continent, looking in every direction—except the one pointing to Self—for a savior, and chopping commerce, meanwhile, or rhetoric, or gangrened nationalism on their decayed backlogs of life, will they ever become sensible again of the Awakening? The harbinger of Spring, will they know him should he appear? The herald of Summer, will they receive him should he come? O, ye weak races of Man, what are you going to do with the few soul-Titans that are of you and with you ? Will you deliver them as bound captives to a foreign despot? Will you sell them for a decoration? Ye little peoples of the land, ye disinherited and downtrodden children of the earth, the big throbbing heart of the world is with you. So be you with your soul-Titans, and rise to the summits of love and light and freedom and power. (Sometimes I forget that I am writing in English and to people little used to dithyramb and dogma outside a certain form of art.)
But the majestic beauty of my native horizon is marred, alas, by the pitiable poverty and squalor of human life. And what is one to do with one's heart? Here is a broad verdant slope, rising high to the very feet of Mt. Sanneen; it is studded with clusters of pink gable houses, with pyramids of white and bluish stone;—it is at night a brilliant spectacle—a sight for the gods. And no less beautiful is it in the day. Behold these homes, half-hidden in mulberry and poplar and surrounded with thick pine forests, rising from terrace to terrace, like the steps of an altar with its objects of decoration, its flowers and icons and wax figures. Indeed, this makes a most beautiful altar to Nature.
But the life, think on the life behind this outward show, under these trappings and decorations. Once I likened the village on the breast of that gentle and hospitable mountain to the decorations on the breast of a successful Turkish diplomat. And the diplomat protested Turkish fashion—Istagferullah effendum! Which means, in unequivocal language, Allah forgive you, if you have not flattered me—Allah forgive me, if you have. And it is well at times that ambiguity, like a summer cloud, should temper the noon-day heat of our thought. For what difference is there—the thought was eating into me, while I trifled with the image—what difference is there between the life that deifies a silk rag or a piece of copper and the life that soils its lips and forehead in the dust before them. Here are the people and their decorated nobilities....
The Lethean breezes, blowing in the evening from the East, awaken the pagan in man,—the artist,—the lover of sheer beauty. And often, in contemplating this fascinating village, my fancy would westward wing itself. And my fellow man and the destiny of my race would no longer trouble me. The little lights behind the glass casements of the gabled houses, fixed and faint as the distant stars, are like so many diamonds in the crown of some sylvan goddess. And in places where the houses are crowded, piled above each other, a cascade of light in a frame of shimmering purple foiliated by the bright pink gables, suggests to me the skyscrapers of New York at dusk or the electric legends of its White Way at night. And that renews my hope as well as my anxiety.
The weak races, I ask, why are they so strong in their land of adoption, so weak in their native land,—so bold and daring there, so docile here? And the moon disappears in the clouds, as if she did not care to listen. I look with half-shut eyes and in the seen I see the unseen. Behind the clouds I behold the moon smiling mystically; within the darkness I see the potential spark of the eternal fire; and behind the faint lights of the village I see the moving, darkness of the human soul. And so, I say to myself: Depend not always on the known senses; look at things with half-shut eyes. And often I do so. Even with the eye of the soul into things moral and social.
I look out of my northern window in the day on a prospect terrible, wild and majestic. The valley below, the deep gorge, the dizzy precipices, the escarpments spotted here and there with laurels, terebinths, scrub oaks, the broad slope on the other side of the river, decked with olives and mulberries and terraced homes, and the hill-tops fringed with pines rising behind and above each other,—all this is beautiful to hehold, especially through half-shut eyes. Thus seen, the grey of the rugged ridges seems to melt and fuse in the bright green of the fields and the sable of the heaths. And between the brown soil on the breast of the hill and the barren cliffs below there is a bond of common sympathy and mutual affection. Yes, under the soil I can see barren cliffs, and under the barren cliffs I behold arable stretches of land. So with Nature, so with Man and the races of Man. In this sense, at least, my native horizon, methinks, is the horizon of my race, and under the seasons of the year are the seasons of my country. Nor are the monuments and temples lacking. For right behind Mt. Sanneen is the Acropolis of Baalbek, and farther East are the ruins of Palmyra. The one is a monument to the Spring, the other to the Summer of my country's past.