Read Online The Governess and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell - Free Book Online Page B

virginity, or the tremor of awe in immaculate devotion to dreams of another world. He was ashamed to open the portfolios containing his own work, for it seemed to him as if he had, so to speak, made himself unworthy to live on this earth, had committed a sin in painting pictures where sturdy country folk modelled for the Saviour’s disciples and stout countrywomen as the women who served him. His mood became more and more sombre and oppressive. He remembered himself as a young man following his father’s plough, long before he took to art instead, he saw his hard peasant hands thrusting the harrow through the black earth, and wondered if he would not have done better to sow yellow seed corn and work to support a family, instead of touching secrets and miraculous signs, mysteries not meant for him, with his clumsy fingers. His whole life seemed to be turned upside down, he had run aground on the fleeting vision of an hour when he saw an image that came back to him in his dreams, and was both torment and blessing in his waking moments. For he could no longer see the Mother of God in his prayers except as she was in the picture that presented so lovely a portrayal of her. It was so different from the beauty of all the earthly women he met, transfigured in the light of feminine humility touched with a presentiment of the divine. In the deceptive twilight of memory, the images of all the women he had ever loved came together in that wonderful figure. And when he tried, for the first time, to ignore reality and create a Mother of God out of the figure of Mary with her child that hovered before his mind’s eye, smiling gently in happy, unclouded bliss, then his fingers, wielding the brush, sank powerless as if numbed by cramp. The current was drying up, the skill of his fingers in interpreting the words spoken by the eye seemed helpless in the face of his bright dream, although he saw as clearly in his imagination as if it were painted on a solid wall. His inability to give shape to the fairest and truest of his dreams and bring it into reality was pain that burnt like fire now that reality itself, in all its abundance, did not help him to build a bridge. And he asked himself a terrible question—could he still call himself an artist if such a thing could happen to him, had he been only a hardworking craftsman all his life, fitting colours together as a labourer constructs a building out of stones?
    Such self-tormenting reflections gave him not a day’s rest, and drove him with compelling power out of his studio, where the empty canvas and carefully prepared tools of his trade reproached him like mocking voices. Several times he thought of confessing his dilemma to the merchant, but he was afraid that the latter, while a pious and well-disposed man, would never understand him, and would think it more of a clumsy excuse than real inability to begin such a work. After all, he had already painted many sacred pictures, to the general acclaim of laymen and master painters alike. So he made it his habit to wander the streets, restless and at his wits’ end, secretly alarmed when chance or a hidden magic made him wake from his wandering dreams again and again, finding himself outside the cathedral with the altarpiece in its chapel, as if there were an invisible link between him and the picture, or a divine power ruled his soul even in dreams. Sometimes he went in, half-hoping to find some flaw in the picture and thus break free of its spell, but in front of it he entirely forgot to assess the young artist’s creation enviously, judging its art and skill. Instead, he felt the rushing of wings around him, bearing him up into spheres of calm, transfigured contemplation. It was not until he left the cathedral and began thinking of himself and his own efforts that he felt the old pain again, redoubled.
    One afternoon he had been wandering through the colourful streets once more, and this time he felt that his tormenting doubt was eased.