Confessions of Aleister Crowley

201 truth --- and experience (often humiliating) of such reactions --- is of much use against this particular kind of bondage. While other defenders of Rodin were apologizing for him in detail I brushed aside the nonsense --- "a plague o' both your houses!" --- and wrote a sonnet, which is, in its way, to conventional criticism exactly what the Balzac was. It was translated into French by Marcel Schwob and made considerable stir in Paris. Even at this length of time, I attach a certain importance to it. For one thing, it marks a new stage in my own art. BALZAC Giant, with iron secrecies ennighted, Cloaked, Balzac stands and sees. Immense disdain, Egyptian silence, mastery of pain, Gargantuan laughter, shake or still the ignited Stature of the Master, vivid. Far, affrighted, The stunned air shudders on the skin. In vain The Master of La Comédie Humaine Shadows the deep-set eyes, genius-lighted. Epithalamia, birth songs, epitaphs, Are written in the mystery of his lips. Sad wisdom, scornful shame, grand agony In the coffin folds of the cloak, scarred mountains, lie, And pity hides i' th' heart. Grim knowledge grips The essential manhood. Balzac stands, and laughs. The upshot was that Rodin invited me to come and stay with him at Meudon. The idea was that I should give a poetic interpretation of all his masterpieces. I produced a number of poems, many of which I published at the time in the Weekly Critical Review, an attempt to establish an artistic entente cordiale. The entire series constitutes my Rodin in Rime. This book is illustrated by seven often lithographs of sketches which Rodin gave me for the purpose. {340} 43 Any other man but myself would have made a ladder to fame out of the success of this winter. I had no such idea. I had been thoroughly disillusioned, not only by the original trance of sorrow which had struck me between wind and water in 1897, but by the experience of my travels. The natives of Hawaii were not worrying about Sophocles; Chogo Ri would be there when the last echo of Napoleon's glory had died away. I was more than ever convinced that to take an interest in the affairs of this world, one must turn one's back on truth. Buddhism might be right or wrong in saying that nothing is worth while; but anyhow there could be no doubt that the conventional standards of value were simply comic. If anything were worth while, it could only be discovered by turning one's back resolutely on temporal things. In accordance with Eckenstein's puritanical ideas of propriety, no communications about the expedition had been made to the newspapers. Ultimately, in the sheer interests of science, a paragraph had been permitted to appear in The Times. It contained thirty-two lines and seventeen misstatements of fact! I myself had been interviewed by a French journalist and the report of my remarks bore no discoverable relation with them. I am perhaps unduly sensitive about such stupidities. I ought perhaps to rely on time to sweep away the rubbish into the dustbin of oblivion and set the truth upon her throne; but yet, the evidence of history smiles grimly. What do we really know of the rights and wrongs of the struggle between Rome and Carthage! What do we know even of Buddhism and Christianity but that the most authentic accounts of their origins are intrinsically absurd! "What is truth?" said jesting Pilate. But, personally, I fail to see the joke.